>> rose: welcome to our program. we continue this evening with our summer recess composite focusing this time on symphonic and operatic music and beginning with the conductor valery garg yef. >> you know what you want to hear. you do something and then you hear something. so there should be a very interesting process thathat you want to hear isn't as good as wt your wishes are maybe even better because good orchestras can do... >> rose: so you hear something in your head which is perfect and you're trying to reproduce

that with an orchestra. >> yes. you cannot go behind orchestra and chorus. that's unacceptable. you lead. >> rose: we continue with sir simon rattle. >> i want to hear a story being told. i want to hear... i want to ar that if the violas play a phrase in a different way that the singer will hear that and rct. i want to ar different colors. i wa to hear the music shimmer. want it to be a secret when the note begins and ends. you want all kinds of things that are impossible together. and you want people to breathe together in one way. >> rose: and we conclude with italy's antonio pappano. >> it's very easy to look at a big piece of music and see all the details and not see the abcs of music which is harmony, rhythm, and melody. that sounds very basic, but i tell you, when you're looking at something as complicated as some of the music that a conductor has to look at, he has to be

able to see what's essential. thenhe inspiration, especially opera, the inofficer ration of the words. >> rose: valery gergiev, sir simon rattle and antonio pappano when we continue.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >>ose: valery gergv is here. he is one of the world's greatest conductors. also one of russia's most well-known cultural figures. he's currently the principal conductor of the listen to don symphony orchestra. since 188 he has been the leader of a theater in st. petersburg. his style of conducting has made him one of the most compelling performers to watch. here he is in a "60 minutes" piece out him.

>> he's got to be the world's most unkempt, unshaven and unlikely of conductors. but don't let that put you off. gergiev is conducting in another world. his eyes are all inwards. his hands perform a ballet for ten fingers. he coaxes musicians, he cajoles, he's a sorcerer casting a spell. >> rose: gergiev is also famous for being everywhere at the same

time. this month in new york he conducts boris gud november at the metropolitan opera. at carnegie hall he will perform mahler symphonies. he is doing so much it's surprising we get him here back at this table. so welcome. great to see you where are you happiest? what n what of all the things you do bring you the greatest satisfaction? >> maybe when something is really adventurous and a little bit difficult. i'm trained in the difficult years, late '80s, early '90s. of course, russia is a big country. of course culturally it's a huge tradition and we inherited tremendous glorious but end of' 80s and beginning of '90s there was a big question. and then i was survived... >> rose: the fall of the russian empire? >> well, the breakup of the soviet union was one thing. and it went its own way, the

breakup of the soviet union and the political process. but then there's another process-- cultural. and that's very much a big one. so this, let's say, smaller brother is very, very important because all these... the loss of many musicians and you are 35 years old, you have to be a leader of important institutions which is undersupported. you can't sell... it will be very cheaply because then people didn't have money to buy expensive tickets and so on and so on so we had to work very, very hard. and that was maybe the most challenging timeor me when i ally had to lead by my own example. i had to work more than others because it was challenging. >> rose: are you saying saving the her written ski is what has brought you thereatest

satisfaction? the fact that the kirov survived under another name? >> the kirov was a communist leader. he was killed in 1934. mariinsky, his name was restored in 1992, we brought this name back, like st. petersburg was again st. petersbu after it was named leningrad. but marinsky theater was working hard and i myself as a leader i thought thought i had to wk a little bit more than anyone else beuse they he to trust know see that not only tell them you do this, you do that. that was challenging and finally became also something of am

pride for everyone that we could overcome. >> rose: but do you claim credit-- and i mean this not in a sense as an ego thing. but was it you and that time that somehow gave a new emphasis to pro of jeff and shas co-vich and brought them to an even larger recognition? i was like a young general who had to know what to do with a very, very difficult situation. it wasn't a war i had to conduct but the danger was that orchestra, chorus, ballet company would be disintegrated. there was a real danger so i had to do something very smart and one of the smart things was to make recordings with big western companies. now we do our own recordings. >> rose: that's a story we'll tell. >> but it was also important to come to the u.s.a., to come to european capitals and demonstrate why this tradition should survive and why actually it is alive. because we had to do it. >> ros because you dime the west and said you've got to...

