THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 16, 1994 TAG: 9411160036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 273 lines
EVERYONE'S got a Peter story. Maybe you toasted him after ``Tosca.'' Maybe he yelled at you in rehearsal. Maybe he called you early in the morning from California, where it was dawn.
Maybe you saw him cry at the climax of a performance. Maybe he fired you. Or maybe he made you love opera, something you didn't give a damn about until this crazy, charismatic musician showed you how much fun it could be.
For 20 years, Virginia Opera productions have started with a tall, bearded man bouncing into the pit, raising the orchestra, turning his alert brown eyes to the spotlight and flipping his hands out to his sides. Peter Mark is czar of Virginia Opera, a place hungry young singers come when starting their careers and veterans visit to try out new roles.
In the past year, Mark has seen one of his fondest dreams realized. The old Center Theater was transformed into the Harrison Opera House, a fancy facility named for his closest ally, Edythe C. ``Edie'' Harrison, and her late husband, Stanley. When it opened national critics came to visit, just as they did years ago when the company premiered works by Mark's wife, composer Thea Musgrave.
Just a few weeks after his Halloween birthday, Mark, 54, is facing new challenges. Friday he conducts Richard Strauss' difficult ``Salome'' for the first time, in an abstract new production by a Mexican stage director making his American debut. Mark makes his Continental debut later this season, with two operas in Cracow, Poland. And Musgrave's ``Simon Bolivar,'' originally scheduled for a Los Angeles premiere, will debut here in January with Mark in the pit.
As Mark travels abroad, and Virginia Opera recording and possibly touring ``Bolivar,'' he is poised to develop the international reputation he and his company have coveted. But whether he succeeds on the world stage, he will have the spunky outfit he nurtured into a $3.9 million, statewide performing organization.
He is it, it is he.
Last week he sat behind his desk, flipping excitedly through haute couture costume sketches for ``Salome,'' commenting on the designs. ``That's what I love about this job,'' he said. ``In the beginning this really used every part of me. It broadened me and gave me access to my natural curiosity. It used all my talents and forced me to develop others.''
``The opera company has become something very important,'' said Sergio Vela, the 30-year-old director of ``Salome,'' who has seen Mark conduct in Mexico City. ``He has a reason to be proud of it. The team of professionals within this opera company is magnificent.''
``Peter's one of those guys who has incredible drive,'' said Scott McElroy, principal trombonist of the Virginia Symphony and a four-season veteran of Virginia Opera. ``And he is definitely the leader of this thing. It's not just his administrative job or his conducting job. It's everything. And if that thing's going down, it's everything for him.''
McElroy, who has also worked in the Virginia Symphony office, says that when a musician makes a mistake while playing for Symphony music director JoAnn Falleta, ``you sit there and you think, `I didn't give Brahms his true credit.' When you screw up in the opera, you think of it in terms of Peter. `Boy, Peter's going to be upset about that.' ''
``This really is Peter's life,'' board president Dixie Wolf said. ``Peter spends every day thinking about what he can do to improve the quality of productions, enhance the fund raising, just strengthen Virginia Opera. And whatever criticisms people have of Peter, he is single-minded in his efforts to promote Virginia Opera. And he's a good little self-promoter, too.''
Mark's operatic career started when he actually was little. He was a boy soprano, and may be heard as the Shepherd Boy in a Metropolitan Opera recording of ``Tosca.'' His singing career ended when his voice changed, and he trained as a violist at the Juilliard School.
In his 20s, he developed a successful solo career, including recital tours and concerto appearances. He accepted appointments as section leader at Chicago Lyric Opera orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He joined the faculty of the University of California-Santa Barbara, a position he retained until taking early retirement in August.
``Peter's not the kind of person who really achieves contentment. He's always got something on the burner,'' said Michael Ingham, chairman of the UC-SB music department and a longtime friend. Ingham said he was surprised when he learned of Mark's 1975 appointment as artistic director of the fledgling Virginia Opera Association.
``I remember I was blown away. I thought, `How does this happen?' '' Ingham didn't think of Mark as a conductor; in fact, Mark had never conducted an entire opera. But another of Mark's friends, stage director David Farrar, had worked on one of the first Virginia Opera productions and recommended Mark to the board.
Mark's very first show, ``La traviata,'' was reviewed favorably in The New Yorker, and the company was off and running. That summer, in Santa Fe, Mark acquired his trademark - a large turquoise ring on the index finger of his left hand.
