全球概念与本土制作：马修·希尔沃克谈旧金山歌剧院的“全球本土化”

文：司马勤（Ken Smith） 编译：李正欣

坐在酒店的大堂里，马修·希尔沃克（Matthew Shilvock）用手机回放了一段排练的录像，带着一个牛津学生在学术上取得突破后般的残余激情。屏幕里，女高音歌唱家卡门·詹纳塔西奥（Carmen Giannattasio）攀登着仿造罗马圣安杰洛城堡搭建的布景，中途停下来对着镜头唱歌；而后继续攀登，停在标志性的天使雕塑旁，瞬间从布景的边缘消失。希尔沃克微笑着说：“这么多‘托斯卡’都只是冲上山顶，唱，然后跳下。随后，士兵们就踉踉跄跄地蹒跚上场，这把所有的戏剧性都澌灭了。”

导演肖娜·露西（Shawna Lucey）的《托斯卡》这个月在旧金山歌剧院上演。她充满张力的处理手法与普契尼乐谱里的音符紧密相扣，契合自希尔沃克成为旧金山歌剧院的“掌门人”以来所拥护的、戏剧性和音乐深度相结合的“全面艺术”。希尔沃克·于2016年8月就任旧金山歌剧院院长一职时，只有39岁。他出生于英国基德明斯特，离伯明翰不到一个小时车程的城市；他来到美国，是为了在自身严谨的牛津大学音乐学术与管理咨询的美国式实用主义中取得平衡。

在40岁之前就接管一家大型歌剧院听上去是个卓越的成就——不过希尔沃克的前任院长及恩师大卫·高克利在30岁之前，就接掌了休斯敦大歌剧院。希尔沃克在马萨诸塞大学阿姆赫斯特分校攻读公共管理研究生时，通过美国歌剧协会实践计划被派到休斯敦。在高克利的办公室当了一阵临时助手后，他成为歌剧院的正式聘用职员。当高克利离开休斯敦前往旧金山歌剧院时，他带上了希尔沃克。

从2007年高克利入主旧金山直到2016年退休，希尔沃克成了院长的“千里眼”“顺风耳”。希尔沃克逐渐了解到旧金山歌剧院这家美国第二大歌剧院的复杂性：剧院有1000多名员工，每年预算为4700万美元。2007年的旧金山歌剧院中国之行，希尔沃克与高克利随行，也见证了高克利任期内许多委约作品的世界首演，其中包括2008年的《接骨师之女》（

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

）——惠士钊（Stewart Wallace）根据旧金山小说家谭恩美的同名小说改编的歌剧作品，以及2016年盛宗亮的歌剧《红楼梦》（

Dream of the Red Chamber

）——该剧首演后曾在香港艺术节及北京、长沙和武汉等地巡演。近如硅谷、远似中国，希尔沃克不断在世界各地寻找灵感，同时，他还继承了高克利的宏愿，为剧院的新纪元重新设计规划自己的路线。今年夏天，弗朗切斯卡·赞贝罗（Francesco Zambello）复排了美国版的《指环》。9月，希尔沃克又来到上海，观看上海歌剧院与德国埃尔福特剧院在上海大剧院联合演出的《漂泊的荷兰人》（

Der fl iegende Holländer

）。在上海之旅的间隙，他见缝插针地思考着瓦格纳歌剧与国际合作的可能性，以及如何在经济衰退期为剧目制作筹得资金，并吸引如今社交媒体时代的新观众。

旧金山歌剧院院长马修·希尔沃克

可以谈谈你的“起点”吗？

我在牛津大学基督堂学院主修音乐——确切地说应该是音乐学。我自小热爱音乐，4岁开始弹钢琴，后来又学会大提琴与管风琴。一直以来，我深信自己将来必定会加入音乐这个行业。但是，我从来都不喜欢站在台前，在聚光灯下炫技。或者这样说，我喜欢演奏乐器，但不愿意以此为终身职业。另外，因为我同时会几种乐器，总觉得自己无法专注于其一。12岁那年，我首次观看歌剧，是格拉汉姆·维克（Graham Vick）为伯明翰一个小型歌剧团执导的制作，那个表演团体正是今天伯明翰歌剧团（Birmingham Opera Company）的前身。这么多年过去，团队依旧致力于艺术与观众的互动，演出极具参与性，观众甚至可以跟随戏剧的发展四处走动。维克正是开拓这种突破性歌剧演出的领跑者。我依稀记得，当年演出的作品是斯蒂芬·奥利弗（Stephen Oliver）的《美女与野兽》（

Beauty and the Beast）

。那次的经验让我了解到歌剧演出可以与现场观众建立起直接的联系。在旧金山歌剧院，我们不可能让观众游走于剧场中，但我们能营造出让他们的感情或精神与舞台融合的氛围。歌剧不应是被动的；如果我们把工作做好，观众会主动地投入其中，成为故事的一部分。

维克的那部制作，确实让你在剧院中走来走去？

演出地点是伯明翰中央电视台（Central Television Studios）的演播室。他们真的占用了四个录影棚，让观众跟随剧情的发展，从一个房间走到另一个房间。维克后来也继续着这类风格，比如借用伯明翰的工厂作为表演场地。当我累积了更多歌剧观剧体验，发觉自己爱上了歌剧这门艺术。后来在牛津，我更明白了艺术的复杂性，期望把歌剧的千丝万缕整理为一体。

那时候你有戏剧的背景或兴趣吗？

其实没有。我父母喜爱音乐，他们当然鼓励我。但我从来都没有过真正的剧场经验。我猜，歌剧之所以吸引我，是因为它的复杂性与多重性。要把一切都融合在一起，你必须找到彻底的、共性的一刻。

那是你在牛津学习到的一部分吗？

做大学毕业论文时，我专攻法国巴洛克时期研究。牛津图书馆的藏书之中包括很多古籍，甚至有吕利（Jean-Baptiste Lully）的第一版印刷总谱、手抄稿与改编乐谱。当年，吕利的歌剧只在伦敦演过一次，但他歌剧的舞台实践（performance practice）是通过室内乐改编而广为流传的。

这个话题非常有预见性。时至今日，喜欢法国巴洛克的观众的确增长了。

是的，这很有趣，但牛津鼓励学习的过程多于实际的内容。你要花时间在图书馆里去深入研究某个观点，同时也为自己定下方向。牛津的老师不会具体指出“去阅读书中这几个章节”，他们会说“就莫扎特的钢琴协奏曲写一篇论文”。你得自己去选择论点，并构思文章的架构。

牛津毕业后到你在休斯敦工作前，又经历了什么？

我曾投考过英国的各大歌剧院，他们对于我的到访很友好，也乐于为我更深入了解歌剧行业提供具体资讯。但是，英国的歌剧院实在没有任何空缺，即便在今天也如此，因为歌剧院本身就不多，每当有人受聘，往往就会留在这一岗位直至退休。后来，我在一家小型的管理咨询公司工作了两年，随后去美国进修公共管理硕士。我静心以待，期望终有一天可以投身歌剧这个行业。不同的工作经验让我拓展了本来狭窄的学术视野。这家咨询公司与英国机构合作，举办了一系列研讨会——焦点是为了强化与整合供应链——他们想利用音乐激发到会者，让他们心情愉悦。我接到的任务是：“马修，你在大学念音乐。帮我们研究研究，好吗？”我刚从牛津毕业，能怎么办呢？于是我撰写了一篇长达6万字的研究音乐与大脑的论文。我找来多本科学期刊，阅读神经学文献，还参考了大英博物馆在英国北部的馆藏文献。当我自豪地交出论文时，老板给了我一个绝对恐慌的表情——他想要的，不过是几首好听的歌曲。这是一个“弄不清楚目标观众”的极好例子。

