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Marc A. Scorca: John DeMain: thank you so much for taking time this afternoon to talk to me about the last half century of opera in America. As you know, our 50th anniversary was to have been celebrated in 2020; that celebration was cut a little bit short, but we are conducting an oral history with 50 people, who've really shaped opera in America in the last 50 years, and you are one of those people. So thank you so much for taking this time.
John DeMain: That's a good question. My first opera was the radio: my parents putting The Met on, on Saturday afternoons, when I was five years old. And then I think my first opera I went to, I was in, 'cause I sang the role of a Amahl and the Night Visitors when I was nine with the Youngstown Symphony and it was a co-production with the Playhouse. But, the very first really great experience I had was: there was a gentleman involved with the Youngstown Playhouse, which was a very, very, very thriving community theater in Youngstown, Ohio. And he saw that I had this special affinity for music and so he asked my parents if he could bring me to Cleveland to see The Met on tour when I was 13 years old. And so I got to see Carmen with Ris Stevens; Cavalleria with Zinka Milanov; the Pagliacci I remember was Leonard Warren, and (Renata) Tebaldi in a recital with piano in her prime. And that transformed my life; that just transformed my life.
John DeMain: I was 13. And you know, in those days The Met traveled with...Fausto Cleva was in the pit: it was absolutely the top of the line, all the big stars. And I just was star struck. It was so fabulous.
John DeMain: Yes. I have a bachelor and master's degree. I studied with Adele Marcus and then I took some elective courses in conducting, but I was conducting...I was involved with the community theater (when they) did their first musical. And when I was 14 years old, I put an orchestra in the pit and conducted Brigadoon. So I was doing stuff just on instinct without any real formal (education). My grade school music teacher was the founder of the Youngstown Symphony, and so he took an interest in me. And so I sort of learned the basics of conducting, but I was doing stuff that people probably would do after they got out of college. And so when I was a senior in high school, I won a local piano competition; made my debut with the Symphony. And that really sort of cemented my thoughts about maybe majoring in music, because I had just so many interests. And so I thought, "Well, I'll try to go to Juilliard," and I went to Juilliard and the rest happened after that.
John DeMain: Yeah, I got to coach it in English. Right. So you would be assigned seven operas a season, back when they had the double seasons. But any one of those 20 operas, they could call you the day before and tell you, you have to fill in. So, you know, I'd never played Butterfly, and so I stayed up all night sight reading. I was a good sight-reader. And the next day - remember Giuseppe Morelli? I think was his name. He was the Italian conductor, at that time when Rudel was conducting. He probably did 40 Butterflies a year in Italy; it would all be very routine for him, but it excited him that I had never done it before. So he focused and he got me through that (rehearsal). In those days - remember O'Neal's? I made a lot of trips there (for) the good scotch after I survived some of those challenges.
John DeMain: Well, it was a three-year award, but I didn't last three years, because in the second year, Dennis Russell Davies had become very entrenched with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and with all those investments, back in those days being made by the Ford Foundation and all these arts (foundations); that was going full time; it was going on tour and he wanted a resident conductor. And he was my roommate in my freshman and sophomore year at Juilliard, along with a couple of other guys. I actually ran into him on the steps of Lincoln Center. I was conducting the Norwalk Symphony, preparing rehearsals for him, because that's what he was doing when he first got out of school before he went out to St. Paul. So he knew I was doing this. And he said, "Do you want to take the audition? I'll fly you out." And I knew what my duties would have been. They were a fantastic opportunity for a conductor. It wouldn't be like a pianist who gets thrown in at the last bit, with no rehearsals at City Opera with The New York Times sitting out there, which if you have no other choice, that's what you do. I said, "I'll take the audition. I'll prepare, but I can't go when Rudel is in town, because that would speak of real ingratitude." So he had his auditions on Tuesday and Rudel was going out of town on Friday. So I sneaked out to St. Paul; took the audition. Dennis said, "Since we know each other, it's between you and the orchestra; we didn't like anybody on Tuesday." And the orchestra applauded my audition and Dennis offered me the position. I was in my second year (of the Rudel Award) and I just asked Rudel for a conducting debut. And he was giving me Hoffmann, the following September, which was one of his shows, and that was that new production with (Beverly) Sills and (Norman) Treigle at the top. Rudel was like...you trembled when he walked by...he was a tyrant in a way. He really made you (quake). He was fabulous; he was the best conductor; he was great, but he ruled with an iron hand. And so I thought, "What do I do?" So I thought I'm going to just treat him like he's my grandfather. So I went in; I sat down; I told him that I had sneaked out of town because I was invited to take this audition with the orchestra, and I don't know what to do. And he said, "What would your duties be?" And I told him, I'd have my own subscription concerts; I would take the orchestra on tour; I'd have that chamber ensemble; I'd be playing chamber music. He said, "When I was your age, I would've killed for something like that." He said, "If you want it, I won't stand in your way." I said, "What about the debut in September with Hoffmann?" He said, "You're making me change my whole music staff; I want more dividends from you for that." Well, I wasn't smart enough to call up Dennis and say, if you want me, you've got to give Rudel a guest engagement at St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. So I left, and it was a glorious two years in St. Paul. And that was the Exxon Arts Endowment initial thing to make American music directors for symphony orchestras operated by Affiliate Artists. And of course, a lot of people don't know what Affiliate Artists is anymore, but I'm sure you do.
