Opera japonica/Kazushi Ono

Kazushi Ono

Photo: Jochen Klenk

Kazushi Ono will succeed Antonio Pappano as the Musical Director of La Monnaie, the Brussels operahouse, in the autumn of 2002. Ono has been General Music Director of the opera in Karlsruhe since 1996, before which he was the Music Director of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. Born in Tokyo in 1960, the conductor has also had a long association with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he started an ambitious series of Opera Concertante that have included the Japanese premieres of works by Hindemith, Janacek, Prokofiev, Schreker, Richard Strauss and Zemlinsky.

Simon Holledge met Kazushi Ono in Tokyo on 22 August 2000, following performances of Verdi's Otello (Opera Concertante Number 20) and talked about his career, his hopes for Brussels and his views about opera in Japan.

Simon Holledge: How did your music making start? Were your family musical? Did you play an instrument as a child?

Kazushi ONO: My father was a computer engineer and my mother was a tea ceremony instructor. But when I was a child, Yamaha and Kawai were trying to sell a piano to every home, so we had one. My elder brother learnt to play and I started when I was four. But even before that I liked music. I said I wanted to be a conductor when I was three! My father bought some of the first stereo recordings, including Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, and I used to dance around waving chopsticks in the air to the music.

My debut as a conductor was when I was 12 with an ensemble consisting of accordion, percussion etc. But it was all like a dream, nothing concrete. I didn't conduct professionally until after high school.

Holledge: You studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music [Geidai] in the early 80s. Who were your teachers? Was Geidai stimulating?

ONO: My teacher was Masahisa Endo who sadly died of a heart attack last year. As you know, the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music is a national university, so it didn't cost much. There were a lot of talented students. The system adopted in the conducting class was helpful. The university had an orchestra made up of professional musicians and each of us could conduct them a few times a year. It was very enjoyable, very stimulating. I remember conducting Beethoven's 2nd Symphony at the end of my first year, I wasn't prepared for the response delay of the orchestra, hesitated for a moment and then found that my hesitation had been followed by the orchestra!

Holledge: What kind of music were you interested in at that stage?

ONO: We learnt the main 19th century symphonic repertoire, but I also accompanied lieder. I found music with a text more concrete . . . I could learn how the music functioned in a concrete way. I was also very interested in opera

Holledge: You later studied with Leonard Bernstein, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Giuseppe Patanè. Who made the greatest impression on you?

ONO: All three were important. I only had one summer in Tanglewood with Bernstein, but he taught me how music can give us the most important moments in our lives. How music has the power to open the hearts of men and women. He believed that the power of music could overcome all human difficulties, a power that he achieved himself in his late period.

Sawallisch is a man of enormous ability. A pianist. Performed all Wagner, all Richard Strauss, all Mozart, very wide repertoire. He also had many other duties, administration etc. as director of an operahouse [Bavarian State Opera]. But he did everything perfectly!

Patanè was a genius. Unfortunately he died when he was 57. He never used a score, memorized 200 operas, emotionally rather than mathematically. There's a story that he was doing Adriana Lecouvreur, and asked the soprano not to use rubato on the phrase: 'Io sono l'umile ancella del genio creatore'. The first singer was Freni and she did exactly as he wanted. But when he came to perform with the second cast, the soprano unwittingly put in the rubato. The maestro flung down his baton, the orchestra stopped, and the soprano apologized profusely. Patanè accepted her apology, gave the orchestra the precise number of the bar to start on, the text to the soprano and re-started the opera all without a score!

He was passionate! I learnt all about Verdi and Puccini from him. He was the last of the great Italian conductors: Toscanini, Victor de Sabata, Tullio Serafin and Patanè!

Kazushi Ono conducting the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra

Holledge: Your association with the Tokyo Philharmonic goes back to 1988. Has the Tokyo Philharmonic been a major anchor for you in your career?

ONO: It is always a pleasure for me to work with the Tokyo Philharmonic. It's a theatre orchestra. They have had many opportunities to do the Italian operatic repertoire. They possess the ability to listen to and follow the voice. Other orchestras, symphonic orchestras can't do this. This is the quality that for example the Vienna Philharmonic have, in contrast to the Berlin Philharmonic which has a different sense . . . The Tokyo Philharmonic have a sound that is soft and comfortable, like velvet, the orchestra has a palette of many colours which connect to the emotion, a sensibility that is also dramatic. When I took over the orchestra I wanted to develop this aspect of their music playing.

