The most important thing is the text. Interview with the French baroque researcher Stefans Fiže / LR3 / / Latvijas Radio

On Saturday, February 4, at 6 p.m. in Liepāja’s “Lielais dzintars” concert hall, baroque music experts from France will visit with the program “Treasures of the Italian Baroque. Monteverdi and the Venetian Opera” – ensemble The Epics and conductor Stefan Fizet, under the leadership of which the pearls of the opera pages of the Venetian composer – Claudio Monteverdi and his students and contemporaries will be heard. With Stefan Fizet see you in “Classic” right now.

Stefan Fizet is a harpsichordist, pianist and conductor. He has been a vocal pedagogue in the world’s best opera houses and has worked as a conductor on the most outstanding international stages, such as the Vienna State Opera, the Bastille Opera, the Leipzig Opera, the Elysée Country Theater in Paris, etc. Inspired by the desire to work with young artists, he has developed and transformed the only vocal pedagogy and baroque operas classes in France available at the Paris Regional Conservatoire to hone and develop your vision of Baroque declamation and ornamentation.

After a long-term study of the repertoire and treatises, Stefans Fize created his own ensemble five years ago The Epics, which offers a brand new vision of baroque interpretation. The basis of this project is training and the transfer of experience, therefore a large part of the ensemble’s artists are former students of the conductor (47% singers and 40% instrumentalists), who are the most talented music professionals of their generation and are able to perform phenomenally the repertoire of the Baroque era.

Inga Žilinska: With what the ensemble you lead The Epics is different among other early music ensembles?

Stefan Fizet: It is hard to say what is special about our ensemble, but I focus on two things – the first of them is text or speech. Especially in recitatives, it should be like in a theatrical play – related to recitation, speaking as much as possible. The second thing, more related to French music, is ornamentation.

When you look at a 17th century sculpture or painting, the cloths of the characters are often decorated with ornaments. We want to bring a similar image to life in music as well; especially in French music I use a lot of ornamentation.

These two aspects make a difference The Epics from others. It is also important that young talented musicians who have just graduated from the conservatory merge with experienced artists who have built an international career in the ensemble. This collaboration brings a very special energy to the ensemble.

By what criteria do you choose new artists? Should you invite students or only graduates for cooperation?

Someone is still studying, someone else has already finished his studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where I myself am a teacher and lead an opera class and create opera productions. This ensemble is only five years old and I created it mainly from my graduates, although several of my students play in other orchestras and ensembles. Even now, I see how young singers and instrumentalists are developing, and if I see a potential musician for our ensemble, I invite you to join us on our adventure.

If you basically stage opera performances, then The Epics the composition is quite thick. Will you go to Liepāja with a smaller team?

Yes, in Liepāja we will play 17th century Venetian opera music, and at that time, similar to today, the saddest story is about money, because in Venice there was never enough money to hire orchestra musicians.

The situation was different in the courts, where an influential highborn tried to demonstrate his greatness. In 17th century Venice, the opera was a public event – anyone could attend it. Therefore, a great deal of attention was paid to the visuality of the performance, as the scenography had to surprise the audience. In one of the operas, a fragment of which we will also play in Liepāja, there were even elephants on the stage! Visually, these performances were impressive, but there was no money left for the orchestra, and in the second half of the 16th century the Venetian opera orchestra consisted mostly of only seven or eight musicians. At the very end of the 17th century, the orchestra was supplemented with one trumpet and timpani. We will also arrive in such a composition – two violins, a viola, which will play both the alto violin and viola da gamba line, and a cello in the continuo group. Such a composition of musicians could be heard in the arias, but only the harpsichord and theorba revealed the content of the ritunelles – the instrumental fragments of the opera.

But why do you think opera was able to be born in Italy and Venice, if there were no funds to pay the musicians?

Nothing has changed even today – singers in baroque operas are paid much better than orchestra musicians…

Of course, the soloist is on stage in front of the audience and the audience notices every little mistake and follows the progress of the stage events. But those in the orchestra pit are less important. In order to achieve clear speech in recitatives, the orchestra ensemble must be small and flexible, like a cat it must follow the singer in recitatives. The larger the composition, the more difficult it is to implement.

What will we hear in the performance of your ensemble in Liepāja?

It will be the music of Monteverdi and his students, as well as his contemporaries. Although Monteverdi’s “Orpheus” was not written in Venice, it was with him that this completely new form of music began at the beginning of the 17th century, and Monteverdi was its brightest representative. We have included in the program the works of musicians of different generations: for example, the opera fragments of Monteverdi’s pupil Francesco Cavalli, which date back to the second half of the 17th century.

And interestingly: the closer to the end of the 17th century, the more important arias become in operas. For instance,

Cavalli, already a prominent composer at the end of his life, composed the opera Masenzio, but the Venetian theater rejected it, saying that the opera had almost no arias. Antonio Sartorio, a composer of the next generation, was invited to supplement Cavalli’s opera with arias. He included in it, I don’t remember exactly, 85 or 90 arias, the shortest of which lasted only about 10 seconds, but he called it an aria.

It vividly shows the public’s attitude towards opera and characterizes the era. Of course, as the importance of arias grew, so did the orchestra.

Do you have a single idea for the concert program?

Yes, the story will be about love and its different manifestations.

In Venice in the 17th century, there was a very free atmosphere: the city held the Venetian Carnival, which was accompanied by dressing up and masquerading – the atmosphere was quite relaxed. Of course, this is also reflected in the opera and its plots, highlighting various spicy scenes, for example, the scene in the women’s bathhouse, where a prince dressed in women’s clothes wanders in.

In another scene, we meet a woman – a free thinker who changes partners and lives as she wants. While going to the sauna, she notices a knife hidden in her competitor’s dress. These will be stories about love, but there will also be some less positive aspects of love…

In an interview, I read that you refer to the musical score as a certain frame and an optical illusion. How is the work on the new score going? What is the most important task when starting work on interpretation?

The most important task is always related to the text – how best to bring the content of the text to the fore.

At the concert, we will play excerpts from the operas of Domenico Freschi and Marcantonio Dziani, which are actually like completely new scores, especially as if they were written yesterday, because they have not been staged since the 17th century; the scores also have no marks, no notes or descriptions available.

Therefore, the most important thing is the text, its content and drama, through which we bring the characters’ characters to life. Of course, in a sense, these scores are not completely different, as they are rooted in the traditions of 17th-century Venetian opera. It was one era, one tradition.

So it follows that in the Venetian opera of the 17th century, the text plays a more important role than the music?

It can be said – the role of music is subordinated to highlight the text, to underline the main point in the text. However, singing technique also develops in parallel. It moves rapidly towards the bel canto manner and at the end of the 17th century is not far behind the vocality of Handel’s or Verdi’s operas. That is why the audience demanded more and more arias.

You are a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. What do you think: what about interpreting can be taught to the other person, and what does the interpreter have to find for himself?

The most important thing is to keep looking for what else we can do with this music. This generation has the opportunity to learn from very good teachers who speak a lot. But if we look at the music of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, we have no records available to show how this music sounded at that time. A teacher can only present his vision, but each musician must find his own.

If we listen to Anton Rubinstein or Marta Argerich, Yehudi Menuhin – artists of this level come with their own world of interpretation, and everyone must somehow try to find their own world of music.