在英国时，我曾听说过美国歌剧协会（Opera America）有实践计划，为有志投身歌剧行业的年轻人提供实习机会，但他们不能安排签证。我一旦在美国就读，情况就不同了。再次重申，公共管理课程也让我学会把想法浓缩至三个要点，而不是用3万字进行论证。那些曾受苦于我长篇累牍电子邮件的人一定会认为我没有很好地学习“精简”。

来休斯敦之前，你对大卫·高克利（David Gockley）有什么了解？

我当然听说过他：一位鼎鼎大名的创新者，他提倡新作品，带领休斯敦影响整个歌剧世界。我本来不是跟他一起工作的，那不是歌剧协会计划的一部分。我当时被派至休斯敦大歌剧院跟戴安妮·佐拉（Diane Zola）学习，她是歌剧院工作室（Opera Studio）的负责人。大概过了一半实习期，有一天我被邀请到大卫的办公室谈一谈。一直以来，他都会聘用行政实习生，而当时他急需一个人在短期内填补这个空缺。最后，他正式聘用了我。我觉得自己太幸福了，像做梦一样，与这位伟大的歌剧策划人共事了14年。

从休斯敦至旧金山，就像地壳移动般的剧变。旧金山歌剧院不是大卫根据自己想法所构建的艺术机构，甚至可以说有时候较为混乱。对于你来说，又有什么变化？

你可能认为休斯敦是更大的文化冲击，但加利福尼亚州令我惊讶。得克萨斯州最引以为荣的是当地人待人热情、精力充沛，你会被他们所牵动。面积广大的得克萨斯州色彩丰富、热情大胆，不同于我以往见过的任何东西。加利福尼亚州则多一点欧陆情怀，可是总是感觉与世隔绝，实际距离更像是天各一方。从我的事业上来看，能到旧金山工作，让我开拓了很多新的领域。大卫在休斯敦工作35年，对于歌剧院方方面面的运作都了如指掌。我负责帮助他执行某些特别项目，但都是在我已经熟悉的领域。旧金山的一切对我们来说都是新鲜的，大卫尝试了解歌剧院的运作、铺排未来的计划、寻找策略性的实践。突然间，我肩负起新的角色，我的任务包括研究歌剧院的日常运作、财政预算（旧金山的预算规模是休斯敦的三至四倍），甚至还得洞悉需要面对的政治压力。工会的势力在这里根深蒂固，足以影响任何决策。于是，我成了大卫的“千里眼”与“顺风耳”，这使我以前所未有的方式近距离地与他待在一起。不同于休斯敦短暂的实习工作，在旧金山，他会不断地分配更多工作给我。

你在旧金山歌剧院的职业轨迹又是怎样的？

我有过五六个职务，但具体的称谓相差无几，只是顺序有所改变。一开始，我负责“特别项目”，包括直播与媒体策略。到了2008年，我接管的范围扩张至乐团、合唱团与舞蹈团，以及演员工会与合唱团的运作。再过了两年，我的职责又延伸至宣传与教育。接任院长一职的不久之前，我还负责监督筹款部门的工作。我的职责覆盖了整个歌剧院，我很感激大卫对我的信任：他让我担任了一个“通才”（generalist）的角色。在歌剧这一行，这种机会很难得。到了某个阶段，你往往要做出取舍——选角总监、制作总监或是负责筹款。

歌剧院的一把手的确应当是个通才——了解每个部门的需要，但不必熟知每一个运作的细节。听起来，这些年来，好像有人一直在悉心栽培你。然而，这并不能保证你会得到院长这一职务。可以描述一下歌剧院挑选院长的过程吗？

大卫打算退休的消息，很早就放出来了。歌剧院董事局为此成立了专项小组，认真对待这项工作。他们花了很多时间决定歌剧院未来的愿景，设想他们心目中理想的领导者，用了很长时间探讨歌剧院的领导架构——应该只有一人，还是两人？他们也请教了其他歌剧院，以参照不同的行政架构。然后他们对外宣布了一个公开的、全面的国际招聘。一直以来，大家都有清楚的共识，我需要跟其他人一同应征、面试，没有“早已预定”的捷径。

他们聘请你的时候，有没有解释为什么选中你？

问得好。我前面也说过，自己花了10年时间躲在幕后，从来没有试图把自己放在聚光灯下。我猜，某些董事局成员也是这样看待我的，因此质疑我能否脱胎换骨。到了最后一轮甄选，他们询问候选人关于歌剧院未来十年的前景规划、在社区里应扮演的角色等，我当时的雄辩言辞令他们刮目相看。但是，这仍然是一个非常不寻常的决定。从前曾有院内“接棒”的案例——1953年，时任旧金山歌剧院院长梅罗拉（Gaetano Merola）退休，院内在职的阿德勒（Kurt Adler）接任——但这种情况现在十分罕见。这个行业并不支持提携内部人员。做出这个任命决定很重要的一点是，它不仅让我，而且让整个领导团队发挥了集体智慧，为公司的未来建立了框架。要搞清楚歌剧院的整体运作需要花3年时间。如果你还在认识基本操作，同时又要兼顾未来五年的计划，真的要浪费很多时间才能把项目真正做出来。我可以代表我今天的团队说，我们不需要从零开始整理琐碎的问题，便可以找到解决方案。

大卫当年的核心哲学与关注重点，到了今天还同样适用吗？它们需要为未来重新调整吗？

我从大卫身上学到的最重要的概念就是平衡。大卫有很远大的艺术抱负，但他从不会任意妄为。他往往会考虑整个演出季剧目的平衡及财政预算的平衡。这种见解在现在尤其重要，因为经济不景气，一切都显得更加脆弱。我认为十年来，最大的变化就是大家如何预测什么可行、什么不可行。我们设法对这门没有实质与绝对的艺术行业，从中预测出可靠、绝对的结果。可能你从前会有把握，如果做了X，那么Y就会出现；但这种想法到了现在(尤其是2008年过后)，就不再灵验了。一个制作的票卖得好坏与否，肯定有特定的算法，但这种算法跟我们常用的思维不一样。去年的《茶花女》尽管有很棒的乐评，可我们只售出了七成门票；约翰·亚当斯（John Adams）的《西部女郎们》（

Girls of the Golden West

）没有获得很高评价，但票房却很好，是当年秋季剧目中第二畅销的制作。我们的团队一起探索如何在更难预估受众反应的情况下，创建出一个可控的商业模式。

电影人威廉·戈德曼（William Goldman）曾经这样描述大电影公司怎样预测卖座率：“无人知晓。”谁能猜得到，2008年旧金山歌剧院搬演《接骨师之女》后，世界经济会完全崩溃？

经济萧条改变了观众购票的习惯——幸好没有影响到捐助人，但演出季套票销售受到很大的压力。最近我也想到，以苹果手机的崛起为起点，移动媒体的影响极大地改变了人们的娱乐消费与生活方式。这是一个令人恐慌的时代，也是个令人兴奋的时代——因为我们越来越意识到，尽管大环境恶劣，我们还是有独一无二的价值，但关键在于如何改变大众的认知与期望。

早在20世纪90年代，我首次造访休斯敦与旧金山时，人们对制作的期望值相当清晰。在休斯敦，观众进场来看令他们感动的演出；而在旧金山，歌剧迷的到来是为了欣赏一流的歌唱家，制作的好与坏显得不那么重要。今天，旧金山的观众来看的是歌剧制作。现在的“平衡”不同了，部分原因是因为大卫，但也反映了时代变迁。

