Conversation Piece:

Producer  Boris  Goldovsky

By Bruce Duffie

For anyone who grew up on the Met broadcasts in the 1950s, 60s or 70s, the performances were usually wonderful, but the intermission features were somehow extra special.  There was the weekly Opera Quiz hosted by Edward Downes, and often a talk about the work being heard that day by Boris Goldovsky.  His distinctive voice and sly wit illuminated the opera, and the charming manner of presentation made it fun as well as enlightening.  It turns out that this nationwide exposure on the radio was only a sideline for him.  His primary focus was teaching young singers and producing works in Boston and on tour throughout the U.S.  [Names which are links on this page refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.]

We had met several times over the years, often when he visited Chicago to give a lecture for Lyric Opera.  In September of 1985 I asked him if he'd mind if we recorded a conversation.  He happily agreed and we sat down to talk.  As usual, we were gabbing while I set up the tape machine, and we pick up the chat while we were speaking of Der Liebe der Danae by Richard Strauss, which had been given at the Santa Fe Opera.


Boris Goldovsky:  I like to know what people say. 

Bruce Duffie:  When you don’t get all the words, is this the fault of the composer or the producer or the conductor, or whom?

BG:  It’s hard to say.  Strauss was aware of the problem and he spoke about it openly.  If you’ve heard his Intermezzo, you would know that it’s the only one of the later works for which he wrote his own text.  When he wrote his own text, he wanted it to be understood!  Hofmansthal’s?  Never mind!  [Laughs]  So he wrote a preface to the vocal score in which he said several extraordinary things.  First of all, he said the reason one can’t understand singers is that they sing full voice.  In this performance he wants them to all sing half-voice.  And the orchestra will be kept as soft as possible.  Then he said something very interesting: The Devil has put a curse on German composers, and the curse is called Counterpoint.  Counterpoint, Strauss said, destroys enunciation and diction.  In the orchestra, when things are played at the same time, even softly, it creates a sort of smoke-screen that no words can come through.  I think that is the problem.  Strauss was a “cursed” German composer who couldn’t help himself and wrote everything in counterpoint.  There are always three or four lines of music going on.

BD:  The reason I ask about this is that young composers today look at Richard Strauss, who is an acknowledged master, and his words don’t come through, so how can theirs?

BG:  The thing is this: When Strauss himself conducted, he managed to let the words come through.  He prided himself that when he conducted Elektra, every word was understood.  That means being a great conductor.  He knew what to do.  Karajan knows how to do it.  I saw him conduct Wagner at the Metropolitan, and every single word was audible.  So it has a great deal to do with the conductor.  It’s not just getting the orchestra to play softly.  It has to do with the kind of vibrato the strings produce and the kind of smoke that comes out of the pit.  I also noticed that when the singers were not singing and the orchestra had to make a crescendo, Karajan let it really roar up.  But when the singers sang, everyone could hear them.  In Bayreuth, one hears every word because the orchestra is under the stage.  They don’t even have to sing loud at all.

BD:  Should more theaters be designed along those lines, then?

BG:  They don’t do it.  You forget that Wagner created his theater in 1876 and nobody has imitated it.  There is not a pit in the world that is constructed like Bayreuth.  The audiences want to see the orchestra, and the conductors want to be seen.  This is what happens.  Even if they don’t want to be seen, there is still too much orchestra between the first row of the audience and the footlights.  In this country there is another problem; people just don’t understand foreign languages, period.  So, they don’t care.  They listen not for words but for the beauty of the voice, or the beauty of the orchestra, or to the counterpoint, and that is a different kind of listening.  Because of that, singers often ask why they should try so hard to enunciate.  You know that I traveled with my company for over 35 years, and all the performances were in English.  I insisted that the words be understood.  But I created a special kind of test.  Coaches, pianists, and conductors understand the words because in the rehearsals they hear them over and over and over.  They even sing and speak the words so they know them by heart.  They are bad judges of diction because when you know words by heart, you hear them.  So what I did, a week or so before production opened, when things were going pretty smoothly, I would invite 12 or 15 people to our rehearsal, people who had never heard the particular text.  Then, I instructed them that whenever they didn’t understand the text – even a word – they were to clap their hands and stop the show.  So we started singing and after a few measures, there was the sound of clapping.  I told the singers not to explain anything, but to do it again and be sure it was understood.  Then the singers realized all of a sudden that they were not being understood.  They don’t like to be stopped, so they started singing differently.  You see the secret of diction and enunciation is the desire to be understood.  People who teach diction always say to emphasize the consonants.  They are important, but more important is the desire to be understood.  So why should singers in America work hard when the audience doesn’t care anyway?  In Europe, the singers know that the audience will probably be very familiar with the texts, so they don’t have to make any special effort – they’re understood anyway.

BD:  OK, should all operas be translated?

