Future Classic Women Awards – Vivien Hewitt

Hello and welcome to Future Classic Women Awards with Stefania Passamonte on women's radio station, the program where we search for the most amazing new female artist on the classical panorama. Today is the first episode of the third edition of Future Classic Women Awards and I'm very happy to introduce you to Vivian Ewitt. Good morning, Vivian. Good morning. How are you? Very good. Vivian is a stage director and costume designer in major theater, including the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Felicia Theater in Genoa, the Bunker Kaitan in Tokyo, Sewell Heart Center. So many incredible theaters. How do you become a stage director and costume designer? It's both incredibly easy, incredibly hard. I started at university because when I was very young I was interested in opera and I acted and I designed costumes for an amateur company in Northern Ireland and a props lady got sick with the opera company and so somehow they got hold of my name and so I went and worked, did props. I was. I was actually working in politics at the time, professionally, and I was very, very young and, you know, my office was just right in front of the opera house in Belfast, so I would rush across the road and we weren't in the opera house at that time because that was bombed. We were in a. We were in a theater, another cinema theatre beside that. And I started working with them and then I became an assistant producer with them and they knew that I was interested in pursuing a career, so they said either you choose London or you go abroad. I very foolishly chose Italy. Yeah. And after I had a couple of important scholarships, an arts council, one to study at the British School in Rome and another one to the Institute of Ready Studies in Parma. And for a while I sort of pursued an academic career as well, and still do at times, but basically I then got thrown in at the deep end of the Puccini Festival. And after many years with them, I then started working in Korea and in Malta and anywhere where they would give me a job. But I never really did the conventional thing of being somebody's assistant, which is what you normally do. You become an assistant to somebody. What a charming job, I think is one of the most interesting inside the opera. And it's very interesting the fact that you take. Tell me that you've been involved with politics before starting your career in the opera. And today I wanted to talk about something that happened right yesterday, because this episode is recorded. So on Tuesday, 6th of October, we had the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who made a statement on ITV News that was believed to have suggested that musicians and others struggling in the arts should retrain and find other work. And then shortly after, an advert called the Fatima's advert about Rethink, Reskill, Reboot campaign from the government began to trend on Twitter with great horror from all the professionals in arts and music. And the adverts depicts a ballet dancer lacing up her ballet shoes and reads, fatima, next job could be in cyber. She just doesn't know it. And so this, of course, sparked a big debate on the necessity for art people that, during lockdown, suffered so much from the fact that they lost all their jobs, all their performances, and basically the main way to leave and pay the bills. And I'm sure a lot of musicians had to go through, you know, getting other jobs to manage to pay for their living costs. And so yesterday at the parliament, there was a very peaceful manifestation about the Rethink, Reskill, reboot. And so people decided to meet up and sing. Do you hear the people sing? From the West End production of Les Miserables. So I'd like to start our episode with this incredible piece from Les Miserables. And then with Vivian, we're gonna go through the impact of opera in the social development and politics as well. So let's listen to do youo Hear the People Sing? Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men? It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again when the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see? Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free do you hear the people sing? Sing the song of angry men it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again when the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance? Some will fall and some will live Will you stand up and take your chance? The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men? It is the music of the people who will not be slaves again when the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the cross There is a light about to start and tomorrow comes. So, Vivian, what do you think about Les Miserables, the French Revolution in opera, actually. Well, it's been a very big theme in opera, hasn't it? Les Miserables is very hard to Define, because it seems like a musical and in many ways it is instead an opera. And of course, the French Revolution has inspired lots of operas. It inspired an opera by Mascagni set during the murders of the aristocrats in the south of France. It produced Andrea Chenier, which is a wonderful opera by Giordano. In fact, around the centenary of The French Revolution, 100 years on, it produced a lot of art. Yes, indeed. Actually, I like to