Holledge: You started the Opera Concertante series in 1992. Otello which you conducted last week was number 20. This series has included a broad range of works and eight Japanese premieres. What was the purpose of starting this series? Has it been successful?

ONO: When we started the series it was not well known or well sold, but after about three or four years it began attracting attention. It showed that there were people in Tokyo who appreciated a broader repertory and were curious about hitherto unperformed works.

Holledge: The next opera concertante is to be conducted by Ryusuke Numajiri. Does that mean that your involvement in the series has now come to an end?

ONO: I will continue to do concerts with the Tokyo Philharmonic from time to time, but the orchestra is now being amalgamated with the Japan Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra. Chung Myung-Whun is to become Special Music Adviser to the orchestra. Perhaps he may continue with the series . . . but the preparation for an opera concertante requires a lot of time.

Holledge: You were chief conductor and music director of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra from 1988 to 1996. Was this been more or less demanding than being with the Tokyo Philharmonic? Was it very different working in Europe.

ONO: In Tokyo I did the programmes that I thought were needed here. Zagreb was completely different. I was able to do symphonic cycles and other programmes relating to its strong Middle European traditions. Bruno Walter had worked there, also Weingartner, Matacic . . . So I had the opportunity of developing two orchestras in two different directions.

Holledge: I understand that your big breakthrough was in April 1995 when you conducted Rigoletto at short notice at the Hamburg State Opera. How did that come about?

ONO: Roberto Abbado was supposed to have been the conductor, the production was by Andreas Homoki. The direction was tricky and in the middle of the rehearsals an exhausted Abbado disappeared. I got the job, though I had no experience of jumping into a production at short notice - what Patane was really good at - having been an orchestral conductor up till then.

Holledge: And that led to Karlsruhe?

ONO: Yes.

Holledge: You have been the general music director of the Badisches State Opera in Karlsruhe, Germany since 1996. What kind of experience has that been? I understand that you have conducted the whole of Wagner's Ring there.

ONO: Karlsruhe has a special Wagner tradition. It was considered as a site for Wagner's festival theatre before Bayreuth was chosen. Felix Mottl, who was a pupil of Wagner's, worked there and we have all his annotated scores. We have done the whole of the Ring, Meistersinger, Fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin, Parsifal - everything except Tannhäuser! I was very lucky to have the experience of conducting all these operas when I was still so young. . . Wolfgang Wagner comes to visit the theatre every year.

And we have also been doing early Verdi there: Macbeth and Attila, both highly acclaimed, and Ernani . . .

Holledge: And you will stay in Karlsruhe until 2002 when you go to Brussels?

ONO: That's right.

Holledge: In the autumn of 2002 you will take over as the musical director of La Monnaie, the Brussels operahouse. What are your plans for the house? I understand it had a reputation for radical and exciting productions in the 1980s when Gérard Mortier was there. Will you want to return to that kind of approach. What operas do you want to perform?

ONO: During the 1990s under [Bernard] Foccroulle and Pappano, La Monnaie had a very well-balanced approach. Verdi, Wagner and Richard Strauss but also Victor Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk [Shostakovich], Peter Grimes, From the House of the Dead (Janacek) - and new operas. I think it's important to continue this tradition.

I am very interested in doing new operas - by people like Wolfgang Rhim, Manfred Trojahn, Luca Francesconi and Toshio Hosokawa . . . I'd like to do one or two new operas each year. Brussels has a stagione system not repertoire, and there are a lot of revivals, including commissioned pieces.

I am also keen to find new directors for our new age. People like David McVicar who has just had a huge success with Agrippina in Brussels.

And I want to do Mozart - but in a new way. I will be doing Don Giovanni during my second year. Mozart is important because it is like a visiting card for the house. Any, every aspect of the work being done at an operahouse can be measured by the quality of its Mozart productions.