我坚信我们在舞台上的工作——一些具有试验性的、富有质感的、“绝对旧金山”的制作——与21世纪的心态非常一致，即你发现了一件好东西之后，就会推荐给其他人。还有，我们所做的某些具有特殊性的制作与旧金山日益增长的科技受众息息相关。

比如说，歌剧《史蒂夫·乔布斯的变革之路》 。

是的，某些主题很明显，如这部梅森·贝茨（Mason Bates）关于乔布斯的新作品提醒我们，歌剧仍然可以为今天的社会增添价值。但实际上，这种价值来自观众，因为他们可以在舞台上看到关于自己的东西，无论那是个关于“科技”的故事，或是《茶花女》。

来歌剧院看《乔布斯》的观众愿意来看托斯卡跳崖吗？事实上，有没有一群特定的“旧金山歌剧院观众”，还是你们在孕育多个不同的受众群？

我希望受众见证我们把充满人性的故事带上舞台后，会信任我们。今天，要推广某一个歌剧剧目，实在艰难。公众对于作品名称感觉陌生，就很难引起共鸣，更不用提个别歌唱家或指挥家了。因此，歌剧院要成为一个赢得观众信任的地方。他们深知来到我们这里，必定会体验到催人奋进的动力。票价可能会令他们望而却步——在旧金山这个昂贵的城市，很多人都习惯花钱，但我不能确定他们是否愿意花钱来尝试不同的体验。因此，我们必须超越固有的、刻板式介绍剧目的思维，比如吆喝：“来看雅纳切克的《耶奴法》！”——相反地，必须向受众解释《耶奴法》对你会有怎么样的影响。舞台上所展现的只不过是一种方式，能让观众看过演出后而有所触动。

在与旧金山歌剧院相邻的旧金山交响乐团，迈克尔·蒂尔森·托马斯（Michael Tilson Thomas）与观众就建立了这种信任。当然，在演奏贝多芬或马勒的音乐会中穿插一部雅纳切克的作品，问题不大。然而要花一整个晚上观看《耶奴法》就不一样了。

让我重申“信任”这个词语。你得赢得观众的信任——就算他们对于歌剧剧目、故事情节、演员阵容甚至演唱语言一无所知，还是会踏进歌剧院。在这里，他们可以找到一些埋在心底里的感情。我指的是，到了《波希米亚人》的最后一刻你会流泪，不是因为咪咪要病死了，而是看到一段无法延续的爱情，令你感同身受。这就是歌剧的力量。

一切都回归故事本身。你必须对剧中人物有所共鸣。

对我来说，歌剧的故事从来都不仅是个剧情简介。我经常开玩笑说，歌剧之所以如此强大，是因为并不总是那么精彩。或者我应该说，情节不够紧凑。它们不是希区柯克的戏剧。如果真的是这样紧凑，肯定可以吸引我们，但我们未必会投入感情。

《托斯卡》差不多可以算是希区柯克式通俗剧，但舞台演出经常失手。

是的，但就算是《托斯卡》，也还有空间能让你把自己的生命经历代入其中。你可以闭起眼睛把自己想象成舞台上的一个人物。看亨德尔的歌剧同样是感情之旅，但那些故事也一样是情感的载体。

普契尼与亨德尔的音乐风格有很大反差。当你搬演那些超过百年的剧目，会不会套用什么公式，让他们到今天还能引人入胜？

我对此思考了很多。本年度演出季开始的时候，有人说：“来吧，马修，你已经担任院长一年了，告诉我们你对歌剧院的艺术愿景吧。”我越思考这个问题，就越意识到这个问题鲜少有人可以作答。我可以举出一系列计划——比如说，雅纳切克的全套歌剧——但那些计划牵扯到很多因素，所以未必可行。资金可能无法跟上，制作可能无法安排。大卫有他的艺术愿景，因为他拥有多年的经验。你明白他的美学观，以及他会优先考虑哪些事。很多歌剧院院长都会倚赖过去的功绩，就如同参照后视镜中所映出的东西前进。可是我没有这样的资历（大笑）。

与其提供演出季计划，不如直截了当地谈谈对我们歌剧院来说什么是重要的。我把我们的艺术哲学归结为三个支柱。第一，创意优势。因为我们的规模、历史和地理位置，在这个极具丰富思考的领域中，我们必须塑造艺术的未来，并在我们拥有的资源中发现创造力，包括新作品、制作与演员。第二，反映受众群。我们喜欢把自己看成一个世界级的歌剧公司——我也希望我们是，但是我们85%的观众来自加州北部。我们讲的故事应该与当地紧密相关，不论是《乔布斯》《西部女郎们》或是我们制作《托斯卡》的手法，确保我们此时此地的观众可以从中得到启发。我们不能只为了“传达文化讯息”而做歌剧；讯息也必须有机性地由我们的观众自身发散出来。这也得益于我们社群可以孕育并支持高水平本地艺术家与技术人员，这不是世界各地都通行的情况。在这里，我们真正可以宣扬“本土”制作，并邀请观众欣赏制作中的多个层次。第三，“全面艺术”——并不是模仿瓦格纳“整体艺术”（

Gesamtkunstwerk

），这个德文词语并不简练。从前我还以为这句话是老生常谈，后来发现并非如此。歌剧制作要成功的话，必须是全面的成功。如果有人离场时跟我说，“闭上眼睛我都可以欣赏演出”，我会觉得很失望。如果其中的一部分没做好，就是整体的失败。我们需要成功地把艺术、戏剧、视觉与故事都融合在一起，才能缔造魔力。我们近期搬演的《恶魔罗勃》（

Roberto Devereux

），观众反应热烈。是的，除了我们请来桑德拉·拉德凡诺夫斯基（Sondra Radvanovsky）以外，也包括舞台、指挥、与其他演员的互动、节奏与微妙的细节。每个元素都有助于创造观众的反应。如何考虑制作与选角，才能保持这么高的水平？我宁愿少搬演几个制作，但把它们每个都做得精致巧妙，好过追求数量却把这些元素边缘化。

你们的“美国‘指环’”是“本土制作”的例子吗？

那是一个经历多年的大计划。最初，大卫与弗朗切斯卡·赞贝罗在休斯敦讨论过这个新制作。后来，华盛顿国家歌剧院开始主导。当大卫接任旧金山歌剧院时，他又再次参与其中。一直以来，人们总是认为《指环》应该与美国人找到共鸣，但是，处理手法不该刻意地严厉。其实，当我们进行这个计划时，很多东西都被删减了。《莱茵的黄金》的背景是美国的淘金热，原先的制作舞美设计充斥着那个年代与地域的符号。我们把它们删减了，让你感觉到一丝美国西部风情，但又故意不太明显，好让不熟悉当年历史的观众不会困惑。《众神的黄昏》的背景是未来一个专制的国度，虽然构思源自美国历史与思想主义——也包括某些程度上的政治元素。随着时间的推移，你也可以用“自然主义‘指环’”或“女权主义‘指环’”来描述这个制作——有人用过这些形容词，它们跟“美国‘指环’”同样贴切。说真的，真正使它成功的还是故事的叙述。弗朗切斯卡执导的《指环》与瓦格纳所叙述的故事完全吻合。观众们不必有任何隔阂，对我来说，这就是一部伟大的作品和令人困惑的作品之间的区别。如果观众必须弄清楚到底发生了什么——无论是历史背景还是当代背景——倘若要他们停下来思索导演为何这样选择的话，歌剧的魔力就消失了。在过去一百年里，歌剧变得太知性主义。当你试图思考导演的意图，你就失去了体验歌剧灵魂的机会。