listen to the proper counterpart of the opera that is an aria from the. Andrea Chenier is La Mamorta and this is a version with Callas and the Philharmonia Orchestra. And the conductor is Tullio Serafina. That was actually used in a movie. There was Oscar winning movie with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, Philadelphia. So as well, it was used in a very moving movement about social change. So that was about recognition of homosexuality and hiv. And this song in particular, this aria, it's so moving. I don't know about. I was watching it before the lockdown at the Royal Opera House and I couldn't, you know, keep up my tears. It was so moving. There are some chords in it that they just go straight into your heart. Yeah. And it was magnificently interpreted by Callas, who was very much inside the character, who is a young aristocratic lady who at the beginning lives in a magnificent palace and knows nothing about the outside world. And of course, with the revolution, her world falls apart and she has already met Poet Xinye and she falls in love with him and he tries to save her and they both die at the guillotine, celebrating. Celebrating heroically their death. Something we wouldn't do nowadays, maybe, but it's an extraordinary piece. Well, actually, this one in particular, she's about to. She's offering herself to Gerard to try to save her lover, to save Andrea Chenier. And she's saying to him, you know, you can take me because anyway, I'm already dead. But it starts incredibly talking about the sacrifice of her mother that died saving her from the revolutions. Yeah, from the revolutions. And then about her friend Berci that gave herself to. Gave her body in prostitution. Yes, to manage to pay for her. For the bread because she was sick. But then she says at a certain point she found out that she wasn't alone and around there was hunger, misery and deprivation and danger. She actually heard the voice that God was walking with her and that it was love. And I mean, it's such a powerful piece and it's so full of meanings and I believe it's quite Relevant today as well in the sense that with the lockdown, we all felt alone, particularly, you know, if. But even if you're living with your family at home. But we are not, because we are all together in that sense. Yeah, it's very difficult, isn't it? But I think the important thing about the whole area is that it throws light on a series of things. For example, Berci, the girl who saves the heroine. Berci is actually her personal servant, and she's a black woman. And it's very interesting to see how Luigi Ilica, the librettist, portrays this young black woman who, very determined, becomes one of these kind of frivolous, revolutionary women who prostitutes herself and is very dressed up and elegant and smart and part of this new generation of new rich. But at the same time is doing this just to save the girl whose servant she once was. So she's a very sympathetic figure, and we have a very sympathetic central figure because she's a young woman who loses absolutely everything and is guided only by the idea of love. So the piece has a lot of relevance for today about how social station can change, how people who once were servants or slaves or in very disadvantaged social positions can become extremely powerful. Well, let's listen to La Mama Morta with Maria Callas. Kan. Kotra. Sa. Ra. Holy. F. Oh, my gosh, I just can't talk after these. I mean, how is it you speak perfect Italian, Vivian? But how much do you think someone is missing by not understanding the text of this area, for example? Well, I fell in love with opera, not understanding a word. The first opera I saw was Carmen. And I think it helps enormously if you do understand. It gives you. So I guess if you like our opera, it's well worth the effort to. You know, I did at the beginning some Italian night classes. And you can learn to eat wonderful Italian food and drink wonderful Italian wine as well, and know how to ask for it. And then you can understand your opera better as well. Certainly, Luigi Ilica, the librettist, creates some very intense texts, and he's very concerned with women and with the idea of suffering that brings about rebirth. And I think you miss a little bit of the understanding of what he's trying to get at. But certainly the profundity that an artist like Callas gives us is just electric, isn't Is? I mean, this is something out of this world, really. And I mean, the thing is, even just the introduction with the cello, that first notes, as suddenly they put you in such a state, isn't it a State of mind. Yeah. I think that Jordan was a very young man. His best work. He was very young when he wrote Andre Chenier and he never rose to that level again. It's interesting. But certainly he's a wonderful, wonderful composer and a man with a very good understanding of women, which is not always the case in opera, but he certainly did very empathetic towards women. Well, there is so much that we want to talk and definitely Vivian. I'm going to spoil the news already, but Vivian is going to come back because we need to talk the role of opera for women. And you know, women composers as well that were incredible. There is so much to say about it. But today we were going to focus on the politic effect of opera and the importance of actually the