The power of the press can seem meagre when you're writing a tepid review of a record you know is going to sell a million copies. So I won't deny I was pleased when I heard that the Canadian Opera Company's new music director is Johannes Debus, the man I tipped as a prime contender for the job in my review of his first performance with the company in October.
Not that Alexander Neef, the Toronto company's general director, needed any help from me to make his choice. He heard for himself the very assured sounds coming from the pit during the company's first-ever performances of Prokofiev's War and Peace, and the buzz from the COC orchestra after they spent several weeks working with Debus.
“The reaction of the orchestra and singers to him was absolutely exceptional,” Neef said, while announcing the appointment last week. The response had to be pretty passionate for the general director to curtail the usual two- or three-year search, and grab practically the first conductor to come through the door since Neef took over the company last summer.
It was amusing to see the two men together, as they met a crowd of media and arts insiders at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. They're both lean, natty, rather intense Germans, both 34; each learned his profession at a big, bustling Germanic company.
It was only when I sat down to talk with Debus that I discovered what a gamble his first appearance with the COC was. He knew of War and Peace only by reputation when his agent called to say the company was looking for someone to conduct, with only a few months' notice. Debus said he would think about it, and called a friend, a Russian singing coach, who had recently seen the opera in Paris.
“I asked her, ‘Do you think I'm able to conduct this piece?' Debus recalls. “And she said, ‘Yes, I think so.' So I decided to do it.” He had not seen a single page of the score, which takes 4-and-a-half hours to perform, and had no experience conducting Prokofiev.
Considering the success he made of the shows, it seems moot to wonder whether Debus has enough experience to run the orchestra so carefully groomed by the late Richard Bradshaw. The new man is obviously a very quick study, and in any case has packed a lot of experience into a short career.
Debus has spent his entire professional life, all 10 years of it, at the Frankfurt Opera. He joined the company as pianist-répétiteur while still a student, after a former teacher, conductor Klauspeter Seibel, suggested he try out for the job.
“He was one of the most talented young conductors I had ever trained, in 20 years of teaching,” says Seibel, who was also then at Frankfurt Opera. “He was a mixture of knowing exactly what he wanted, and also of being completely open to any good suggestion.”
Frankfurt Opera has a repertory system, with several works on the go at any given time. Over the next seven days, for instance, they're giving seven performances of four different operas, and for each of these productions répétiteurs are needed to coach singers and play at piano rehearsals.
“It was very good schooling to start as a répétiteur, to get an insight into so many operas at the piano,” says Debus. He also learned how to alert stage directors to sensitive points in a score, and to bolster singers when nerves faltered. Both are useful skills for music directors. After a year, Debus assisted another conductor in a production of Hans Werner Henze's Boulevard Solitude, and led two performances. Seibel says he was an immediate hit with the orchestra.