BG:  We have two kinds of operas.  We have an international style, and what I call the opera theater style.  We want to hear the great international singers, and we don’t want them to sing in English.  They don’t pronounce it well and their voices don’t sound as good in English.  And since we want to hear them, we want to hear them in the way that they produce the best kind of sound, usually in the original language which they have learned.  And since we have many American singers who sing with them, we teach the Americans to sing very good Italian, acceptable German, lousy French, and impossible Russian.  But we teach them so they can participate in the international style.  That makes perfectly good sense, but we have the other style, the opera theater style which uses only native singers.  Then you have the advantage of audiences which can understand the words, and you can accomplish better theater because the audience becomes acutely aware of bad acting.  When the audience doesn’t know what is being sung about, they haven’t the slightest idea whether they act well or badly.  It’s all the same, but an entirely different approach to opera.  The opera theater style can be done well, but you must have very good English versions.  Years ago there was no such thing.  The old English versions were not in English, but rather “libret-ese” of the worst kind with “thee” and “thou”.  People back then thought that they had to come very close to the original, word for word if possible, and created a language that didn’t exist and couldn’t be understood.  But in the last 40 years, we have developed a considerable number of people who have learned how to translate well.  It’s a very special kind of thing.  You don’t have to be word for word, you can be approximate, but you must use a language that sounds as if the music were created for that particular phrasing.  The contour and syntax of the language and the music have to coincide.  It’s very difficult.  I’ve done a few and have used some by others which are very good.  And the translations are constantly adjusted.  When people rent my translations, I write a letter and say, “Please make all the changes you wish and don’t annoy me.”  Our attitude toward language changes all the time, and what may be acceptable today may be different tomorrow.  So I change, and I permit everyone else to change as much as they wish.  The important thing is that because the translations fit the vocal line so well, they can be understood.

BD:  What about the new gimmick of supertitles?

BG:  (sighing) Yes, it is very sad.  I personally find it demeaning, but I am very bad judge of that because I am a linguist.  I have a brother-in-law who didn’t like opera, but the moment he saw opera with the supertitles he started loving it.  There are people for whom this is important, so obviously it has an advantage.  But it is a peculiar thing because it gives the impression that people don’t have to study the librettos or read things ahead of time or pay any attention.  They just sit there and relax and act like morons.  And many things are being sung that the supertitles don’t give the right impression.  Don’t forget that to use them, you have to have a certain kind of theater.  The proscenium at the Metropolitan is much too tall.

BD:  Is having the translation on the TV preparing the way for use in the theater?

BG:  Live performances are one thing.  Canned performances are altogether something else.  Recordings are recordings, TV is TV, and live shows are live shows.  I have nothing against them, and there are certain advantages.  In recordings the balances are better.  On TV, you let people who have never seen the stage see it, but now the Met doesn’t tour any more because the various cities can see the Met on TV, and that’s sad.  Opera is too expensive.  Musicians in the pit are paid as much as those in symphony orchestras, and that is indefensible.  A symphony orchestra represents close to 100% of what it’s all about, while in the opera, the orchestra represents, at best, about 25% of what it’s all about.  When I went on tour, I had special arrangements to use only 23 people, and even then in my budget, the orchestra was paid more than anyone else.  More than half of the entire cost was the orchestra, and that is wrong because the orchestra doesn’t produce that much value.  So, the touring orchestras are disappearing.  It would be better for them to work for a little less and remain working.  Mind you, it’s not because they are not worth it, but their contribution is not the same as in a symphony.  One has to understand that.

BD:  You’ve been working with young singers now for almost 50 years.  How have the voices changed in that time – if at all?

BG:  There are more good ones, and what is so extraordinary now is that they are better-trained and much more apt to learn rapidly.  I can go out for 5 days to a university and work with 20 or 25 young singers who are very well prepared for me by other people.  I can now accomplish in three days what used to take three weeks even with very gifted people.

BD:  Is this partly due to you showing the world what can be done, and others do that before you arrive to give the master class?

BG:  That’s right.  It all started in Tanglewood in the 40’s and 50’s.  I’m not the only one.  Other people and my own students and their students just spread all over the country.  [Vis-à-vis the program shown at right, see my interviews with Sarah Caldwell, and David Lloyd.]

BD:  Let me ask about the international voices – have they changed in 50 years?

BG:  They’re about the same.  I don’t think it has ever been different.  My feeling is that there have always been in all periods of opera maybe 20 or 25 superstars

Boris Goldovsky Born: June 7, 1908 - Moscow, Russia Died: February 16, 2001 - Brookline, Massachusetts, USA The Russian-American pianist, conductor, opera producer, lecturer, and broadcaster, Boris Goldovsky, is the son of Léa and nephew of Pierre Luboshutz. He studied piano with his uncle and took courses at the Moscow Conservatory from 1918 to 1921. In 1921 he made his debut as a pianist with the Berlin Philharmonic, and continued his studies with Artur Schnabel and Leonid Kreutzer at the Berlin Academy of Music from 1921 to 1923. After attending Ernö Dohnányi's master-class at the Budapest Academy of Music (graduated, 1930), he received training in conducting from Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (1932). Goldovsky served as head of the opera departments at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 1942 to 1954, the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood from 1946 to 1961, and the Curtis Institute of Music (from 1977). In 1946 he founded the New England Opera Theater in Boston, which became the Goldovsky Opera Institute in 1963. He also toured with his own opera company until 1984. He was a frequent commentator for the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts (from 1946) and also lectured extensively. He prepared English translations of various operas. In 1954 he received a Peabody Award for Outstanding Contribution to Radio Music. Writings Accents on Opera (1953) Bringing Opera to Life (1968) with A. Shoep, Bringing Soprano Arias to Life (1973) with T. Wolf: Manual of Operatic Touring (1975) with C. Cate: My Road to Opera (1979) Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen!: Intermission Scripts from tbe Met Broadcasts (1984) Adult Mozart: A Personal Perspective (4 volumes, 1991-1993)

This interview was recorded on September 5, 1985.  Portions were used (along with recordings) on WNIB in 1993.  This transcription was made in 1988 and published in The Opera Journal that June.  It was slightly re-edited and posted on this website in September, 2008.  More photos and links were added in 2015.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.  To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.