过分的知性主义（over-intellectualism）不仅仅在舞台上出现。

对。很多人讨论歌剧的时候也是这样，他们对于歌剧的看法也同样被知性主义所驾驭。无论你多了解演员，要是周边的人开始争议不同的“声音类型”（voice types)，或回顾1952年在大都会歌剧院演出元帅夫人的演员，你顿时会觉得自己渺小不已。当然，这种高谈阔论对于歌剧来说，既美妙又重要。但它不能变成歌剧艺术的主导，因为很多人会因此被拒之门外。歌剧现在好像困在死角一般，大众认为必须“懂”歌剧才可以走进剧院。当然，你想深入这个行当是一件好事，但这大可不必。我们公布的信息和营销，一再地强调你不需要预先认知歌剧也可以来看演出。现在我们观赏歌剧的时候，都带着严肃虔诚的气氛，这甚至不是我们曾经的出发点。《天堂电影院》（

Cinema Paradiso

）中有一场戏，整个社区都聚在意大利南部的这家电影院里，他们聊天、吃喝、调情，有些人也在专心看电影。生活的多彩多姿在观众席与银幕上同时出现。从前的歌剧院就是这样的。也许我们没有机会重现这一场景，但最起码我们要记得，在历史长河的一大段岁月里，歌剧曾经非常普及。

今年马德里举行的世界歌剧论坛上提出了一个问题：如今我们真的可以负担起歌剧这门艺术吗？刚才你谈及财政问题，但这又如何影响你们的经济架构呢？

歌剧永远不会有利可图，起码票房销售无法平衡开支。在过去400年来，情况没有改善。加州有很多科技公司其实也赚不到钱，但其中的一些仍被认为是成功的。你看看风险资本被注入科技公司，这与慈善家捐款给艺术制作真的如此不同吗？这只是回报形式不一样罢了。

回溯1940年代，维吉尔·汤姆森（Virgil Thomson）曾经发表文章阐述大都会歌剧院的困难：很多人认为它是一个失败的盈利机构而不是一流的花钱机构。

我们的捐助人中有不少慷慨的慈善家，我也逐渐明白，彼此的联系是双向的。到了今天，人家捐钱支持艺术，不再被视为社会贡献的“正确”做法。在很多人的心里，医疗或教育要重要得多。人家捐赠给艺术，是因为他们热爱艺术，也代表他们该从中得到回报。我们刚建立了“制作人圈”（Producers Circle），让捐赠超过10万的慈善家们有机会深入了解歌剧制作。我们其中的一位捐助者也是百老汇制作人，我跟她讨论百老汇模式时得到这个启发。很多高额捐款人也同样热心艺术，希望参与其中，所以我们尝试构建“主人翁意识”（sense of ownership），邀请他们有机会参与创作。如果我们引进一位主要慈善家或投资者、制作人，正如本季新的《托斯卡》制作，他们可以从参与计划的第一天就跟我们一起工作。他们出席设计会议或首天的排练，一点都不会影响我们的工作。他们应该与制作建立起直接关联，因为他们是其中的一分子，正如在舞台演出的演员一样。我们现在正在进一步筹划，让这种思维与实践更为一体化。

身在加州创建这个系统应该容易得多吧？

几年前，我到某个科技公司开会，那家公司算是典型的北加州科技公司，办公室布置简约、玻璃墙密布、员工拿着自己的苹果笔记本来来回回，入口还有人轮流调制香浓咖啡。正是你想象中的那种科技公司。出来的时候，我心里这样想：“哇，真希望我在这样一家创意公司里工作。”随即又反驳自己：“我在说什么？” 我们在舞台上所做的是人类梦寐以求的最不可思议的创造性事物之一，但是，制造这种艺术的过程往往缺乏创意。我们的工作只围绕于解决问题，而非开创性。

单靠创意，不能保证效能。

同意，而每一次我离开欧洲艺术节，心里总是欣喜但又沮丧，因为你能看到那些艺术团体带来的高度创造性演出。他们大胆尝试、接受挑战，有时候获得空前成功，有时候会一败涂地，但观众们还是欣然接受。你会在艾克斯-普罗旺斯看到一部效果逊色的制作，但这不会影响演员或主创明年回来与否的抉择。冒险会带来激情，大家也都理解充满了风险。对于美国的歌剧院来说，尤其是那些固定资产异常复杂的大型机构，是不允许失败的。财政运作模式与受众敏感度都是这样：一旦你做错了一件事，立即会引发观众流失。但如果你不冒险，整个机构会变得暮气沉沉，你失去了处于成败边缘的兴奋感和随之会发生的可能性。身在硅谷，令我觉得特别振奋，因为在这里有特别的创意，而研发的成果可以改变世界。我不断地探索我们参与其中的不同方法。

在社群参与方面，旧金山是社交媒体的重镇。这对于拓展观众有起作用吗？

现在我们的社交媒体可以接触多种声音，下一个阶段就是把不同声音拼在一起，制造出令人鼓舞的对话。歌剧院应该允许观众在官网进行评论吗？（大笑）我认为，这正如专业乐评与公众之间进行互动一样，存在很多有趣的可能性。你是乐评人兼记者，你怎么看？会不会太冒险？

在早期，互联网引起了一些令人兴奋的讨论。但你不要忘记，是用户原创内容（user-generated content）促使特朗普入主白宫。于是，网上对话与言论贬值了。很多网上刊物故意邀请公众回馈意见，但只限于某些内容或文章。很多论坛还设有管理员，因此会过滤“灌水”或电脑自动留言。

未开发的可能性是令人兴奋的。我接任院长之后，意识到我必须要要会自己动手。最起码，得能一起参与其中（大笑）。此前我有时候会上脸书（Facebook），但从没有上过INS（Instagram，或称照片墙）与推特（Twitter）。于是我开始训练自己善用社交媒体。INS是最佳载体，因为可以用图片直观我们的工作；推特多涉及的是想法与理念，因为我是歌剧院院长，把个人的想法推出去未必合适。还有，推特的性质让你很难区分“个人”与“公众机构”的身份，因此作为面向公众的社交平台不太适用。但是INS能让大众有机会看到平常无法体验的歌剧院后台风景，比如，从台侧拍摄的谢幕场景；某些演出的半场休息时，我们故意开启大幕，让观众能看到换布景的复杂程序；我们更欢迎公众提问互动。有些人希望保持舞台神秘感，但更多的人对于后台十分好奇，想知道一切的运作。我每两周都写一则“跟马修一起后台探秘”（Backstage with Matthew）的推送，每则介绍一个人，比如制帽匠，访问他们需要什么资历与经验才可以从事这行，还有成品在舞台上的功用。当你观赏《托斯卡》的时候，就会更了解歌剧演出是多么复杂；看到演员头戴的帽子，又能近距离欣赏服装制作的精巧工艺。其实能有很多不同切入点可以让大家找出话题。当然，歌唱是歌剧最重要的部分，但你可以通过其他途径走近歌剧世界，而不需要一定会区分抒情女高音与戏剧性女高音。去年我家的厨房要重新装修，水管工问我从事什么行业。我告诉他我的职业后，他说，“这跟我的世界毫不相干。”但我回答道：“其实，歌剧院剧场里有很多人跟你的工作大同小异。”

2007年你首次到访中国，当时你才在旧金山任职。可以谈谈当年的旅程及你的期望吗？

当时我在旧金山只工作了一年多，谈不上有何期望。但给我留下最深印象的，是中国的快速发展与乐观预期。北京国家大剧院当时还是个工地，我们戴着安全帽在那里走了一圈；在上海，我还记得在浦东被东方艺术中心的庞大规模所震撼。当年的环境很特别，传统的西方歌剧对于中国来说还算是一个相对新的事物。我感觉到大家谈到歌剧都无比兴奋并有所期待。今年9月我重临上海大剧院的后台，赞叹于剧院大规模的先进设备。就算这些剧院现在还没有天天搬演歌剧，我仍能看到无限潜力。现在上海又在筹备建造新的歌剧院——其实是两座新歌剧院，包括上海音乐学院歌剧院——这令我惊讶。然而，上海是一个拥有2400万人口的大都会，按比例来看是合理的，它们可以推动歌剧艺术的巨大发展。

