BY LEAH BLANKENDAAL
Repetiteur and conductor Simon Bruckard, 25, is part of the Victorian Opera’s Professional Development Program following his graduation from the Master of Music (Opera Performance) at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
Simon has worked as a coach and repetiteur with Victorian Opera for La traviata, Norma, Hansel and Gretel, The Flying Dutchman, Sweeney Todd and I Puritani, to name a few. In 2015, Simon conducted the company’s regional tour of Remembrance in addition to the youth opera, The Grumpiest Boy in the World. Simon frequently performs as a collaborative pianist with singers and instrumentalists and is also a sought after French, German and Italian language coach.
This month he conducts Richard Mills’ The Pied Piper and catches up with CutCommon to chat about the experience ahead of its opening performance.
As a repetiteur, what does your typical day look like?
I spend most of my days playing piano in production rehearsals for operas. On average, we do about six hours of rehearsal each day. I also do one-on-one coaching with singers leading up to rehearsal periods, helping them learn their roles and refine their language. We usually have a few productions on the go at the same time (in fact, at the time of writing this we have three!), so it’s pretty varied. I’m very lucky to play such a wide variety of music.
What do you enjoy about repetiteur work compared to conducting a show?
Most of the time, I don’t actually play in the performances of shows I work on, so it is a different kind of satisfaction to live performance. I love unpacking the text and language of an opera and seeing how that is supported by the music. It’s rewarding to spend time coaching singers, discussing the language and the characterisation, rehearsing details into performance, and then seeing it all come together into a piece of theatre.
You’re gearing up to conduct the premier of Richard Mills’ The Pied Piper with VO next week. What preparation has gone into this?
We got the score pretty late for this show, so all the preparation that would normally be done before rehearsals start had to be truncated into less than a week. I always start by reading through the libretto a few times without the music. All opera is drawn from the text and your musical decisions have to come from there. I usually play the opera through a few times at the piano, working out the tempos, beating patterns and periods of the music to create a functional scheme before rehearsals start. Then you simply have to put your head down and study the orchestration and make sure you know it very well.
A lot of the detail really comes in the rehearsal room. Things change when the performers start blocking their actions and detailing their characters. For example, we’ve adjusted a few tempos to allow for choreography and text clarity and so forth. It’s a moveable feast, and I’m still discovering new things in the score.
How would you describe Mills’ score? You’ve talked previously about how each character has an individual ‘musical feel’. Can you elaborate?
Richard Mills is a wonderful composer – really one of the most experienced composers of opera in Australia, and certainly one of the best orchestrators in the country. Parts of this score remind me of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The music for the kids’ chorus and some of the more comic characters has a really fun and light feel, but always with a slightly crooked edge. There’s Wagner-esque roving harmony in romantic moments and grandiose chorales for the townspeople. The play is full of colourful characters, from money-hungry villains to scampering rats to the slightly love-struck town-crier, and all of them have their own musical styles to bring them to life.
What’s the biggest challenge in working with new music (and, in particular, new opera!)?
I love working on new music. It’s the most exciting thing we do, and Victorian Opera are leaders in the field, doing at least one new work every year. The biggest challenge is also the most exciting thing – there is absolutely no precedent for its performance. That means the audience has no preconceptions about how it should be performed. It’s not like doing La Bohème, where the audience expects the tenor to sing a high C in his aria (even though it’s not in the score). There’s no previous performance practice to draw on. You can’t listen to a recording to save time, or assume that everyone has an understanding of the style of the work. But, you have an opportunity to surprise and excite, which is what brings you back to performing.
What was your first-ever conducting gig?
My first production after I finished high school was an amateur production of Guys and Dolls. I had a lot of fun, and learnt a lot. Mostly that conducting is as much about diplomacy as waving your arms about.
What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the beginning of your MMus?
Not to compare yourself to the other students (easy to say, not so easy to do). Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. It’s very easy to be intimidated by that person in the practice room next door, playing their scales blisteringly fast and seemingly without effort. Never mind them. Stay at your own pace, keep chiseling away, and remember that you decided to study music because you have something of your own to offer.
To see Simon conduct The Pied Piper, check out the Victorian Opera website and you can book tickets online.
Images supplied. Featured image credit: Charlie Kinross.
