Setting the stage
New director Esther Nelson shares her plans for the Boston Lyric Opera
Boston Lyric Opera is opening its season with a production of Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann," but much of the news at the city's largest opera company has been playing out behind the scenes. Esther Nelson, BLO's new general and artistic director, has arrived to succeed Janice Mancini Del Sesto, who steps down at the end of this season after 17 years with the company. Nelson, whose resume includes seven years as general director of New York's Glimmerglass Opera, will guide BLO into its next chapter. Under her watch, the company must find a new music director (the post is vacant); grapple with the limitations of its home at the Shubert Theatre; and continue growing its audiences. Nelson spoke recently with Globe classical music critic Jeremy Eichler about her new post and her vision for the future of the company.
Q. You grew up in Europe but have worked with regional companies all over the United States. What interested you in coming to Boston?
A. First of all I like the city of Boston, the rich cultural offerings and the density of the excellent academic institutions. And the company is the right size for me at this time. It has established the infrastructure to do good quality productions and to bring in good singers, and it has a good infrastructure for additional growth.
Q. What is your sense of where BLO is now, and where the company needs to go?
A. I think we're ready to expand in what we offer to our public, and I think that it makes a lot of sense to look at what we're doing from a broader, grander, and more holistic viewpoint. That doesn't mean launching a fourth [annual] production, at least not right away. But opera in my opinion is one of the most fascinating art forms because so many of the arts come together, be they music, theater, the visual arts, and sometimes dance. I would like to see us branch out and add concerts, vocal recitals, performances of large choral works or oratorios, and seminar series that shed light on the multiple aspects of creativity connected to a particular opera.
Q. For example?
A. Our "Tales of Hoffmann" would have been a wonderful jumping-off point for all kinds of programming about E.T.A. Hoffmann. He was a writer and a composer himself. There is a wealth of material out there. Why did Offenbach choose Hoffmann? He was obviously a colorful character in his personal life, and was interesting enough to have the central part in the opera. More generally, with the three operas each season, there are all kinds of crisscrossings that connect the works. Of course we're in a highly academic city, so we don't want to duplicate what a university is doing, but you can take these aspects and dramaturgically link them in an interesting and entertaining way.
Q. Are there particular opera composers that are close to your heart, or individual works?
A. Whichever I'm working on at the time. I'm of the school that Mozart never wrote a wrong note. I'm deeply moved by Mozart, but every period has its great masters. Gluck is certainly one of the grand masters considering what was around him at the time that he composed. I'm a great fan of Verdi. I love Verdi's music and would love for us to do some of the more dramatic pieces like "Otello." Of course, in that case, you're looking at reduced versions.
Q. I assume you mean because of the small pit size at the Shubert Theatre.
A. Yes. As many theaters as Boston has, to my disappointment, we don't have a single perfect opera house. It's unusual for a city of the size of Boston, with its level of cultural integrity, to not have an opera house where you can do grand opera. That for me is a major handicap, a sadness, because it eliminates certain work that, as the largest company in New England, we should be able to do. We can't do Wagner or "Otello" the way it's meant to be done.
Q. Should we be expecting a new BLO capital campaign?
A. Not at this time. But the facility issues remain, and they need to be addressed in some way at some point. That may mean a modified capital campaign or a full-blown one, but at this point, I'm still in a fact-finding phase.
Q. How do you approach the broader challenge of attracting new audiences to BLO without alienating your subscriber base?
A. That's a juggling act we all have to do in regional opera companies. When you have a loyal following for the traditional works, you can't come in and sweep them off the table and say here are works you have to hear [instead]. In this case, I have to wear my other hat, as an executive, and try to find a bit of a blend. You will find in the next years, when we are doing a "Boheme" or a "Tosca," maybe we will bring in a team that might have a fresher approach to it.
Q. Meanwhile, as BLO has focused on more traditional repertoire, the other main company in town, Opera Boston, has been building a reputation for innovative programming. Do you see it as competition?
A. From what I know of opera history in Boston, it's always been a city in which so much is offered. There are also universities and Baroque institutions doing interesting productions. Opera Boston, being a smaller company, has a great deal more flexibility than a larger company has, and it seems to me it takes great advantage of that flexibility. I think there's a wonderful niche for a company that does the lesser known works on a smaller scale. I hope we can coexist, and it certainly seems like we can. It's terrific that we are all here - the audiences have tremendous choices. The beneficiary is the Boston public.
Q. Do you envision BLO commissioning new works?
A. Yes, we would probably look to commissioning very soon. But I would like to do that in partnership with a music director or a principal conductor. As I talk to potential candidates, we have to be in alignment with what excites us and doesn't excite us.
Q. In addition to your interest in various mainstream contemporary composers, I understand you've also kept tabs on the music being written for video games?
A. Like film music, I think it's a genre we have to be aware of, since it's been so interesting to the younger generation that has not traditionally been that captured by orchestral music. The benefit of having teenagers myself is that I know in those video games, they get very excited about the music, and can be quite discriminating. I know several kids for whom the music is primary and the game is secondary. The University of Maryland has a student orchestra that is dedicated only to video game music. It's a field to watch.
Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com. 