Mezzo-soprano Robynne Redmon, whose portrayal of Carmen at New York City Opera has won critical praise, sang in the opera chorus during Mark's first few seasons. ``It was great,'' she said. ``It was very fun. I just remember that he was very young and handsome and to me he was sort of a romantic figure. I just thought he was great.''
``Certainly Peter's excelled at it,'' Ingham said. ``He always was a superb musician. From childhood he had a definite, encyclopedic knowledge of the standard repertoire in opera.''
Ingham has also seen how Mark works off the podium, having hosted him during his trips to California. ``If he stayed at your house you knew he was going to be on the telephone all the time.'' Virginia Opera staffers have described marathon calls that drift from desk to desk.
``He's chatty,'' said Eilene Rosenblum, executive director of Young Audiences of Virginia and a former Virginia Opera executive. ``There were calls when there was something pressing that needed to be taken care of, and they didn't know specific hours.
``I started as a part-time person - I laugh humorously here - there is no such thing as part time at Virginia Opera. Great theater is not 9 to 5. You have to seize the moment. It may be 6 in the morning, it may be 12 o'clock at night.
``Crisis was a part of the daily existence, but you didn't think it was unusual. It was grand opera every day. You think we perform only four times a year?''
This season, Mark is conducting three of the company's four productions. But he keeps himself as busy as the director of any major opera house. A typical day begins at 6:30 or 7 a.m. with breakfast, usually at Yorgo's Bageldashery downtown. Then he makes phone calls.
On some mornings he sprinkles messages through the staff voicemail system. He is often the first person in the office. Last week, he held a staff meeting at 9, then conducted an orchestra reading of ``Salome'' from 10 to 1. After a meeting with the company's state development director he ran out for lunch, followed by a 90-minute coaching session with ``Salome'' baritone Douglas Nagel.
At 4, Mark attended a meeting with the production team to discuss makeup and costumes; the show is being presented on a stark, asymmetrical set.
``That left me an hour to go home, get rested, jam some food down and be back in rehearsal on stage at 6.'' For once the cast finished early - ``Salome'' is a short show - and Mark was home just after 9. He called his manager, Isabel Wolf, in Massachusetts. He called his assistant artistic director. He called mezzo Patricia McCaffrey, a cast member staying in his apartment building, and lent her an herbal remedy for a threatening cold.
``I like the problem-solving aspect of it,'' Mark said. ``It's a legacy of me having been responsible for so many things for the company from the beginning. I realized I'd have to solve so many of the management problems before I stepped into the pit.''
And there have been management problems. At a fund-raising roast of Mark and Harrison Sunday at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel, there were many references to fired administrators and office turmoil.
Today, though some musicians would disagree, Mark believes he has mellowed. ``When we were a young company and were not established, everything had the potential of destroying us. Every performance. Every missed opportunity. I used to worry about the weather. Over the years, when you realize you have built a history, you begin to take all of the potential problems in stride.''
He said he has a view of the opera house from his Ghent apartment. ``It does calm me down to see it. We have achieved something here that doesn't disappear after every performance.''
The quintessential display of Mark's desire to do it all occurred a year ago, at the opening of the opera house. After Edie Harrison spoke, Mark entered the pit to conduct the overture to Bellini's ``Norma.'' He startled the orchestra by conducting it differently than he said he would in rehearsal. When it was over, he scrambled out of the pit and, after a pause, emerged on stage to address the crowd haltingly, out of breath.
For most conductors, waving a baton and cuing singers is enough to worry about during a performance. Mark also keeps track of mistakes and passages he wants to change.
After a player error, he reaches to a stack of paper, takes a slip and sticks it in his score. At the end of a performance, the book is packed. Late that night he writes up his notes, which are photocopied and left on musicians' stands at the next show.
The written instructions are especially necessary because Mark's interpretations are idiosyncratic and extremely detailed. He encourages singers to sing with a very bright sound, and inserts countless expressive indications in the orchestral accompaniment. Often, instead of the beat, he conducts offbeats and odd accents. More than one singer or player has performed in Norfolk in a way he or she will perform nowhere else.
``There's phrases that happen that are not natural to me in my orchestral training,'' trombonist McElroy said, but he added that he is not an expert on opera. A Symphony musician who also performs at a leading summer festival said, ``it's hard to approach Peter and not have to change the way you're doing things because he does things differently.''