你首次以歌剧制作人的身份与中国合作是《接骨师之女》，这也是大卫·高克利在旧金山的首批委约作品之一。这部歌剧如何把旧金山与中国连接起来？

这个例子很有趣，因为《接骨师之女》糅合了中国与美籍华裔元素，却展现了纯

粹的美国美学观。我们也聘请了一个相当中国化的制作团队。在这部作品里，我们开始认识到东西方的不同见解：创作过程的差异，对流程把控的差异，还有建立关系的差异。但是因为作曲家与编剧都是美国人，整个歌剧制作与中国的互动不像后来的《红楼梦》那般深入。

在中国，人们对旧金山歌剧院更关注，正是因为《红楼梦》这部歌剧，也是大卫最后的委约之一。你似乎从一开始就更直接地与中国联系在一起。

《红楼梦》让我更清楚地了解到美中观点的不同，尤其在叙事方面。我明白、也尊重《接骨师之女》这个故事，是关于华人的移民史；但《红楼梦》是中国文学巨著，我们取材于这部小说，在一个西方语境里把中国文化传承重新诠释在舞台上，因此创作与制作过程都完全不同，包括舞台上的表达方式、与设计团队的合作方式、叙事的节奏。我再次发现，最重要的就是建立关系。我第二次造访上海，更加明白建立互信的重要性。

这两部作品筹备的过程具体有什么区别？

《接骨师之女》比较接近美国的传统模式：剧本与音乐都写好了，然后聘请制作团队。《红楼梦》更为有机，音乐、舞台设计与戏剧文学都是互动式同时推进的。我们改编的是中国珍视的国宝级经典，通过整合文本、音乐、方向和设计的不同诠释，旨在传达一个共同的信息，我相信这有助于创造出更具普遍吸引力的东西。

旧金山歌剧院的《红楼梦》是首部引进中国进行多个城市巡演的西方现代歌剧。你们未来有什么计划？旧金山歌剧院如何展望与中国的联系？

歌剧《红楼梦》新闻发布会，从左至右：叶锦添、旧金山歌剧院董事局委员何吴筱英、希尔沃克、盛宗亮、赖声川

无论是旧金山这个城市还是歌剧院，与全球建立起相互关系都处于有利的位置。因为我们与上海有着紧密的联系——多年来在政治与经济层面合作密切，两个城市更有机会举办一些文化融合的项目。我对中国扶持歌剧发展的步伐感到敬畏。这次观看《漂泊的荷兰人》的观众层很年轻，来自不同背景，又十分投入其中。他们对于舞台上发生的一切都深感兴趣，他们的热情鼓舞人心。我们有很多可以探索的机会，比如说传统剧目以及新作品。通过歌剧《红楼梦》在中国的成功，我有信心，无论这部作品到哪里，都能让观众找到共鸣。建立关系的过程需要大家一起探索，也不需要确定每一步的方向。当你投入了宝贵时间、思维与合作精神，必有所得。旧金山歌剧院是一个庞大的、拥有悠久历史的艺术机构，我们可以帮助中国新建立的歌剧院团与剧院进一步发展，但这种合作不只是单向的。《红楼梦》这个案例让我们明白，到了今天，很多精彩绝伦的东方故事，还没有机会与西方观众结缘，而歌剧这门艺术可以把这些故事叙述出来，让全世界欣赏。我很兴奋，期待下一次会有哪些故事搬上歌剧舞台。

Sitting in his hotel lobby, Matthew Shilvock replays a rehearsal video on his mobile phone with the residual fervor of an Oxford student making a scholarly breakthrough. On the screen, the soprano Carmen Giannattasio climbs a mock-up of Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo before stopping midway and singing toward the camera. Continuing her climb, she pauses at the iconic angel sculpture, then disappears from the edge. “So many Toscas simply rush to the top, sing, and jump,” Shilvock says gleefully. “Then the soldiers stumble in befuddled and it just saps out all the drama.”

Director Shawna Lucey’s staging, set to run through October at San Francisco Opera, ties a taut dramatic leash to Puccini’s score, fully befitting the “total artwork” of theatrical immediacy and musical depth that Shilvock has espoused since becoming the company’s General Director in August 2016 at age 39. Born in Kidderminster, England,less than an hour from Birmingham, Shilvock came to the United States in search of a similar balance between the academic rigor of his Oxford musical studies and the pragmatism of management consultancy.

Running a major opera company before the age of 40 might seem a notable accomplishment—except that Shilvock’s immediate predecessor and chief mentor David Gockley had been handed the reins of Houston Grand Opera before he turned 30. Shilvock first came to Houston while in post-graduate studies in public administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst through an OPERA America fellowship. Following a short stint in Gockley’s office, he was offered a staff position. When Gockley left to run San Francisco Opera he brought Shilvock in tow.

From Gockley’s arrival in 2007 till his departure in 2016,Shilvock became his boss’s “eyes and ears,” gradually learning the intricacies of the US’s second-largest opera company, with more than a thousand employees and an annual budget of US$47 million. He was at Gockley’s side during a 2007 trip to China, as well as the world premieres for many Gockley commissions, including

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

, Stewart Wallace’s 2008 opera based on the novel by San Francisco-based novelist Amy Tan, and Bright Sheng’s 2016 opera

Dream of the Red Chamber

, which later appeared at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and a subsequent tour of Beijing, Changsha and Wuhan.Searching for inspiration as near as Silicon Valley and as far away as China, Shilvock has continued Gockley’s legacy even while refitting the artform for a new era. Fresh from this summer’s reprise of Francesco Zambello’s “American”Ring Cycle, Shilvock was in Shanghai for the Shanghai Opera House’s recent co-production of

Der fliegende Holländer

with Opera Erfurt and the Shanghai Grand Theatre. In between meetings, he had a chance to ponder Wagner and international collaborations, as well as ways to fund repertory opera during a recession and attract audiences in the age of social media.

So how did this opera thing start with you?

I studied music—musicology, really—at Christ Church,Oxford. Music had always been my passion in life,beginning with piano at age 4 and later cello and organ. I always thought I would go into music somehow, but never enjoyed being on stage in the spotlight. Or rather, I enjoyed playing, but not in a professional context. I’d spread myself a little too thinly with too many instruments. But at age 12 I saw my first opera, which was one of Graham Vick’s productions for a small opera company that later became the Birmingham Opera Company. It had always been a place where he could experiment with interactions between art and audience. It was very participatory; you moved around with the drama. He was one of the first to champion that approach. The show was

Beauty and the Beast

by Stephen Oliver, I believe, and looking back,it showed me how opera could make a very immediate connection. In San Francisco we can't have our audience walking around on stage during the performance, but we let them do that emotionally and mentally. Opera should not just be reactive; if we’re doing our job well, the audience should be part of the story.

So in Vick’s production you really moved around the theatre?

It was staged at the Central Television Studios in Birmingham. In four different studios, actually, so you’d literally follow the action around. He’s since done many things in that vein, in factories, for example. But as I saw more operas, it became a confluence of loving the repertoire and art form, and later at Oxford, of recognizing its complexity and developing the rather masochistic interest in bringing all those strands together.

Did you have background or interest in theatre at that point?

Not really. My parents enjoyed music and certainly encouraged it, but nothing really on the theatrical front.I think the whole appeal of opera was its complexity and multiplicity, the idea to bring it all together you have to find that one moment of complete synchronicity.

