Interview: Hershey Felder of HERSHEY FELDER AS PUCCINI at Florence, Italy

BWW Interview: Hershey Felder of Hershey Felder AS PUCCINI at Florence, Italy.

The elephant in the room.... "lock-down" how are things in Florence and how have you had to change your style of working?

Hardly an elephant dare I say...more like an ever-present, hyper-conscious awareness of the absolute necessity for safety. Lockdowns here in Florence and in Italy in general varies depending on daily case reports. We have a color system here. During "Yellow," services are allowed (restaurants, etc) are permitted but with careful rules. During "Orange" in-house dining and so on is forbidden, but takeaway is permitted (as an example of the many rules) and during "Red" everything is shut except for essential services. Throughout all, work is permitted, following the appropriate rules. In our case, this means quarantine, work bubbles, endless testing on the way in, on the way out, and the careful management of contact. As artists have to work closely together, and without masks in order to sing, this part of the management must be done very carefully and significantly. And yet, it is always of concern. As an example, our dog groomer had specific rules. The dog must be left in the front office with no contact and as the owner would leave, the groomer would enter. There was zero social contact. Things were sanitized again and again. The case rate in our part of Tuscany was very low. And yet, two weeks ago, the groomer called that our dog's appointment had to be cancelled because she contracted the illness. Then we read that the virus can remain on fabric... (a dog collar? A little dog coat? A leash?) for at least three days. As much precaution as one takes, there are situations which are not controlled, so we work as hard as possible to ensure that everyone coming in, is cleared and our sets are controlled.

Your last production: "Before Fiddler was your most ambitious, using the most pre-produced material yet. Now that you have used multiple means of storytelling - from totally live to a hybrid of live and prerecorded, do you feel you have arrived at a "happy medium"?

Each piece finds its own medium. All of it is still very much an experiment, complicated, unusual, always trying to capture both the intimacy of performance and grandeur at the same time. There is a lot of discovery, and as time goes on, we'll learn more. The difficult part to accept is that we may be dealing with these methods for a while as the world figures out how to navigate the rules along with the reality of the situation.

Your press release mentions that you will be back at the piano for this livestream; Puccini is justly celebrated for his grand, lush, sensual orchestrations, how will you handle this musically?

Hopefully well (?!?!?) - though one of the wonderful things about Puccini, is that the orchestral reductions play out beautifully on the piano if approached pianistically with great use of color. Naturally the orchestra is the non-plus-ultra - and we managed a bit of that too...

Puccini will have several big name opera singers as your co-stars - how has that impacted the way you work and the production overall?

Fine artists are fine artists. They work as hard, and maybe even harder than anyone else. And they are wonderful people. Work comes first, commitment to quality comes first and so the work ethic on set is most enjoyable and we laugh a great deal and luckily all enjoy each other's company. My goal here was to create an intimacy in the storytelling rather than a distanced grandeur. To many viewers, while thrilling, the opera can be somewhat forbidding... the goal here was as usual, to humanize as much of the story as possible.

And can you tell us a bit about who we will be hearing/seeing in this livestream?

Well, you will be hearing from Puccini himself, so to speak and you will be hearing elements of his own story that underscore the development of his most famous works. You will also hear selections from his operas to underline the story from four great singers, Nathan Gunn, Baritone, Gianna Corbisiero, Soprano, Ekaterina Siurina, Soprano and Charles Castronovo, tenor. Each is individual and very personal in the way they approach their art. It was important that I left that intact and not have them sing in ways that they do not sing, and yet find ways to have the cast congeal. As usual, all this has to be done quickly and carefully because of our pandemic requirements, but we do our best under these circumstances.

In the last year or so many critics have stated that, if he'd faced the "MeToo" movement, Puccini would have been banned. Times being what they are, how do you handle those aspects of the composer's life?

By explaining them. Artists are complicated. People are complicated. The idea of art coming from only the non-cancellable, is complicated. The question of separating the art from the artist is complicated. There is a lot that is complicated, and I think each person must work through the situation as they can. We know that great things - not just art, but things that we use everyday, things that are necessary to live have come from not the best of people. I speak only for myself, but say that education is key. The idea for me is that we must acknowledge, to understand, to learn and to go forth having learned and not repeat.

Livestreaming of musical performances has increase by 1,490% in the last year. As viewing options have literally exploded, how do you keep it fresh and keep audiences coming back for more?

A good question. I don't know that there is a formula. Because so much is unstable, everything needs to be a new invention, a discovery, something different. Just like with live art - sometimes the audience will find favor, sometimes not. The stability, I suppose comes in the effort to just keep it, and all of us, moving forward.

Broadwayworld.com would like to thank Hershey Felder for taking time away from his rehearsal to speak with us.

Hershey Felder AS PUCCINI livestreams this weekend:

Sunday March 14th, 2021
5 PM PDT, 6 PM MDT
7 PM CDT, 8 pm EDT
(plus a full week of On-Demand viewing)

FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE

-Peter Danish

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