Gerard Mortier brought you to the Salzburg Festival for the first time in 1992. As well as Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, there was Monteverdi, albeit madrigals and other works. At that time, Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti had been brought in for decades for ‘early’ music performances. Were you and Les Arts Florissants exotics for period instrument music in Salzburg in 1992?
William Christie in Conversation, photo Salzburg Festival/Oscar Ortega
No, because, after all, there was an eminent Austrian by the name of Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He was not of my generation, but along with someone like Gustav Leonhardt. These days, I find myself of the older generation, but back in the 1980s and early 90s, there were still people of a generation older than me who were performing music on period instruments, with historically informed performance practice. Leonhardt remained very true to all this. Harnoncourt left it behind.
In 1993, your colleague and friend René Jacobs came to Salzburg with Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. The same year, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien made their debut at the Salzburg Festival with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea. When did you first become aware of Harnoncourt?
Very, very early on. Obviously through recordings. I arrived in 1970 from the USA and the names of Harnoncourt and Leonhardt were already well known. I can remember, for example, in 1974, listening to a recording of Harnoncourt conducting Rameau’s Castor et Pollux. That’s a long time ago.
Following in your wake, numerous early music ensembles sprang up like mushrooms. Did you notice ‘free riders’ as well, who took the easy way out and, once successful, were content with a more moderate level of playing?
We now have many early music ensembles. A number in France, for example, who are former colleagues and students. Among these people, there are very serious musicians who have become very successful, like Christophe Rousset, Emmanuelle Haïm, Marc Minkowski, who used to play with me. It is a popular movement in many countries. The simple fact is that we can sell out the Vienna State Opera five times or the Paris Opéra and Glyndebourne during the summer. But there are some people, I ask myself, are they really serious? Are they people who have the passion and the commitment? Or are they simply profiting by the popularity of a movement?
I think it is like everything else. Even in 19th or 20th-century music, you have people who are extraordinarily gifted and those who are less gifted. But I think that all comes out in the open. Why do we love Jonas Kaufmann? Well, because he is an extraordinarily talented and passionate musician. You’ll find this in every generation and, I think, in every field of music. The only difference between the early music movement and mid-19th century opera or symphonic music is that you have a sense of virtuosity. It’s very intense. You cannot play an opera by Richard Strauss if you don’t really know what you’re doing. It’s technically very difficult – to conduct as well. Whereas in music of the 17th and 18th century, there is this kind of Gebrauchsmusik, where you have people, amateurs, who can play. When that comes into professional situations, then it’s a bit sad.
What would you pass on to ‘modern’ musicians from your experience?
I suppose it is the idea that you can question music. One of the great problems, for example, with playing Mozart is that people are doing the same thing that they have been doing for 150 years. They don’t question themselves. Why do we do a ritardando during the Countess’s second aria in Figaro? There are these kinds of accumulations of things. There are essentially two worlds for musicians in a modern orchestra. There is the world of the musician who receives information from his teacher, from his teacher’s teacher, that’s (in German), ‘Tradition’. Some is good, some is not very good. The other idea is that these modern musicians, when they look at a page of music, believe that everything is on the page, that everything is truth. You’re talking about dynamics, about phrasing, tempo…
To give you an example: Pierre Boulez in Le Marteau sans maître. We took one page, which I use for teaching at the Conservatory. There were 72 indications of tempo, orchestration, everything. That’s a lot. One page of an opera by Lully, published in 1687 by Ballard: nothing. Which means that the input of the musician is extremely important. He must complete the score. This is something that modern musicians don’t know. Can you go very far with a modern orchestra? Or modern singers? It depends on their intelligence. It depends on their engagement, passion, interest and understanding of what the score needs. The modern conservatory musician has to understand that there is a degree of specialization. That is essentially the difference when working with modern orchestras.
How do you assign roles according to gender in these times of excellent countertenors?
I do use countertenors. I think some of them are extremely good. But we must remember, of course, that there are many that aren’t very good. And secondly, it is a 20th-century phenomenon. Were there extraordinarily gifted falsetto singers in Handel’s or Monteverdi’s time? Not really. They were used sometimes for comic roles. They were mostly used by people like Handel in the church. Falsetto singing was, likewise, used in France in the church. They were called ‘dessus mués’, sopranos who had already become adult males.
You are quite right, we have some excellent and wonderful countertenors who can sing castrato roles. Is it the same kind of voice as back then? We don’t know. And we never will. And for Handel, we know, if he didn’t have a castrato, alto or soprano, he simply used a fine female voice. For example in Orlando, which is one of his best magic operas: the role of Medoro is always sung by a woman.
Musically, Handel was a man of the world who absorbed many influences. Where did the opera pioneer Monteverdi get his musical inspiration?
First of all, he used forms that were already present. The recitar cantando, the seconda pratica, was not invented by Monteverdi. The idea of enhancing the individual as a soloist becomes something that defines him. And this is extraordinary. But so little remains of his theatre music. There is L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea. Monteverdi is putting together new styles. And we see the evolution from L’Orfeo and, at the end of his life mid-century, a piece like Poppea. For me, it’s some of the most wonderful music in the world. It is an enormous pleasure to play Monteverdi.
Ultimately, Poppea is an immoral opera. How does Monteverdi express this musically?
The characters are finely defined in terms of their emotions and the way they behave towards each other. Ottavia, Ottone, Drusilla and, of course, Poppea and Nerone. Poppea is a woman of no morals. And Nerone is a man of no morals and he’s mad. Poppea is not mad; she’s ambitious, a bit evil. She’s immensely seductive. Does she have moments of selfdoubt? A few, yes.
But in the greatest of all Baroque opera, we’re dealing with human tragedy, be it Handel or even the French tradition of Lully. All the music that dates from Monteverdi to the death of Rameau. It’s humanism, essentially. I’ve often said that it’s curious that humanism begins in Italy way, way back in the 16th century. It goes through literature, painting and sculpture, through theatre, and ends with music. The exaltation and the interest in the human – his emotions, his tragedy. And Monteverdi is among the best at expressing this through his music.
If there is something that makes Monteverdi unique for you, what would it be?
It’s exactly that. It’s the human aspect, the emotional aspect of Monteverdi. He’s dealing with forms, with recitative, the instrumental work, the symphonia. They are not unique in the sense that others of his time were doing this as well, but he puts them together in the most unique way.
We’ve already done a great deal of Monteverdi. The recordings I made in 1982 are currently being reissued. My lovely colleague Paul Agnew has now completed a recording of the entire madrigals. We can talk of Monteverdi as someone who is very familiar to us. And I think both of us would say, yes, it’s this extraordinarily human element that he develops more and more as he gets into the pure seconda pratica. He can write fantastic polyphony, but he writes music that’s designed to be expressed either by the solo voice or in a very individual way in music for several voices.
What influence did your harpsichord playing at the beginning of your career have on your life as a conductor?
An enormous one. Look, for example, at my colleagues: Christopher Hogwood, Ton
Koopman, Konrad Junghänel, who is a fine lute player. We are doing something that was very historic in the sense that the cembalo was always at the centre of the orchestra. Always. And the person who played the cembalo was the person who was directing. Bach and Handel conducted from the cembalo or the organ; all the Leipzig repertoire, there was always a harpsichord.
I also think it is part of our nature. I could have been a soloist, I suppose. Harpsichordists are essentially fulfilling a historical role and also a social one – and I like making music with other people.
(After Press Materials)