So, tell me, was having your own opera company a long-time dream? How did that come to be?
Well, I conducted my first opera at the Palladium theater in 2005, so we're in our 20th season now. And that came about because at the time the Palladium was putting together a collaborative production of “Madama Butterfly,” and they asked me to bring an orchestra and conduct – provide the orchestral music for the “Madama Butterfly.” But that was the seed that would sort of grow into St. Petersburg Opera.
Tell me about your own connection to opera. I mean, opera is so it's everything, isn't it? I went on an opera tour many years ago and in the group was just a plain-speaking man, and he said, “I never liked opera until I realized opera was like all of us. I mean, there's so much, like, lying and cheating and all this other stuff.” And I just thought that was a funny way to look at it.
I mean, as preposterous as some of the plots are, it is. It is kind of everyday emotions and relationships. And a lot of operas have love triangles going on, which I think you see a lot of sometimes in real life. And you have comedy; you’ve got the funny times. You've got the tragedies and the love stories, and they encompass everything; you've got instrumental music, you've got the vocal music, you've got staging. You've got acting on stage, the sets, the lighting and props and sometimes there's dance, too. It just brings everything together into one fabulous art form.
And I had some early exposure to opera. Since we're on a bassoon kick, one of my bassoon teachers was David McGill. He's sort of one of the great pedagogues in the bassoon world, and he loved the singer Maria Callas. He loved opera singing. He used to have his students listen to recordings of famous opera singers, and he would point out the way the opera singers were shaping certain phrases in the music and doing certain musical inflections. And that was already when I was a developing bassoonist, sort of already a fascination with opera that I had. And then when I was in The Florida Orchestra, the orchestra was playing a lot of operas at the time in the '90s (with Opera Tampa) with Anton Coppola conducting on the podium. And he was such a great maestro. And I learned so much from watching him work and everything that he did. And I've always just had a connection to the art form.
What are you most excited about this season for your company?
It's our 20th season, and for this season, for the casting, I looked back at the past several seasons, and I wanted to bring back singers that had been here in the past, primarily. I think one thing I'm excited about is the reunion with a lot of these wonderful singers. We just did our production of “Susannah,” and Jessica Sandidge was in the title role, and she had played our Violetta in our last “La Traviata.” John Robert Green was in the role of the Reverend Blitch, and he had just been the lead in “A Little Night Music.” And I'm looking forward to these upcoming reunions with a lot of wonderful singers who've worked here in the past, who are coming for “Giulio Cesare” and “La Bohème.” And I'm also excited about the diversity of the offerings we have this season. We had Carlisle Floyd's 20th century opera “Susannah,” but we're also going way back to the baroque with “Cesare,” and we've got “Bohème,” which was the first opera I conducted when we had newly formed the St. Petersburg Opera company. That seemed like a great 20th anniversary choice.
Tell me about your production process?
We usually have about two to three weeks rehearsing with the cast, with the pianist, before we even bring the orchestra in. Our process is, the cast will arrive, and I usually take the first two or three days to just intensely rehearse the music aspects with the cast, and then they get into staging, and they're learning all the staging and blocking. And then when we go into the theater about a week before opening night, then they're rehearsing the technical elements, but we also introduce the orchestra at that point, which is always very exciting, to add that rich and fabulous element to the production.
And I enjoy the work. I played principal bassoon for 15 years with the orchestra, and I feel like being an opera singer in an opera ... it's sort of like a combination of being half concerto soloist and half principal player in an orchestra kind of mentality, right? I mean, there are times when the opera singing is really leading the entire ensemble, and you must have that concerto soloist feel to what you're doing. But there's other times when, as an opera singer, you're part of a duet or a trio or a quartet, and you've got to be more tuned in to connecting with your colleagues in a way where you're more like one of four principal players in in the woodwind section of an orchestra, kind of working together. I see the opera singers as this fabulous hybrid between being a concerto soloist and a principal in an orchestra.
Have you taken in more operas since you started doing this? Have you become a student of opera yourself?
Oh, absolutely. Because playing in an orchestra, you had to know musical terms that were in foreign languages. But when you start conducting opera, then you're learning, really learning the Italian and French and German in much more depth. You have to understand the pronunciation, and what the difference is in Italian between having a double consonant and a single consonant. These things are very important to the way things are pronounced. The shadings of the vowels, how open and how closed they're supposed to be. I mean, that's a big journey, right there. And, I knew a lot of operas from playing them, but there were a lot of operas I didn't know. And I really got to fall in love with some amazing operas I hadn't known.
