Yuval Sharon

American to direct in Bayreuth, former Detroit Opera Director and currenly directing Richard Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at New York’s Met

I You recently moved to New York. How long were you in L.A. before?

YS. I lived in L.A. for 12 years. I moved there in 2008 to originally be the assistant director for Los Angeles Opera’s Ring cycle. I decided to move so that I could start my own experimental opera called The Industry. That was all about really pushing the definition of opera as far as I possibly could. I felt L.A. was the right place to be doing that.

I. How did you start in opera?

YS. When I was little, I was very resistant to any kind of musical training. My dad forced me to play the piano. I thought it was so boring, and I hated doing it, especially the scales and the practices, and all of that. But he forced me to take piano lessons every single week, even though I protested. He was the one who was responsible for taking me to the opera for the first time. He wanted me to learn about opera for professional reasons, so he started taking me along, and again, I thought the opera was really boring, but it was so fun to be with him. And that was it, you know, he kept taking me over and over again, even though I wasn’t very interested in what was happening on stage.

I. Which opera was the first one that you remember?

YS. I was 13. It was La Traviata, and everyone was in 19th-century costumes. There were no translations, so I had no idea what was being sung or what was happening. It was as if it were a mirror into another time, but not particularly exciting either. I really thought of it like a concert with costumes, and so it didn’t really appeal to me that much. I grew up outside of Chicago, and Opera wasn´t a thing. Then I remember seeing one of my very first operas by Richard Wagner. I have to say that the very last act is a long love duet between these two characters, and it’s 6 hours… for a 13-year-old, that was still not the most exciting thing in the world, but for the first time, there were aspects of it that I was really into.

I. What do you think would be a good start for a non-trained person?

YS. First of all, I should say that no one should feel obligated to like opera. I think there is this feeling that opera is close to museums, or it’s close to the things that are “high art”, or great culture of the world, and either you’re a cultivated person that responds to it, and therefore you’re a good person, or you’re uncivilized, and you’re a slob, uneducated basically. I think that kind of thinking is absolutely wrong. A lot of my own career …

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