arts in general into the society. So of course the Minister Runnik wasn't saying that musicians should just change a job. He says he was talking about everyone and the fact that there might be new opportunity. And if this opportunity comes, it would be good to try and find new ways. That is actually what we want to do with our new new music conservators. It's called the London Performing Academy of Music. And Vivian is going to be a lecturer at the London Performing Academy of Music. And we're gonna teach skills that goes above the just performing. Performing skills, but it's actually gonna teach skills for the music industry in order to open up all the different opportunities that are inside the music industry above the fact of just performing. And so talking about history, one of the most revolutionary opera as well was Lenozzi di Figaro. The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. Would you like to say something about this? The Marriage of Figaro is very interesting because it's written by Beaumarchais in 1784 and Mozart already has the opera on stage by 1788. So four years after the play was written. Beaumarchais is an interesting figure because he came from a very poor background, he was musical, he had a very dissolute lifestyle and he married a rich woman and then he went into investment and became fabulously rich. But he, he lost it all during the French Revolution. He is one of the great sort of propulsors of the revolution because the Marriage of Figaro for the very first time puts the servant in the name part. Until the late 1700s, the figures who had been at the center of drama, with the possible exception of British drama, which is world apart, the people who had been at the center of drama and especially opera were great princes, great lords, aristocratic figures. Instead, beaumarchais puts a servant at the center of the drama. And it's a servant who's getting his own back against his master because his master would like to take this young man's bride to bed their wedding night. And this was. There was a law that allowed this in Spain and it was a feudal law, very old feudal law which had been current throughout Europe. But it's interesting that, you know, in the Marriage of Figaro we see that the Count says, oh well, you know, I wouldn't oblige you to anything to Susanna. The reality is that he hopes to get by persuasion and maybe a rich tip he would have got by right a few years earlier. But the opera, what the opera does do is it very much puts under shines a light on the power of powerful men over women. Of course, we're now in the age of Harvey Weinstein and of the MeToo movement. Yes. And this is a sort of a MeToo anti litter am written by man where he's showing that certain effects of power never go away and that women can very easily become victims of this and that it needs a very stout defense on the part of their spouses or their boyfriends to defend them from their employers who can certainly use their influence to try to obtain sexual favors. So you know the aria Sebol balare, Signor Contino, which means, do you want to dance, Count? In this Figaro says, well, if that's what you want, you know, I'll give you as good as I get. And he vows to frustrate the Count's plans to take his girlfriend to bed and to make a fool of him, which is what he does too, in the end. Fantastic. Let's listen. Sevoalball Signor Contino from the first act of the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart with Rolando Panerais Figuero and directed by Ans Rosebo at the Aix en Provence Festival. Leave. It means I will play you the little guitar. But actually when we say in Italian, this one at all, this one at all I will play, I will play A means I will beat you up. That's what he means, literally. Indeed, indeed, indeed. And you know, certainly Rolando Panerai's interpretation of this opera was exceptional. He was a very strong, audacious Florentine, very independent man. He died on 22 October of last year at the age of 95. And he was one of the greatest opera stars I have ever worked with. And certainly he understood. He was very close to the Ponte and very close to the Words. Because here the words are very clear and he gives great emphasis to them. Absolutely, Yes. Because there's very little orchestration underneath and it's deliberately made in that way by Mozart to privilege the words. I think it must have been a big shock to the public at the time because the public was used to these very grand two part arias with lots of coloratura. And suddenly they found somebody speaking to them in a clear, very colloquial voice. And this is the big revolution of Mozart that he brings a colloquial voice, an everyday voice into the opera theatre and real people, real lives, credibility. And this is a truly great operatic revolution. Of course we're just a few years, we're just 10 years before. Well we just know one year before the French revolution. And so the, it's very much the spirit of the times. Well, there is another composer, Rossini, that made the Figaro a wonderful hero in the Barber of Sevilla. And actually today we're going to listen to something else that is his Otello. So the version by Verdi, who was used by the Italian revolutions for Vivia, Vittorio Emanuele Reditalia, they were using his acronym to incite for the unification of