Holledge: Turning to Japan, the New National Theatre still lacks a musical director, an orchestra and a regular company of singers. The only thing it has is a chorus group. What are the prospects for the NNTT becoming a fully functioning operahouse? What needs to happen there if the theatre is to be more than a glorious piece of hardware?

ONO: This question reflects on Japanese society. Change is necessary in Japan. We are struggling to adapt to radical world developments, economic and political.

Holledge: If you accepted a job at the NNTT (which you might not wish to!) but if you did . . .

ONO: We would need to clarify where responsibility lies, financially, musically. No-one knows who controls the New National Theatre, what is going on there. The first artistic director was only there for three years. The present one will also, probably, be there for three years. I doubt if they have any real power. Three years is too short to accomplish anything. Intendants at German houses have at least six years tenure.

Holledge: What repertoire would you want to present to the Japanese public? Would they be the same operas you have conducted in the Opera Concertante series?

ONO: When I started the Opera Concertante series, I was frustrated because important 20th century works that were being done in Europe - for example Prokofiev, Britten, Shostakovich, Janacek, Penderecki - weren't being done here. These works should be heard in Tokyo, and we also need to refresh the standard repertoire. Traditional productions are no longer viable. We need a new public. And we need courage - which is absent from the New National Theatre.

Holledge: Despite the large numbers of professionals here in Tokyo, Japanese singers have yet to make an international impact comparable with the Chinese and Koreans. Do you have any thoughts about the education of Japanese singers and about the kind of financial support they get (or don't get) here? How can things be improved?

ONO: Professional singers should be able to live on their singing but I doubt if there are many who can do that in Japan. On the other hand it's easy to get by here, and it can be much more comfortable here for a singer than struggling in Europe. There is a social safety net. Korean and Chinese singers don't have a good home base, so they have no choice but to go abroad, to the west. During the 1960s Japanese singers did the same thing. . . . There is also the problem of the double standard. Foreign singers are treated better here than Japanese, and can earn much higher fees. . . . The New National Theatre ought to be Japan's Met, the final goal for Japan's singers but that isn't the case . . . I have invited Mari Midorikawa [Desdemona in the Tokyo Philharmonic Opera Concertante Otello] to Karlsruhe and encouraged her to audition in Europe. I have also urged Akiya Fukushima [Iago in the same production] to try.

Holledge: Will Japanese-language operas ever be accepted here, to the extent that opera will no longer be regarded as something essentially foreign?

ONO: If the Japanese language was used as one of the elements of the composition it could be possible to realize an operatic scene in Japan but if you want to make an old-fashioned opera based on Japanese culture it's a difficult time now

Holledge: There are a lot of historical Japanese operas. Is this the wrong direction to go?

ONO: These operas should have been done before now. For example, Yukio Mishima's Haru no Yuki ('Spring Snow') would have been a very good subject for an opera, a love story, but I can't think of anyone who could do it at the present time. It's too late. It should have been done in Mishima's own time. Mishima died in 1970 . . .

We have a historical problem relating to Japanese opera. . . . During the Taisho period [1912-26] there was the 'Red Bird Movement' (Akaitori Undo) of Kosaku Yamada and Miekichi Suzuki. They tried to fit, adapt the Japanese language to European musical systems. Many fine lyrical songs resulted like 'Yuyake koyake', 'Akatonbo', 'Karatachi no hana', 'Kono michi'. Very Japanese but also very musical. It could have been a start to a tradition but their work was rejected by the next group of Japanese musicians to return from Europe, who were then rejected by the group that followed after then, and so on. . . . There was no continuity. It's a great pity. The 'Red Bird Movement' was forgotten and development occurred more in the field of instrumental music. . . . Nevertheless there are now many excellent professional singers, orchestras, conductors now. We need the works . . .

Holledge: Are there young Japanese composers working in Opera? Many of the prominent figures [Minoru Miki, Akira Miyoshi etc.] are older . . What age is Hosokawa?

ONO: He is 45. His opera based on the theme of King Lear was highly acclaimed at the Munich Biennale, but he very cleverly avoided using Japanese text and used English as one of the elements of his sound.

Holledge: Thank you very much for talking to me, and many congratulations on your appointment at La Monnaie.

ONO: Thank you.