you need to know and appreciate because i'm going make sure this tradition survives. >> yes. and my biggest supporters in france were these composters, sjostakovitsj, stravinsky... >> rose: because they gave you something to work with? >> they gave us the powerful tools, the powerful weapon of this great russian music and we obviously tried to learn how to perform it at the best level. and when it worked there was a huge respect, there was support, everything was somehow coming together. and we were becoming more and more confident and the danger... really truly dangerous period was behind us. >> rose: i don't know how you do all this. you have built a new opera house in st. petersburg. >> we ebuilding. >> rose: are it is. tell me about it. >> well, we have canadian archect jake diamond who built tonto opera house. he's a professional, weworked hard on this for many years already. and we hope in 2012 we will

invite you charlie as we will many, many friends around the world the opening and it will be interesting. and building to the left the historical mariinsky and then you see the new opera house. >> rose: did you choose the architect? >> i was totally for this choice because jake diamond already built opera house. after a very difficult beginning i was very much against looking at someone who doesn't know what is opera house about. and then we learn while building this process what is opera house. >> rose: what is opera house about? >> i think it's about both public and artistic families. there are two worlds and both are very important. public should feel good. public should be hap. but also artists, technicians, they have tobe comfortable. it's 21st century. the met was built for some 50

years ago and it's still exemplary the way it works. but today we can learn a lot about what is the ideal opera house. >> rose: at some point you started your own mus company. you did and... i concert with others. in order or because you didn't think the music was appreciated or didn't understand the music, american and other companies? >> my feeling was already five, seven years ago that recording industry in the hands of giants, obviously that was in the past who looked at these companies, saw the music, e.m.i., gram phone, they were giants, right? because their catalogs are huge. 50 years ago, 70 years ago, certainly 30, 40 years ago they were doing great, great things. they still do. but the smaller, younger, fresher, quicker and maybe sometimes smarter players, this

is a sign of our times. the same happens to the worl economy. sometimes unknown companydoing suchood and smart work, progress is so quick and propels to the top and this is what i think will happen to the recording industry today. marin ski recording label is our own label. >> rose: mariinsky is right here. >> we started with the quite famous production at the met being such a success. but this recording also contributed that a lot of people around the world first time realized sjostakovitsj being a young man, 22 years old, composed a very fantastic opera. incredible. and these reportings are already fourth big opera.

>> you always are ahead of musicians. you know what you want to hear. you do something and then there should be a very interesting process that what you want to hear isn't as good as wha your wishes are, maybe even better. >>ose: so you hear something in your head which is perfect and you try to reproduce that with an orchestra. >> you cannot go behind orchestra an chorus, that's unacceptable. you lead. when you look at the musician before he plays, he has to understand what kind of sound conductor hears or whatever. i think with conductors like great americans lenny bernstein, when he looks at orchestra, you already hear even before because

there's an expression in his eyes. we're all colleagues so i am not ordering people. it's not interesting. you invite. sometimes you create. musicians, they can go very well with you at one, two, three, four. but when you create something that is not just one. it's a magical atmosphere and even feels much better. of course in opera house you always depend very much on the fingers. sometimes you simply support... you follow the fingers. i don't lead the fingers here. i am happy to follow them as well because they have to sing. powerful characters. the death of boris is a powerful scene. i will do whatever it takes but

when it feels comfortable in my hands all together with me. because that's my obligation. >> rose: are you different today than you were when i first met you 10 years ago, 15 years ago? >> well, if i improved, not because i have a different age now because i spend more time with tchaikovsky and mozart. i think with this company you have no chance to get worse and worse because if your attention is to them... (inaudible) but i look at what they want from me makes me better person. >> rose: what drives you. what is the motivation for you? >> not fame. not money. it's maybe the challenge which was there many years ago and i made it work like a mother and when it goes slower, maybe i feel less excited than 20 years ago so i someh regret this agitation, maybe.

but it's music, of course, because you know that to perform the symony and this opera it's difficult and you know that the competition which i recorded with my colleags with our best ever, there are 50 recordings maybe made... 40 years ago, 30 years ago 20, years ago, 10 years ago by great, great, great masters. if you compete with the dead. the big leaders, even leaders in cultural field, they compete with the dead because look, katherine the grea they did something incredible, they built cities called florence or someone built venice, someone else built st. petersburg. these are incredible cultural monuments. >> rose: has there been an