Was that part of your studies at Oxford?

My studies eventually became the French Baroque.There was an amazing library of antiquities with a number of first-edition scores of Jean-Baptiste Lully, and manuscripts transcribing and arranging those. There’d been maybe one performance of a Lully opera in London,but the entire performance practice of Lully operas had come through sharing chamber music adaptations.

That topic was incredibly prescient, seeing how audiences for French Baroque opera have grown.

Yes, that’s the interesting part now. But Oxford encourages the process of learning more than the actual substance. It was about being in a library, delving deep into something and setting your own perimeters. Oxford doesn't say, “Read these chapters.” They say, “Go write this essay on Mozart Piano Concertos.” You pick the focus and supply the structure.

So in terms of finding focus, what happened between Oxford and Houston?

I tried to get into opera companies in the UK, and people were very kind with informational interviews. But there were simply no jobs available, and even now there are so few of them that once people get hired they stay for life.So I worked for a couple of years in a small management consulting firm, and then went to the US to do a Master in Public Administration. I was still looking to move into opera, biding my time. These experiences broadened my perspective beyond my very narrow academic framework.The consulting firm did a number of workshops with UK partnerships—it was all about integrating the supply chain—and they used music to get people all jazzed up and in the right frame of mind. So they said, “Matthew, you have a music degree. Do some research on this for us.” So,fresh out of Oxford, I wrote a 60,000-word paper on music and the brain. I went to every science journal I could find,read neurological studies. I was even at the British Library’s reserve collection in the north of England. And I handed this thesis very proudly to my boss, who gave me a look of absolute horror. He just wanted a couple of good pieces.It was great example of not understanding your audience.I’d heard about the OPERA America fellowship when I still in the UK, but they couldn’t arrange for a visa. Once I was studying in the US, it was a different situation. Again,studying public administration was another case of figuring out how to make an argument in three bullet points rather than 30,000 words. Some people who suffer through my emails think I didn't learn that well enough.

What had you known about David Gockley before coming to Houston?

I certainly knew his reputation as an innovator and champion of new works, as well as the resulting impact Houston was having on the opera world. But I wasn’t supposed to be working for him. I’d gone to work with Diane Zola, who was at that point running the Opera Studio. About halfway through my stint there, I was called down to David’s office. He’d always had a second person working there, sort of a management trainee, and he needed someone to fill that position in the short term. And at the end, he offered me a job. I still pinch myself at how Igot to spend 14 years working with a great impresario.

Coming to San Francisco Opera was a pretty seismic shift. This wasn’t a company David had shaped in his own image, so the dynamic was probably chaotic by comparison. How was that change for you?

You might think that Houston would be the bigger culture shock, but I’ve always been more surprised by California. Texas is just so fundamentally proud of itself as a state that I always felt welcome there. You’re swept up in the exuberance that is Texas. It was colorful, big, bold—different from anything I'd ever seen before. California is a bit more European, yet somehow more removed,with the pressure of being so far across the world. But professionally, it opened so many areas for me. David had been in Houston for 35 years and knew every nook and cranny of the company. I was doing special projects for him, but always in a familiar context. In San Francisco,everything was new. He was trying to figure out the company, what he wanted to do with it and how to move strategically. All of a sudden I had a new role to play. Now it was about finding out how things worked, understanding the budget, which was three or four times the size of Houston’s. And, of course, understanding the political pressures. The unions were much more ingrained here and that affected any decision-making. So I became David’s eyes and ears, which enabled me to stay with him in a way I never would have in Houston. In San Francisco, he kept giving me additional departments to take on.

What was that career trajectory?

I had about five or six titles, usually the same words jumbled up in different contexts. It started with Special Projects, which included simulcasts and media strategy.Then in 2008 I was given oversight of the orchestra, chorus and dancers, as well as the related unions. A couple of years later, I took on communications and education,and shortly before becoming general director, I took on development. It was a role that gradually expanded throughout the company, and I can’t adequately express my gratitude for the trust David showed in allowing me to remain a generalist, which is almost unheard of in this business. At some point, you usually have to specialize—become a casting director or a production director, or focus on development.

Being a generalist, knowledgeable if not fluent in all departments, is exactly what you need to run a company. It sounds as if you were being groomed for that role. It was not, however, assured that you would get it. How did that search process work?

David gave a pretty fair amount of notice. The board formed a search committee, which took that job seriously.They spent time deciding the company’s vision, mapping out what kind of leader they were looking for. They spent a long time discussing the leadership structure—should it be one person? Two people? They met with other companies to see how things worked elsewhere. Then they announced a very thorough international search. It was always clear I had to be part of that search; there was no predetermined pathway.

Did they give you any indication when you were hired about why you were hired?

Good question. I used to say, for 10 years I was the one behind the potted plant and never tried to put myself in the spotlight. I think a number of people only saw me in that light and questioned whether I could come out of that role. They’d asked the final candidates to propose a 10-year vision for San Francisco Opera and its place within the community, and I was able to address that with a completely different rhetoric. But still, it was a very unusual decision. There are examples of passing the baton internally—in San Francisco, leadership went from[Gaetano] Merola to [Kurt] Adler—but that’s not really the case anymore. The business does not prioritize internal succession. What was important about this decision is that it has allowed not just me but a whole leadership team that’s been in place for some 10 some years to leverage their collective wisdom and establish a framework for the company’s future. It takes about three years to figure it out the company, and if you’re still learning the basics at the same time you’re planning five years ahead, that’s a long time before you actually know what you’re doing,Speaking for our team now, we have the understandingto solve problems without having to unpack and question every little thing.

2016年7月，旧金山歌剧院举办“棒球场上的歌剧”活动，免费向2.8万名观众直播该院制作的《卡门》

Thinking about the future, how much of David’s core philosophy and priorities are still valid? Do they need to be retooled for the future?

The key concept I learned most from him is balance.David had very strong artistic aspirations, but he was never the kind of impresario to do simply whatever he wanted.He would always think about balancing a full season,balancing finances. That perspective is all the more important now that everything is becoming more fragile financially. I think the biggest shift here in the past 10 years has been the change in assumptions about what works and what doesn’t. We grapple with finding a sense of certainty about the business and the artform when it’s so difficult to predict outcomes. You used to have a pretty good idea that if you did X then Y would happen, and particularly since 2008 those assumptions have begun to change. I’m sure there’s an algorithm to figure out how a particular show will sell, but it’s very different from the one we’ve typically used. Last season,

La Traviata

sold only 70 percent even with great reviews. John Adams’s new opera

Girls of the Golden West

got not-so-good reviews but was last fall’s second-bestseller. So as a team, we're trying to find out how you create a more predictable business model with an ever-more-unpredictable audience reality.

As William Goldman once said about the movie industry predicting hit films, “Nobody knows anything.” Who would’ve predicted that after San Francisco Opera did

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

in 2008 that the economy would plummet so completely?

The recession changed audience buying habits—not so much on the donor’s side, but it put a strain on subscription sales. I was also reminded recently that this was also when the iPhone emerged, and the impact of mobile media greatly changed the way people both consumed entertainment and interacted with life. It’s a scary time—and an exciting time—because we’ve increasingly realized we have something unique to offer amidst all of that. The question is how you can change the public’s awareness and expectations.

When I first went to both Houston and San Francisco in the 1990s, the expectations were pretty clear. In Houston, audiences came to see exciting productions.In San Francisco, people went to hear top-notch singers and the productions were almost irrelevant. People in San Francisco now come for the show, partly because of David, but partly reflecting a different age.

I firmly believe that what we’re doing on stage—something very experiential, very tactile, very made-in-San-Francisco—is very congruent with the millennial mindset,the kind of thing you can discover and introduce to other people. And certain traits of what we do are perfectly aligned with San Francisco’s growing tech audience.