Italy. And Otello is for the first time is based of course of Shakespeare the play. And so for the first time we have a black person, a black hero. Big revolution. It's a big revolution in artistic terms. First of all, it's a big revolution to have a Shakespeare play become the source of an opera. Now it's not widely known but in reality Shakespeare was considered a bit uncivilized in the European art world. It was considered a bit too realistic. And of course the French loved this kind of very grand style of theatre which was very different from Shakespeare. And in Italy there's also a very, there was a grand aulic style of theatrical art. Shakespeare is exactly the opposite. It's like Mozart's magic figure. It's about real people. And it's not surprising that towards the end of the 1700s Shakespeare arrives in Italy first through French translations and then at the, at the court of the King of Naples of course there's this great big English contingency headed up by Lord Hamilton and Emma Hamilton and they make English language something very current in the late 1700s at the court of Naples. And they in this introduces Shakespeare, Shakespeare in a direct translation from English to Italian with a lot of modifications. For example, it was not thought proper that Othello should strangle or suffocate his wife. This was not the done thing. It was all right to stab her to death because that was okay for a jealousy crime, but it was not okay to suffocate her. So there are a lot of changes. And of course, the Rossini Otello has to try and make sense of the story in the Italian context of the early 1800s. So he moves the setting entirely to Venice. And Otello is returning to Venice after his victories in Cyprus to marry. Well, he's already married to Desdemona, but to make public his marriage to Desdemona. And the doge favors him. But this Demola's father loathes him and plots against him. So it's a very interesting to put a black person at the center of a drama, an opera drama of the times. It's very audacious. Rossini was very lucky because singer, who was a very, very good actor, a very handsome man and a very good actor, he had the best five tenors. It's an opera with five important tenor parts, the best five tenors in the world at that time. And so it's a very strong cast in which it seems like the three main tenor roles spend all their time competing for top notes. But the interesting thing is that not only does Shakespeare produce this very sympathetic Rossini produces a sympathetic portrait of a very heroic black man, but he also produces very nasty portraits of very mean, scheming white Venetians who are determined to do down this very nice black man and make him jealous. And of course, in the structure of the libretto, he sees a whole series of actions that lead him to believe that he's been made a fool of by Desdemona. And so it culminates in this very dramatic final scene in the opposite of the Tempest in Rossini's Barbara de Seville. That's a comic tempest at the end of the third act. That's a very funny scene. And the Tempest is a prelude to the happy ending. Instead, here, the Tempest is the prelude to murder with a knife, of course, because that's more polite. So let's listen to not the permefumnesta from the third act of Rossini Othello with Jose Carreras and Federica von Stade and the Filhmono Orchestra. Sa. Ra. It, Sam. How amazing. I mean, apart that Carreras is incredible. We know. We. We know he's a superstar. Frederic as well. What a voice. And. And Rossini, I mean, I'm a big fan of Verdi's Otello. And to be very honest, I've actually never seen the Rossini Otello. And. But this is. I'm such a fan of Rossini in general. All his operas are just amazing. And this is not less really. This Tempest is so stormy, isn't it? The whole final act is quite extraordinary because Desdemona has a wonderful willow song which is truly very, very beautiful and very modern. It was parodied, interestingly enough, by Donizetti in his comic opera Viv or Convenience Teatrale, in which the central figure is a baritone who performs the role of a woman, a frustrated prima donna, and sings a boulderized version of the widow song. Because it was so popular, everybody loved it. And certainly here the situation is very different from the Verdi opera where poor Desdemona goes to her death like a little lamb. Here instead, the very temperamental Isabella Colbran, who was a Spanish singer who was married to Rossini, performs Desdemona in the original production as this very strong, willful woman. And it's a big row, actually, between the pair of them. And she actually gets to the stage where she provokes him and she says, well, if you really believe that, then kill me. And he says, what, are you insulting me? And she says, yes, I am. Yeah, go on, kill me. Kill me. And so he does. And it's very interesting because it kind of recreates that energetic echo that sometimes is involved in big rows that lead to physical violence. So it's a very precocious piece for the times in trying to really portray a violent relationship between a couple. It's a very beautiful piece, huh? Absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much for choosing it. And so now we're actually going to Verdi then. So Verdi Viva Vittorio Reditalia Vittorio Redi Italia. And so Verdi actually wrote a wonderful