Marc A. Scorca: It was such an important place for people to get a career start, and not only a career start, but to understand the community connection: what it was to connect to community through the music they were making. It was an incredible program.
Marc A. Scorca: And it's funny because I wanted to ask you: who brought you to opera? Who brought you to conducting? Then I wanted to ask you who brought you to American opera? And of course, what you've already described is that your entry way into American opera was through musical theater. Porgy and Bess became an enormous part of your early career, but the list goes on from there: Nixon in China...?
John DeMain: I just wanted to say that when I went out to the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, there was tremendous commitment by Dennis Russell Davies to do new works. And so I was involved premiering new works all the time, sometimes at the piano; sometimes with the orchestra, but it was a huge commitment on his part. And I learned something too from him. Sometimes these pieces were pretty bizarre - and we did a whole season of John Cage - one on every concert. We only lost one subscriber. But the point is that Dennis never made fun of new music. He took it 1000% seriously, and therefore so did the musicians. At the end, this was what David did. David Gockley had the same kind of commitment. And at City Opera: ?Marzo: I didn't work on that, but I did Hans Werner Henze's Der junge Lord (with Sarah Caldwell directing). I was always working on new pieces. So that went hand in hand. The success of my relationship with David for those 18 years is that he viewed an opera company as a music theater production company, spanning everything from baroque opera to Broadway musicals. And I had that same kind of catholic tastes. And so that's why we hit it off so well, because we enjoyed...
John DeMain: I have to say, I thought it was great, at the time. I loved the music, right from the beginning. I was lucky that I could do it at all, because that's the one kind of music I had not encountered. And it was the first time I did a piece where the score used digital metronome markings, which means at this point in the accelerando, you should be at 139.5. The old metronome? You didn't quite do it that way. And Adams had never really written opera before. He didn't even know, at the time, what was the potential for singers; what they could do. And he sort of inherited me. (He never really wanted me from the beginning because Edo de Waart is the guy who hired him to be his composer in residence in San Francisco. Edo did that magnificent recording of Nixon later on). But I was shipped out to San Francisco to try to teach the chorus the music. And we did a scene at the Guggenheim, and this was before we did the whole piece at San Francisco. And that's the very first time I ever met John Adams. And he didn't give me the time of day...I'm supposed to be conducting this scene. And he's got Allen Feinstein playing the piano. It was the Chairman Mao scene and the three secretaries were singing, and they had not a clue. They weren't singing right pitches; they weren't singing right rhythms, and these rhythms were hard. And John Adams's just sitting there letting it happen. So then I turned him, and I said, "By the way, would you mind if I worked with everybody for a little while?" "Oh no, no, no; go ahead." So I taught them the scene and really taught them the scene til it was exactly like he wrote it, and he looked at me and he said, "I didn't know, you could get singers to do that." He was that naive at the time: not anymore, that's for sure. And we embarked on a really good relationship. It was a very difficult piece to conduct because when you go into the pit, there's all these meter changes. And there was this joke: about three months later, I was at the Brooklyn Academy, but one of the musicians who had played Nixon in New York came up to me and said, "Maestro, we're all enjoying doing this, but you know, there's 1,859 meter changes in the course of the opera. And we think 1800 of them are unnecessary." I don't subscribe to that because what is necessary is the way the composer heard it in his head. But when you're going (sings) "News, la, la, la and I'm doing 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3; whatever I'm doing," that music doesn't change. So when the actors are singing, no matter how many times they've done the piece, there's nothing to hold onto orchestrally. So they all need you: Henry Kissinger/Thomas Hammons needs you to this day, because the minute you're acting and you go in your own world, you don't get that cue orchestrally, 'cause it's all sounding the same. So they all want you. The orchestra all want you; it's a really difficult orchestra part, and it takes four sensational saxophones. But I remember at the time, that when we opened in Houston, I turned around and looked out at the audience and there were tons and tons of empty seats. And so I went to David and I said, "I'm so sorry that the audience..." "Oh, those were all the subscribers. They didn't come; we're breaking every record in single ticket sales for a new audience." By the time David ended his tenure in Houston, his core audience was first in line to buy tickets for new pieces, because that commitment was unfailing...
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