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

, for one.

Yes, certain overt pieces like Mason Bates’ new work about Steve Jobs remind us that opera as an artform can still offer something of value today. But really, that value comes from audiences being able to see something of themselves on stage, whether it's a “tech” story or

Traviata

.

But will the people who come to

Steve Jobs

come back to see Tosca jump? Is there an “SFO audience” or are you cultivating several audiences?

My hope is that we can cultivate a general trust within the community about how we tell stories of humanity. It’s very hard now to sell individual titles. Names of operas have little resonance with the public, let alone those of individual singers or conductors. So we have to be a place that the audience trusts to come and have live-affirming experiences.Ticket prices can be a barrier to that. People are very happy to pay for expensive things in San Francisco, but I’m not sure they're willing to do so as an experiment. So somehow we have to move beyond this title-driven awareness—Come see Janáček’s

Jenůfa

!—and instead explain what

Jenůfa

can do for you. The specifics on stage are a means to create the emotions you feel as an audience member.

Over at the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas has built that kind of trust. But it’s one thing to program Janáček on a bill with Beethoven and Mahler. It’s very different spending the whole evening with

Jenůfa

.

Well, yes, getting back to that word “trust” again, you have to get people to trust that they can come to the opera house even if they don’t know the title of the opera, the story, the singers, or even the language. It can still be a place that they can find something deep within themselves.I mean, you’re in tears at end of

Bohème

not because Mimi is dying of consumption but rather because you’re seeing a love that has ended too soon, which may trigger something within yourself. This is the power of opera.

It all leads back to storytelling. You have to feel for the characters.

To me, the story of the opera is never the synopsis. I often joke that opera is so powerful because the stories aren’t always that great. Or I should say, they're not tight. They're not Hitchcock dramas. If they were, they might enthrall us,but we’d probably keep them at arms length emotionally.

Tosca

is almost Hitchcock melodrama, yet it often fails miserably on stage.

Yes, but even

Tosca

has space for you to bring your life to the story. You can imagine yourself onstage as one of the characters. Handel’s operas, too, are about emotional journeys. The stories are just vehicles for those journeys.

Puccini and Handel were very different composers.Is there any formula for making such different works succeed with audiences centuries later?

I’ve thought a lot about this. At the start of this season,people were saying, “Okay, Matthew, a year into the position you have to tell us your artistic vision for the company.” And the more I thought about the question, I realized it’s so rarely answered. I could offer a list of titles—say, a complete Janáček cycle—but that’s dangerous, since things might go in different directions. Finances might fall through, productions might not be available. David’s artistic vision was already clear simply because of what he’d done in the past. You knew his esthetic, his priorities.Many general directors can rely on that. Artistic vision is something you see clearly in the rear-view mirror. I don’t have that (laughing), so rather than offering a list of titles,let’s cut straight to what’s important to us as a company.I’ve boiled down our artistic philosophy to three pillars. The first is Creative Edge. Because of our size, history, and place in the middle of this incredibly fertile area of thinking and discovery, we have to shape the future of the artform and find creative energies in the resources we have, whether in new works, productions or singers. The second is Reflecting Community. We like to think of ourselves a world-class opera company—and I hope we are—but 85 percent of our audience is from northern California. We have to be telling stories that matter to northern California, whether it’s

Steve Jobs

or

Girls of the Golden West

or in the way we tell a story like

Tosca

, to ensure that it means something to audiences in our place and time. We shouldn't simply be driving a cultural message; that message has to come organically from the people who make up our audience.This also celebrates the fact that our community can sustain the required level of local artists and technicians, which doesn't happen everywhere in the world. We can really celebrate being “made locally” and invite the audience into appreciating the many layers that go into that. And the third point is Total Art—a bit pithier in English than Wagner’s

Gesamtkunstwerk

. I used to think this was stating the obvious, but came to realize it’s not always done. For one of our operas to succeed, it needs to succeed on all levels. The worst thing for me is when someone comes out of the opera house and says, “If I closed my eyes, I could enjoy it.” If one piece of the equation is off base, we fail. We succeed when it all come together: music, drama, visuals, storytelling.That’s what creates the magic. Our recent

Roberto Devereux

had a huge audience reaction. And yes, part of that was Sondra Radvanovsky, but also the staging, the conducting,her interaction with other cast members, the pacing, the subtle nuances. Each element helped to create the audience reaction. So thinking about how productions and casting come together, how can we sustain that? I would rather do fewer things incredibly well than more things where we marginalize some of those elements.

Was your “American” Ring Cycle an example of being“locally made”?

That was a long time in the making, starting with discussions between David and Francesca Zambello in Houston. Washington National Opera took the lead, and when David moved to San Francisco he was able to come back into the equation. There was always this idea that it should resonate with people in America, but its evolution was never heavy-handed, and in fact things were pared down as we went along,

Rheingold

was set in the Gold Rush, and the original design had a big sluice reminiscent of that era. That went away. You could still feel the iconography of the American West, but it wasn’t so explicit that people unfamiliar with that iconography couldn't find meaning in the piece.

Götterdämmerung

is set in some futuristic dictatorial state, though its conception is very much aligned with American history and ideologies—and politics, to some degree. Over time, you could also call that production the “Naturalistic”

Ring

or the “Feminist”

Ring

—other adjectives that became attached to it and carry almost as much weight as “American.”But really,what has made it successful is the storytelling. Nothing in Francesca’s

Ring

is at odds with the storytelling of Wagner.There’s no disconnect that the audience has to untangle,which for me is the difference between a great production and a troubling one. If the audience has to figure out what on earth is going on—whether the setting is historical or contemporary—if they have think about why certain choices are being made, then you’ve broken the magic.Over the last hundred years, opera has intellectualized itself way too much. The minute you’re trying to unpack a director’s vision intellectually, you’re not experiencing it in the soul anymore.

That over-intellectualism is not just onstage.

Yes, it’s also there in the way people talk about opera and the way they’ve been conditioned to think about it.No matter how much you know about singers, you can be made to feel two inches tall when people start talking about voice types and who sang the Marschallin in 1952 at the Met. That stuff is wonderful and important, but it can’t be the dominant message about what opera is, simply because it excludes too many people. Opera has backed itself into a corner when people think they need to know this stuff. It’s great if you want to go that deep, but you really don’t have to. Our messaging and marketing try to pull back from the idea that you need to have any preexisting knowledge. Even the way we watch opera, with so much sacred overlay, is not what was ever intended.There’s a wonderful scene in

Cinema Paradiso

where an entire community is watching a film in a southern Italian movie house. People are talking, eating, making love.Some are even watching the film. The whole spectrum of life is happening in the audience, and the opera house was like that as well. We’ll probably not get back to that spirit,but it's a good reminder of how fundamentally populist opera was during much of its history.

One of the questions at this year’s World Opera Forum in Madrid was how can we afford this artform in the 21 Century. You touched on finances earlier, but how is this all affecting your fiscal structure?

Opera is never going to be profitable, at least in terms off ticket sales. It hasn’t been in 400 years. But I’m looking at many tech companies around us that still haven’t made a profit, and yet are still considered successful. Look at the venture capital being pumped into tech firms. Is that really so different from donors investing in an artistic experience?The returns just come in different ways.

Back in the 1940s, Virgil Thomson wrote that the Met’s problem was that too many board members thought of it as a failed money-making organization rather than a first-class money-spending organization.