evolution in your appreciation of what you appreciation and how you see music? >> you get wiser and you get stronger but then conductors who are, say, eight years old in america you have somebody conducting when he was nine years old and so physically they will not get stronger but is spirit was working. thepower was in the eyes. i saw conductors that we not very young. it was eight years old when he composed first of, but if the youthfulness of this opera subpoena a tremendous energy from the vy start you will never believe he's 80 years old. becae the spirit gets more a more powerful so your intellect gets richer and richer

especially if you tra yourself practice. rose: so you're becoming what? >> i became tay may someone who wants to reach quite far working with young people. i know that if you live another ten years you better spend most of the ten years helping young people. if you live another 30 years, better start now how you can do it. it's very simple in my case. i invite all universities, all schools to experience at least once what's the world of opera? what's the world of ballet? what's the world of symphony orchestra or chamber music singing, theater. how the theater starts. we invite kids in, we do something so that they understand that there is a line between being in the audience and then there's a magical land wher some theater work starts.

maybe 50%. maybe 70% will not get it immediately. maybe 90%. but they will be intrigued, i hope, and they will carry this impression. most of them will come back. >> rose: is there any reason to believe that there is not the possibility of a new verde or mozart? >> there is. >> rose: the is the possibility? >> when you go and start your concert and behind you there are 2,000 or 3,000 people you always have to tell yourself maybe one of them is mozart. and that's why you have to perform at your best because he will judge your performance. maybe he's only ten years old. because when mozart was a little boy there was a giant copopl posed. we know about balk, haydn,

mozart, beethoven. but the yoger generation, they were maybe ten years old, maybe six years old. and then th same happened in mariinsky. one of the last visits of tchaikovsky to the mariinsky appeared to be one of the first of his mother holding his hand. this is of igor stravinsky who i'm sure was maybe seven years old, maybe eight years old. he's a genius of the 20th century but he just... obviously he blessed him. obviously it was expected of him tchaikovsky was god. that was a boy. but one closing his page without too many words just the line continues and stravinsky took it over. so these areery symbolic things and we always have to

remember that whatever we do is just another small protest of continuation of huge... like an ocean it moves somewhere. so any classical music, this is what we are. we are small maybe important but small pa of a huge ocean of music which has performed all the time. >> rose: before i go, since you have made this point that you want to encourage, develop, make clear the work of living composers, name me five living composers, or six, that you want the world to know morebout in terms of your belief that the music they are creating. >> i have two friends amongst living composers who are senio much more senior to my age, for example. one of them is chadrin. another one is french. over 90 years old but a living

composer,enius, both fantastic. but then, please, pay attention to names like... one of them is called alexander roskotov. very recently his opera "dog's heart" was performed in amsterdam. it was a huge success. we will be performing it in st. petersburg. i love it myself. i think it's very, very important that we work with living composers. of course, thomas addis was recently in st. petersburg for a series of concerts. british, young, less than 40 years old. very important composer and i am asking these leading composers to compose for tchaikovsky competition. i became the president of this organization, committee of tchaikovsky competition. before it was shostakovich. well, i'm not match for these glorious names but someone has to do it today and i was asked

to do it. i will do it, i hope, together with the colleags and we will make sure that young people have a fantastic opportunity to sign the next haikovsky competition which is 2011, june. but living composers is a fantastic opportunity for any conductor to become a very important historical figure. today a composer is remembered, bu also there is a music director who brought it to life, he's recommended because he did it. >> rose: as always, my friend, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> rose: sir simon rattle is here. he is, as you know, the artistic director and chief conductor of the berlin philharmonic. it is one of the world's great orchestras. here is a look at what he does.

>> good, yes. last three let's do. >> there are as many different pes of people in this orchestra as you could imagine. and yet serve somehow searching for something else together. >> rose: simon rat is perhaps best known for his 20th century repertoire with composers like stravinsky, shoneberg and mahler. i'm pleased to have him here at this table once again. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: i hope you know that every time we hear you're near new york we go in pursuit of you. >> (laughs) you're very sweet. >> rose: well, no, we do. and here's what... this is

your... debut at the metropolitan opera? >> well, i thought before i got any grayer it was time. >> rose: wasn't it? so why now? you've been famou and good for a whil and i know opera has a long schedule. >> opera has a long schedule. >> rose: so do you. >> opera far away is difficult and i was bringing up children, i didn't want to be away so long now magdalena and i have solved it by bringing our children with us. >> rose: she's in the opera. >> exactly. she's been here a lot. but it's the last year before our eldest goes to school so in a way it's my last chance to do it. but i've been throng the met for 35 years years. i've been the other side so to stand up there once is really something very special. >> rose: now, for a man of your experience and talent and... is it... are you nervous?