And, for example, I had a sort of bias against Handel. He wasn't my favorite composer, just from playing lots of “Messiahs” in my lifetime, and I really wasn't familiar with his operas. This was a shortcoming on my part, and I had occasion several years ago to look closely at some of his operas. And the one I was really looking closely at was “Semele,” and I realized, "Wow, we ought to do 'Semele.' We ought to go into the Palladium. This is a great opera for this space, with the more intimate theater and somewhat reduced orchestra, and we could do something really interesting with this opera." And I really fell in love with Handel’s “Semele,” and now I'm doing the Handel operas.
Two years later, we did “Alcina,” and I really loved getting to know that opera. Now this season, we're going to do “Giulio Cesare,” which is not done as often as it should be, and it's another great Handel opera. And in 2005 to 2007, if you had asked me, "Oh, do you see yourself conducting Handel operas?" I would have been, like, "No never.’"And you learn things. I came to know Richard Strauss's “Ariadne auf Naxos,” which was an opera that's not done as often as it should be. And I had never played it, but it's this amazing piece of music. It's this amazing piece of art. And there's been a lot of those wonderful, fun discoveries through the years.
Is there something that you would like to share about what you're doing, or about your company, or anything else that you're looking forward to? I was really kind of surprised by “Giulio Cesare” because I'd never heard of that production.
Holly Flack is one of those returning principal singers who she sang Morgana in “Alcina,” and then she sang Semele in “Semele.” She is an amazing coloratura singer, and she has an amazing upper register extension. You hear people talk about singing a high C, and she goes an entire seventh above that to high B-flats, and she's often adding this embellishment and ornamentation in the Handel operas. There's a lot of room to add ornamentation to the music. And just coming to hear how Holly Flack ornaments her baroque arias alone is probably worth the price of admission, not to mention the fabulous countertenors we have coming; Cody Bowers to sing the “Cesare.”
And I would just say, also, that we have a lot of entry points for people who are new to opera. We're going to do a Fourth of July Pops Spectacular, July 4 at the Mahaffey Theater with orchestra and chorus and soloist. And it's the 250th anniversary, so we're super excited about doing this celebration of our nation. And that's yet another kind of different entry point for people to come check out the opera.
How do you find your vocalists?
Most years, we will have an audition in the spring. And this usually involves hearing three or four days of auditions in New York City and usually three days at the Palladium. Singers can either come sing for me in New York, or they can come into St. Pete and sing for me at the Palladium. And when we publish that we're going to do the auditions, we usually get between 800 and 900 resumes of singers who are requesting an audition. And we don't have time to hear that many, so we're usually sifting through the resumes, and we usually whittle it down to about 250. In an audition cycle, I'll typically hear 250 singers, and I cast from that. And then, of course, I also reengage singers who've come and worked here before as well.
Do you divide your time between here and New York?
No, I'm just popping up to New York for those four days in the spring to specifically hear those auditions. But I'm here most of the time. I wear another hat, which is the music director of the Tampa Bay Symphony, so I'm doing that too.
What city do you live in?
I live in South Tampa. I have a commute to our opera building. When the traffic's not bad, it's only 22 minutes. I don't think of that as anything. Some people are like, "Oh, I don't want to cross the (Tampa) Bay." And I got used to crossing the bay when I was principal bassoon of The Florida Orchestra, because the orchestra performs in Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater. You're crossing the bay all the time, and I don't really think anything of it.
Have the audiences changed over the years for your performances?
Well, I know that we get a lot of new people to opera, because we do have these other offerings, like the “Pinocchio,” and it's a one-hour opera, and people will come see it, and it's their first opera, and then they want to come try a full production at the Palladium. Our people will come to the Holiday Pops, and then they'll be like, ‘Oh, well, I think I'll come back for “Tosca" or they'll come to our Broadway cabarets. And our Broadway cabarets are usually done by the cast for one of the operas that's in town. And they'll hear these singers who are getting ready to perform in “Susannah,” and they'll be, like, "Oh, gosh, I gotta go hear these singers do their opera thing." I don't know if I've seen it change. I just think we get a lot of new people to opera, because they try these other things, and then they get curious and interested, and then they come to see a full opera production, and then a lot of them are hooked, which is great.
Do you have supertitles with your operas?
We sure do. If you're seeing an opera in Italian, you'll see the translations as they're singing. I think that it’s really important to have those, because some people think of that as a barrier, but it's really not when you've got the translations there and you can feel the story anyway.
Well, Maestro Sforzini, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
Thank you so much for having me today.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