We have some incredibly generous philanthropists among our donors, and I’ve come to realize this as an inherently two-way connection. People don't give to the arts anymore because it’s seen as being socially “correct.”Areas like health care or education hold that mantle now.People give to the arts now when they’re passionate about it, which means they’re getting something in return.We’ve just launched a new Producers Circle for six-figure donors that offers a way to get under the hood of our creative process. Talking with one of our donors who's also a Broadway producer made me think about what she’s gotten from working on Broadway, and that many philanthropists at that level want the same things from opera. So we've tried to create a sense of ownership,basically including them in the process. If we bring somebody on as a major philanthropist/investor/producer,as we did with our new

Tosca

, they can have a journey with the piece from day one. We’re not afraid to have them there in the design meetings or on the first day of rehearsals with the cast. They should have that connection with the piece,because they’re as much a part of it as the cast is. We're thinking of this now as a much more integrated system.

Does being in San Francisco make it easier to create that system?

I had this light-bulb moment a few years ago after a few meetings at a tech company. It was the quintessential tech office, designed from scratch, glass windows, everybodywalking around with their MacBooks, barista in the entranceway manned by rotating staff members. Just as you’d imagine a tech company would be. And I came out thinking, “Gosh, I wish I worked for a creative company.”And then I thought, “What am I saying?” What we do on stage is one of the most incredibly creative things humanity has dreamt up. But we’re not always creative in the way we get there. The way we function tends to focus on the problems and not the possibilities.

Creativity is simply not efficient.

No, and every time I leave a European festival I come away both with euphoria and depression, because you see companies working on a highly creative spectrum,perfectly aligned to take risks and fail—and allowed by the audience to do so. You can see a production at Aixen-Provence that doesn’t quite work, and it won't effect whether or not someone comes back the next year. There’s excitement in the risk-taking, and an understanding that some things will come out better than others. For American opera companies, particularly big ones where fixed resources are so complicated, you aren’t allowed to fail. Both the financial model and audience sensitivity are such that the minute you do one thing that doesn't work,you start losing people. But if you don’t take risks, the whole thing deflates. You lose the excitement of being on the edge and the possibilities that come with that. That’s what I find stimulating about Silicon Valley, which has a very particular idea of creativity that has led to all kinds of outcomes that are changing the world. I keep exploring ways we can be a part of that.

In terms of community engagement, San Francisco is also a center of social media. How has that helped reach audiences?

Now that we have access to a multiplicity of voices, the next level is turning that into an exciting dialogue. Should we allow user reviews on the website? (laughing). I think there are interesting possibilities there, just as there is in having interaction between professional reviewers and the public. As a journalist, how do you feel about that that? Is it too dangerous?

In its early days, the internet generated some exhilarating discussion. But don’t forget, usergenerated content also gave us President Trump. The dialogue soon becomes demeaned. Many publications open some articles for public feedback, but not others.Feedback is often moderated, so that responses obviously coming from trolls or robots are kicked out.

The untapped possibilities are exciting. I took this job realizing I had to up my own game. Well, first I had to get a game (laughs). I’d done a bit of Facebook, but nothing on Instagram or Twitter. So I started developing that.Instagram is the best vehicle, I’ve found, since what we do is so experiential. Twitter is more about ideas, and as a representative of the company it’s not always my place to be putting out ideas, since it’s very hard to divorce oneself from an institution. But Instagram is a fabulous way to give people backstage glimpses of opera that people never usually see, such as shots of curtain calls from the wings.We also have open-curtain events during intermissions,where we narrate the act change and answer questions from the audience. Some people want to keep the fourth wall and not lose the mystery, but many others are fascinated by seeing some of that backstage world that makes everything happen. I’m trying something similar with a biweekly blog entitled “Backstage with Matthew,”where I focus on one person—say, the hat maker—and ask what it takes to be a hat maker and how that work affects the show. So when you watch

Tosca

you understand a little more of opera’s complexity, with an entirely different appreciation for what’s on people’s heads. There are so many points of engagement. Singing is a huge part of it, but you can enter opera from many angles that don’t require you to know the difference between a lyric soprano and a spinto. We were having our kitchen remodeled last year and the contractor asked me what I did. After I told him, he said, “Well, that’s nothing to do with my world.”And I said, “Well, actually, we have many people there who do things very similar to what you’re doing.”

You were quite new at San Francisco when you first came to China in 2007. How did that trip fit your expectations?

I was a year to 18 months into the job and really had no expectations. What impressed me then was the sense of growth and optimism. The NCPA in Beijing was still under construction, so we got a hardhat tour. In Shanghai,I remember being overwhelmed by magnitude of the Oriental Art Centre, especially for an environment in which Western opera was a relatively new tradition. There was such a sense of excitement and possibility. Just being backstage again at the Shanghai Grand Theatre, I was struck by the immense technical capability of these theatres. Even if they're not being used as full repertory opera houses, the potential is still very much there. The idea that Shanghai is building yet another opera house—two, if you count the Conservatory venue—is amazing, but when you see it in the context of a city of 24 million peopleit begins to make sense. They can accommodate a huge growth for opera here.

Your first engagement with China professionally was

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

, one of David Gockley’s first commissions in San Francisco. How did that opera start the relationship?

That was an interesting example, since

Bonesetter

was a blend of Chinese and Chinese-American influences, heavily rooted in an American esthetic. On top of that, you had a production team with a more fully Chinese esthetic. Within all that, we started to understand the differences in the creative process, a different sense of timelines, differences in building relationships. But because of the piece itself,with the composer and librettist being American, it was a softer engagement than

Dream of the Red Chamber

became later.

People in China are much more aware of San Francisco Opera because of

Red Chamber

, which was one of David’s final commissions. You seemed to be more directly connected to China right from the beginning.

Red Chamber

helped me understand more clearly the difference between Chinese and Chinese-American perspectives, particularly in storytelling. With

Bonesetter’s Daughter

I felt a respect that we were telling a story rooted in the history of Chinese immigration, but with

Red Chamber

there was respect that we were buying directly into the Chinese literary canon, reinterpreting it in a largely Western context. Everything about the process was different: the expression on stage, how we worked with designers, the rhythm of the storytelling. And again, it was about relationships. I saw that again on this trip to Shanghai: It’s all about building trust.

How exactly did those processes differ?

Bonesetter

was more in the traditional American model: the piece is written, the production team hired.

Red Chamber

happened more organically, with music and design and dramaturgy evolving more holistically. We were dealing with a famous text that the Chinese treasure with such reverence, so simply by consolidating different interpretations of the piece in text,music, direction and design we aimed for a common message that I believe helped to create something of more universal appeal.

With

Red Chamber

, you became the

first Western opera company to tour China, not just appearing in one city but traveling to multiple regions.Where do you go from here? How does China play into San Francisco’s future?

San Francisco, both the city and the opera company, are well positioned to have a global reciprocal relationship.Because of our amazing congruence with Shanghai—with longstanding political and economic relationships—there’s an incredible opportunity for our two cities to start thinking in a culturally cohesive way. I’m so in awe of the pace of change in China’s embrace of opera. Audiences at

Der fliegende Holländer

were so young and diverse and engaged. They seemed fascinated by what was happening on stage, and their enthusiasm was inspiring. There are so many possibilities, both in traditional repertoire and the creation of new works. And after our experience with

Dream of the Red Chamber

, I’m not too worried about exactly where that will go. Part of the process of building a relationship is being not quite sure where it will lead.But when you put a lot of quality time, thought and collaborative effort into it, generally what comes out will be pretty strong. There are certain things that big, established companies like ours can do to help new companies and facilities in China, but it’s certainly not a one-way relationship. What

Red Chamber

showed us is that there are incredible stories out there that Western audiences don't know but have beautiful potential for operatic expression that can be cultivated on a global basis. I’m excited to see what other stories we can tell.

希尔沃克在介绍《托斯卡》的舞美设计理念