>> before the first days of rehearsal, absolutely. and when i stepp into the stage door and i saw all these people going in different directions and justemembered again what a huge machine the met is, how many pieces they're putting on at y one time. within 15 15-minutes of tting the stick down with the orchestra i felt like i was... >> rose: at home? >> with not on old slippers but kind of sushi grade slippers. is orchestra is legendary and i'm just beginni to learn why it's legendary. t so similar pat co-. i'm just at home. >> rose: why is it legendary, this orchestra? >> well, they are one of the greatest, if not the greatest, opera orchestras in the world. and they can switch from style to style. almost witut thinking. and because they have to put on so much so fast they've

developed a way of just simply reacting. so my feeling is that a lot of the conductors' wo is done for him by their intelligence. i've really come across a group that concentrates so hard in rehearsal. >> so if a guest conductor goes to the berlin fill mar monic, there is an orcstra thayou have shaped. hugely talented but you have shaped them. and they come in and it's your orchestra. >> they do pieces i've done a lot they're going to get to know a lot about me as well as about the orchestra. and you do you feel the influence of the person who's been there because when i come to the met jimmy levine has been there for 40 yes.

rose: exactly. >> and you feel not only the work but you also feel that he's treated these people with love and respect so you have a familial quality. but you feel the work. and it reminds me occasionally it's not so bad to have a conductor. >> rose: is there any bit of "show me how good you are." >> there is a wonderful thing about being conductor of the berlin fill harmon sick that there are other orchestras that want to play how they imagine the berlin philharmonic to play. and this is also a thing of... actually we are really good, too. but there's... it helps, it's also just to do with time. but they, the people in an opera are interested not only in playing their notes but what they mean and telling the story. and the greater the opera orchestra the more they will tell the story. with the stage. and i see and hear the players

throng the singers and reacting to their every moment. and i see this happen in a split second and it's wonderful, i tell you. it's wondful to be up there also watching the reaction between sician down and musician up. >> rose:ou want to say this is a big deal. i want to take some risk here. i want to expand here. but every place you >> but every placeou get an opportunity to do something different... conductor is one of the great fake professions of all time. we actually... >> rose: (laughs) >> what do we sound like? you have no idea. i've been doing it god knows how many years. i have no idea. without the people we are lost. i have great singers, you have a great orchestra and parts of the business is to put them all into the same place and make it work. >> rose: and now...

>> it's utterly... i don't think there's such a thing as a bipartisan musician. the word bipartisan... it's... yeah, it's become almost a sarcastic usage. but everybody has to be in the same team an part of the thing is not putting opposing teams together it's making the same family a room. so each time is different and nobody if you're smart you're never going to do it the way you've done it before. >> rose: you're never going to do it the way you've done it before. >> one of th greatest conductors of all time said the worst thing in music is remembrance in motion. don't tell me how it sounded when bruno walter conducted it, do it yourself. make it new every time. bless him, he's right. >> rose: tell me what it is you want to hear as a conduct snor what is it that you... >> i want to hear a story being

told. i want to hear that if the violas play a phrase in a different way that the singer will hr that and react. i want to hear different colors. i want to hear the music shimmer. i want it to be a secret when the note begins and ends. you want all kinds of things that are impossible to get. and you want people to breathe together in one way. so a lot of different possibilities. >> rose: are you any different at the podium for an opera? >> yeah, i'm different at the podium anyway. if i was the conductor all my life it would be unbearable. i mean, i think everybody in the arts has a bit of jekyll and hyde away. but, yes, in the theater you are involved and in a very extraordinarway because the orchestra is down and the stage is up. you are ke the... you are like

the force through which the electricity goes. you know, a time beating adapte plug. i'm not making it happen but it has to... it goes through that center, whatever that means. >> rose: because you are well known for the expression of your own phicality on the podium. >> rose: a bit too much. yes, a bit too much. but i suppose it's like a jazz musician. they say how do you improvise? they say well some of it just comes from god. but a lot of it is the experience of material that is there and you take little pieces out of that. this is the fifth production of this piece i've done and so there's a lot of memories of other productions about enfant terriblee, peter sellers in one. a great experimental production

in berlin another. but you know, oh, this has happened, this could happen which of these do we go and which do we take ich isew? isn't it impossible to talk out music? that's why we make... that's why we make music. but sometimes something really magical can happen when people understand something together. and yo feel, oh, this is different but it couldn't have been any other way. just now. >> rose: is there always within yoa desire to express new pieces of music from new composers at the same time to reflect all the greatness that music has? >> look, it's very easy. i'm in a privileged position and i could just explore what is already there. >> rose: exactly. >> but if we don't keep on producing new work, we will die and we will deserve to die.