p. He was. The version that we're going to listen today is from scale Milan. And I'd like you to talk about the Italians revolutionaries that they were using opera as a coded system to give each other messages and to insight actually to the Italian revolution in a way. That's right. Well, really, from the end of the French occupation, during the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars, from the end. End of that. In other words, from 1815 onwards, Italy was an occupied country. I think most people don't realize this. It was in any case divided into very many small satellite states that were controlled by Spain and by Austria. And in the aftermath of the arrival of French revolutionary thought, which taught the Italians to suffer under the French, which they did, but also that it was possible to be united. It was also possible to think of being a nation. And they started wondering if they could import the ideas of the French Revolution and free themselves from oppressive government. And so from, really from Rossini's time, because Rossini is a carbonaro. Rossini has strong affiliations with revolutionary movements. Yeah, underground. Yes. Right. And he has to write a few things for the King of Naples to make, get himself forgiven. And so does Bellini. Bellini is involved in the declaration of a constitution for Sicily and later has to write kind of celebratory pieces for the King as a. An I'm sorry message. But they, of course, they never stop plotting underground through music, they are aware that they can reach a wide public. It's a little bit like Facebook and social media today. The social classes that wanted change were prevalently the middle and the upper classes. And the only one place they could meet was in the opera house. Opera was then somewhere you went every day during the season because there was no television, because people did have a lot of free time, because every evening they could file into the opera house and see the same people, because most people were seasoned ticket holders. And they would see 10 or 15 performances of each opera, the same opera, every night for about two weeks. And so everybody in the public knew each other. It was very easy for a person to move from one box in the theatre to another private box in the theatre. It was almost like a musical club in a way. That's right. Every city in Italy from the late 1600s onwards has an opera house. The opera houses are paid for usually by the wealthy members of society who club together and maybe in a group of 50 or 60 or 80 or 120 noble, decide to build a theatre with the number of boxes that correspond with the number of subscribers. The ground floor, the stalls, are for the blow ins, for the people who can't afford to have a box. It's mostly the artisan and lower nobility who can't afford to maintain a box and indeed to pay some money every year to the impresario, not just in terms of ticket, but in terms of subsidy. And so we have this very strong involvement of Italian society in creating art as at a group level. And all those people, of course, knew each other because they were in a sort of consortium. And it was very easy in these circumstances to pass information amongst the better classes, society, the vocal classes, the people who read and write and want to change. And that slowly grows through the age of Rossini, who is sending out seiphred messages all the time. I mean, even in a comic opera like l' italiani ne Algeri, the Italian girl in Algiers, she's singing at the end of the opera Pen sala Patria, think of our homeland. And this is a very clear message to the Italian slaves in North Africa to escape and to make themselves free. But she's referring to the Italian slaves in occupied Italy, where the Austrian troops were occupying the whole of the north and where the Spanish influence in southern Italy was very, very strong and the Papal States were extremely repressed. And so we have Verdi growing up during this. He is born during the beginning of the Austrian occupation, literally in the middle of a battlefield. He's born, his mother hides him in the church steeple as a newborn baby when the troops arrive in town. And he grows up through this longing for freedom. And Patrio Presa is a sign of that longing. It's written just on the verge of the 48 rebellion. Of course, he was buying arms with his. The prophets of his operas and passing them to the revolutionaries, which was extremely dangerous. And it's interesting that he chooses Shakespeare again to express that longing for freedom. Yeah. So we're gonna listen now to Patriopressa, the chorus of the Scottish profugi. How do you say profugi in English? Refugees. The refugees? Yeah, the Scottish refugees from the 4th act of Verdis Mahbet with the Scala Imilan Chorus and Claudia Bato conductor, Sam. Sa. Sa. Sam. Ra. Sam. Ra. Sam. Wow. I mean, how is this Patria oppressor, the oppressed homeland? Yes, of course, Verdi knows that the darkest hour is the one before dawn and he creates that sensation. Hopefully we are now in the darkest hour and that the dawn will soon be coming from COVID Certainly for the arts community, it's an extremely dramatic moment because there's widespread unemployment and the situation is really dramatic because many people have nothing, have no way of going on because they, they don't have