i just had this year at 55 my first performances of bach's passion and i'm glad i waited that long. unforgettable for me. but at the same time we priered a month later an extraordinary new swing symphony by wynton marsalis with the orchestra. >> rose: oh, yes. >> an it's interesting. the end of last season all of us felt that these were two of the great fillers of what we did. but unless we keep on producing new we had it. and we have to find the next matthew passions. >> rose: do you look at him and say, man... because you can identify with... >> there is a generation of conductors coming up inhich gustavo is an incredible example who are so good and have such

old heads on young shoders but thank god gustavo got a few things to learn. >> rose: exactly. >> but i've heardoncerts from him. i've heard concerts from nelsons which are so masterly and it's funny. i thought to myself am i going to feel bad about this? actually, i'm thrilled to sit and listen to see this next generation coming up who've just eaten everything. of course gustavo has been doing it but he has an uncanny physical ability to convey what he wants and such a charm... look, any orchestra is not going to do it for gustavo isn't going do it for any one. >> rose: an uncanny ability to convey what he wants. >> yeah. and what he wants will change.

>> rose: what he wants from the piece? >>ometimes it's really a young man's music. but it shoulde. >> rose: it will change because his experience five years fro now is different from his experice tay and what he plays today and how he sees it and interprets it is not the way you see and interpret it, it's e way he sees and interprets it. >> exactly. >> rose: that's what we expect because we don't want him to be you, we want him to be him. >> exactly andhe and all these other wonderful musicians will hopefully be allowed to become more themselves. i hope they won't become a corporate picture. so many people in the theater young theater directors are extraordinary. it's hard to believe middle age theater directors. it can be for conductors as well >> rose: what would be your advice for anyone of that generation. >> to gustavo, take a holiday

with your young family now. >> rose: (laughs) >> but did you follow your own advice? >> yes, i did. i was given advice by one of the greatest of all conductors, carlo maria gelini. two words "hurry slowly." >> rose: hurry slowly. >> but i was not gifted prodigy in the way that gustavo and some of the others ar >> rose: sir simon rattle will be at the metropolitan opera. i'm always pleased to have you here sir. >> thank you so much. >> rose: antonio pappano here. he is the music director and chief conductor of the royal opera house in london. this year he hosted the mini series "operatalia" for the bbc. it traces the history of italian opera er 300 years and here is a look. sql >> italians love opera. in this film, i'll be looking at four composers who shaped italian opera beginning with the whole new art form that 400

years later is still thrilling audiences. this is what opera is all about. >> i was born to this world. my father was a voice teacher and he imbued in me a sense of voices, the love of local music and just gets my blood going in a way no other thing can. >> rose: i am pleased to have antonio pappano. welcome. here you are talking about your father and what... a vocal teacher. you were also his accompanyist for a while >> 12 years i played for his students, yes. and for him. >> rose: and when you left, very disappointed. >> very difficult for me, actually. >> rose: for you more than him? >> yeah, he didn't say anything to me.

i i needed to have other experiences, needed to grow. but it was a very difficult moment. you leave the family business. we were a real unit for so long. >> rose: he was born in milano? >> in a south of italy in a village where the name is longer than the town is big. it's a small town in the cam pan ya region just inland from naples. very agricultural. >> rose: and made his way to dlon don? >> made his way to london and connecticut. >> rose: so the english you speak is that you spent part of your boyhood... >> yes, we moved to america when i was 13. >> rose: and music by that time was what you wanted? >> >> i started taking piano lessons at the age of six and it was just the thing to do and my father sort of forcefully encouraged me to take piano

lessons. so i did it. like everything young kid i was out playing football and getting up to god know's what. football was the real passion. but then i had a certain facility for the music. i wasn't great or anything but i kept going at it and by the age of ten or so i was good enough to start playing for his students and then really after school i would go to my father's studio and we'd work until 10:00 at night with students. he's do the vocal exercises and i'd play the songs and arias and every variety of vocal music there was. >> rose: he wanted you to play the piano? >> his biggest ambition for me was that i become the greatest accompanyist there was. that's what he... that was his