unemployment, money. So it's a pan European problem. And hopefully the end is nigh with COVID in six or seven months time. But it's a, it's a long haul before we get there. I. I didn't ask you. What did you do during the lockdown in Italy? I had a very small one which kept me quite busy. I studied a lot, a huge amount. I worked on with a Portuguese company on the production of a video called Covidios, which is studying the effects of video of COVID on people. And it's really interesting because I procured them a lot of interviews of people from many different countries because because of my work, I travel a huge amount. I know people in South America, in Asia, in Eastern Europe, and So on. And so I got them in touch with a lot of friends and it was actually very interesting because what came out was more or less the same interview for every single person. And especially the women. The women have had enough of the cyber world. There is a kind of complete rejection of the present, fast paced, highly competitive, extremely aggressive world. There is an immense desire to get back to simplicity. There's an immense desire to relate to family, to close friends, to be with nature and thought it was very interesting. I mean, I certainly was involved in getting many, many, many interviews into the production. The interesting thing is that people all said the same thing, it didn't matter which country you came from. And I think there is a huge problem with the constant prodding of, you know, cyber is the future, distance working is the future. All that does is remove socialization from people. It closes them in their homes all year round and not just during COVID with their work. And they get no relief from their immediate surroundings. That was thing that I find really hard. For example, I'm a person who studies all the time anyway because if you're an opera director, you do a lot of research, both historical and iconographic. You're looking at images all the time of the period that you're studying, the work you're studying. So you do have your head in books and in computers a lot of the time. But the fact that we couldn't get on the door because here it was very severe, the lockdown was very severe and very effective. Yes, much more than Britain and people, I think. I mean, the one message I would say to folks out there is put your masks on and wash your face, wash your face and hands. You know, fortunately the COVID level is still relatively low here, although it's growing fast Again, perhaps it's climate because the weather has been very bad and especially in smoggy places like Milan, it's really moved forward fast. But I would say to people, don't think that a mask is impinging on your individual freedom. It's not. It's giving other people freedom to not be sick and not end up in hospital. And we have to make that sacrifice for however long it takes to get to the end of this. Certainly it is a dramatic problem for those of us who are not very young people. We're not maybe in a position to retrain. It's extremely hard to find work and extremely depressing because for example, I have productions right through the year and flipped into 20, 21 maybe. And so you're still, you're working in this slowed down way towards the same objection. A little bit of background. When they actually go and hear opera arias, not to hear them in. In a vacuum, but to hear them in a context of poetry and writings of the period. And so I've done a bit of that. We've done some concerts. Fortunately that has been possible and hopefully we will be back to work sooner or later. The prospects are still very bleak. Well, you know, we have this new project together that is. This is very exciting. This is very exciting. University and music conservatory and we're actually starting online and that gave us the opportunity to actually work together. For example, because you're based in Italy, we have professors based in America, others based in Japan. So we really have professors from all around the world. And there is a massive. That is very important to shout as loud as possible is that in the arts there is no difference from where you come from, but it's only where are you going? And we're all going together toward creating something that is meaningful for everyone, not just for us as artists, but for the audience. Our mission and our vocation really is to communicate and to share. I would say as somebody who grew up during the troubles in Northern Ireland and worked in my early life in politics, the only place that was absolutely without any form of prejudice or limitation was working in opera in Northern Ireland. It saved my life. It gave me a very different vision of the world. And I think people underestimate the power of art to transform communities and to give us spiritual wealth. It's extremely important for civilization. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Vivian, Vivian Ewit, for the great chat and the beautiful music that we played today together. You've been listening to Future Classic Women Awards on women's radio station live every day at 10am and 10pm London time. If you would like to listen to it again or catch up on our previous programs, you can head to my presenter page, Stefania Passamonte or Future Classic Women Awards on womensradiostation.com thank you for listening.