world. the world of singers and taking care of singers. >> rose: is he pleased about you being the greatest conductor? >> (laughs) well, i thi probably as much as i am hwould have been surprised to what extent my musical life has developed i have a wonderful career now as a conductor but it was something that was far away from what i was thinking. i love playing the piano. but other people saw in me the potential for expressing myself in a bigger way. >> rose: on that list is daniel birnbaum. >> absolutely. >> rose: what impact did she? >> i went to play an audition for me singers in berlin. i'd moved ck to europe, i wa working in frankfurt and bars low that also working in america but in frankfurt i was called to

play auditions forome singers and the story goes-- and he loves to tell the story-- that while i was playing the introduction he turned to wolfgang wagner, the then boss and he said "i don't know about the singer" he says "but the kid i want." and so i became his assistant and i became his assistant for six years. >> rose: and what did you carry away from that experience? >> well, as a musician and as a conductor and like i... still at that poi this was in 1992 i had no idea... 1986, excuse me. i had no idea that i wanted to conduct or anything. but i knew i wanted to learn and he caught me how to learn. i think in every field you have to learn how to learn. how to absorb the material. how the look at a piece of music and see what's really there. what it's potential is. how do you bring it to life. because music is just a piece of paper until you play it. >> rose: tell me whathe taught you about how to learn?

>> well, there were different things that you take into consideration when you look at a piece of music. obviously wtern music we're all attracted to the melody line. but the melody line is supported by so many other thing, the movement of the harmony which actually guides the way a piece of music goes. it's not guided by the melody, it's guided by this harmonic structure and rhythm. and ose three in tandem. but, you know, it's very easy to look at a big piece of music and see all the details and not see the abcs of music, which is harmony, rhythm, and melody. that sounds very basic but when you're looking at something as complicated as a music that a conductor has to look at, he has to see what's essential. then the inspiration of the words. what do the words mean? what feel dogs they conjure up? what do they insnir what drama is inherent in those words?

what poetry. it's a lot to think about. you're not only there to wave your arms. >> rose: so wh conducting for you? >> let's face it. there's nothing richer than being in front of 100 musicians and creating this world of sound and color. and add the singers in and it's a world. it's a big responsibili. i see it's a responsibility but one where... the fact that you get to perform at the moment, the live music thing is the most important thing about conducting. it's that music live-- and this is from somebody who's made a lot of recordings-- there's nothing like the live experience it's... and the visceral excitement of being in a room with other people watching other people engage fully. and this is important. performers today need to really, really do it. they really need to convince the

audience. music making has to be fully intense, you have to be full on. >> rose: take a look at this. this is from this remarkable opera i talia in which you and renata scoto are talking about the dying scene from "la boheme." here it is. >> to me, this silence before her actual death. ♪ >> that. oh. that gets me every time that one. >> rose: total silence.

where does "la boheme" rank with you as a puccini favorite? >> well, "la boheme" s the rst opera that i ever rehearsed, prepared. it was in oslo, 1987. >> you were then in norway at... you were the conductor at the >> i was the music director from 1990 to 1992 but this was my first gig as a conductor of opera and i waltzed into the room, i'll never forget it, and they were reheaing act two and i just took over. it was the first opera i conducted. i just took over the stage, i took over telling people h to sing, i took over how they had to act, how they had to be. and i realized then that was the defining moment that this was going to be my life. >> rose: at that moment. >> at that moment because the theater was something that was such a part of me.

was so... it was hidden inside. it had been built up for so many yearthrough al its experiences with my father, wh working in little opera companies as a piano player and all that has become a part of me and, bang, it jus came out. >> re: to watch opera i talia you get the feeling that that's exact what's happening. i'm sure you scripted and roe and we rey owe but there's a sense of all the stuff coming out of you, this storieshat you want to tell us. about how a, how it got started, what happened. how it evolved. >> for me it was very important to be able to be free in a program like that. not only to share my enthusiasm but to share the terminology also and that actually makes it fun but there's a lot of italian words flying, portoment, all these words and i translate them on the spot but it... it just

gives a life that language... the italian language is so much a part of the lure of italian opera. the italian language is opera. it lends itself to music. it's so musical in itself. so the bbc let me do that. because they're not big on using a lot of foreign terminology. but if i translated it immediately and included hit in the sh, it enhanced everything. and gave people information that they need to have or they should have if they're going to experience opera. >> rose: so have you done most of what you want to do in sic? >> oh, no. no. >> rose: what do you want to do that you haven't done? >> well, now that i've got the taste of doing this television stuff, i must say, i'm hungry to do more of it. >> rose: because? >> because i think it's a time now when audiences need that little bit of help. and i'm... i can in a

non-condescending free and truly enthusiastic way sell them what the product is. i have no problem with that. it will product is fantastic. >> rose: and you have no trouble in that because your passion in your love is easy to communicate. >> i hope so. >> rose: you can't talk without moving your hands for god's sake. >> true. true. >> rose: while we were listening to that tape your hands were here saying. you knew exactly what silence was coming. when you prepare, what's the challenge there? having done it so much what is it that you reach for every time you take. >> rose: i go back to my piano ssons, of course, that i had. i had a wonderful teacher in connecticut and we we studied

not only piano music but show tunes, early music and music that had nothinging to do with the piano and therefore this way of looking at music from different angles, from is this a piece that belongs to the romantic period? is it something that harks back to the classical period? is it toward the modern period? you ask yourself all these different questions but basically you come back to harmony, melody, and rhythm. >> rose: but you must, i would assume, have to adjust to who your stars are. >> ah, no, now you're asking a different question. how do i fit in other people to my vision of how things are? >> rose: do you take and two, whe they are or bring them to where you are? >> i have a very strong sense of what if i'm working in an opera what the singers i have

available, what they can bring of their own. i have a very, very strong and keen sense of vocal tempo. when they sing to me two notes, i know... because i've spent so much time with singers i inherently know what the tempo needs to be for them to bring out the best performance. now, do i tweak that or do i offer suggestions, interpretive? tempo wise? of course i do. you know, i have to fit their vision and my vision together and i have to make it into a totality. but i dot think there's such a thing as this is the way it's ing to be and that's the w it has to be. en you're dealing with singers you're dealing with someone who's very delicate. the roat, the personality, the words, the weight of the voice. if a voice is lighter, if it's heavier, you can't just say "this is it." it all depends.

it's all very, very fluid and i think that people have... you know, i've been dubbed... i'm a singer's conductor. >> rose: exactly. >> i take that as a compliment beuse i feel that i can help singers give really of their ve, very best because they feel comfortable enough. >> rose: and comfortable means having the right tempo to ride on. >> yes. but what i do push them in is that they are draw mootally believable. that for me is the most important thing. that when they go on stage they're not only sort of singing machines and they hit the high nights but they are believable as characters. you know, the most beautiful thing in putting together an opera is when the stage director is talking about the musical side and when the conductor is talking about the dramatic side. when you've got that going then you've got something really going and the singers in rehearsal feel that and all of a sudden you make them think in different way. it's so important today because

the opera experience has to be beliable. >> rose: what does it mean for you to be associated with this historic place? >> well, venue... the venue was revampe about ten years ago. beautifully. the public spaces are there are incredible and the opera house was smartened up. and it's a wonderful place to be and it's a wonderful place to rehearse. now all the preparation spaces for opera productions are just fantastic. we have winds, we don't rehurs underground. we can look out into the world and it's... it's a very important place with we have attracted so many terrific singers. >> rose: to read about you is to... (laughs) is to read somebody who is as driven by the work, by the demands, by the chaenge as

anybody you can imagine. i mean, you undertake this with the seriousness of purpose and with an overwhelming obsessive need. >> yeah, i love opera. but opera's hard. opera is really hard to do right. it's very easy to do sort of mediocre opera and it's very easy to do it badly. to do it well is really hard. you have to get everybody on the same page and so i feel that i 'nam a position where i have to set the example. i have to be there the earliest in the morning. i have to be the last one to leave and i have to... when i'm performing i have to really be generous and give of myself and that's what i expect of the singers, too. because that's what the audience expects at the end of the day. and, you know, if you're running a big institution, a big musical institution people are looking for someone to stet example.

they're working on a production and i'm defending a production, new production, come on, we're going to pull this, we're going make a great first night. i've got... you know, i've got a show that i'm behind this a million percent and if i don't do it, nobody else will. >> rose: it's also about leadership. it is about pulling all this together for one magical evening night after night after night. you have done a magnificent job. >> thank you very much.

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