And Mark's way is won through intensive rehearsal. Though Virginia Opera pays its singers very modest fees, some managers like to send their clients to Norfolk because the rehearsal period is very long.
``Peter will not give up,'' McElroy said. ``If it takes 20 times he'll take 20 times. It's all because he cares so much.''
Mark guest-conducts two or three times a season. But Virginia Opera's work travels constantly, thanks to Mark's good taste in set designers and the scene shop's burgeoning rental business.
The company's handsome ``Manon'' sets have traveled to Omaha and Quebec. The gorgeous ``Traviata'' has been seen not just in Norfolk, Richmond and Fairfax, but in Reno, Nev., Lewiston, N.Y. and Boston. The company also has educational programs that venture to the far corners of Virginia.
But Mark's primary interest has been the discovery and grooming of young singers, and he has given early breaks to such singers as Diana Soviero, Ashley Putnam and Marilyn Mims. From the company's first production under Mark it decided to keep costs low with developing talent.
(Mark refused to discuss his salary. Tax records provided by the company show that in the 1992-93 season he was paid $106,200 plus $4,199 in health benefits.)
This tradition has remaned intact as Virginia Opera's schedule has extended to Richmond and Fairfax. ``The time spent here is so great now, only young singers who are just making the sacrifices can afford to lock their doors and leave town for what is essentially a double gig for less than what one gig's worth,'' said tenor Darren Keith Woods, a tenor who lives in Norfolk but performs across the U.S. and in Europe.
Occasionally, Mark gives an important engagement to an emerging star. Hiring the young also affords Mark to practice one of his favorite activities - hands-on vocal coaching.
``I think Peter likes to be somewhat of a Svengali, maybe a person who finds a talent that's not so refined yet.'' Redmon said. ``He coaches the singers much more than a lot of places you go to work.''
Mezzo Patricia McCaffrey, a Virginia Opera veteran with an international career, returned for the Opera House opening gala and is singing the role of Herod's wife in ``Salome.'' McCaffrey sends her students to audition for Mark ``because he absolutely understands the singing voice better than any other conductor I've ever known. He's the kind of person who would have been a singer if he'd had a better voice.''
Before ``La traviata,'' Mark coached tenor Eric Dillner, the 26-year-old stand-in for the lead tenor.
``I want you to think of every leap being like running on a diving board and then leaping,'' Mark told him in the rehearsal room behind the stage. ``If you want to run out on a diving board and do a graceful dive you better think of where your feet are going to go.'' Mark used his most familiar gesture, pulling an invisible string from in front of his chest up and over his left shoulder. He has also been known to put his knee in a singer's back.
``A lot of singers, when they come out of school, have the `I know how it's done' kind of feeling,'' said Dillner, who will be the Third Jew in ``Salome.'' ``I haven't been around the block so much. I like the constructive criticism.''
Hiring emerging artists has mixed artistic results. Bellini's ``Norma'' proved to be a trial for soprano Susan Neves. There is also baritone Nagel. Having been impressed with him at Opera San Jose in California, Mark hired him for the role of Scarpia in ``Tosca'' in 1993 and re-engaged him for the lead in last season's ``Don Giovanni'' and Germont in last month's ``traviata.'' Nagel will also sing John the Baptist in ``Salome'' and a part in ``Bolivar.'' All are very different roles, and he has yet to sound completely at home in one.
``A lot of singers at this point in their carers are trying to find out where they can be best placed,'' said Constance Mullin, Nagel's manager. ``If an opera comany has confidence in a singer doing a role, the singer thinks long and hard before turning it down.''
Mark said higher fees don't guarantee a better product. ``I believe the singers you are going to hear in the `Salome' are the best singers that this community can hear in these roles, even if we have four times the money.''
Nagel's finest local performance to date was seen by only 100 people. At the end of Sunday's roast of Mark and Harrison, Nagel appeared as Mark. He wore a black wig and beard, a turquoise ring, and bounced into the room on the balls of his feet to sing ``Anything You Can Do,'' with a woman dressed as Harrison. It was a remarkably faithful impersonation, complete with vocal coaching and the lyrics, ``Anyone you can fire, I can fire faster.''
The roasters spoke lovingly of Mark and Harrison, and their 20 years with the company. Mark was a finalist for the directorship of a Philadelphia company a few years ago, but insists today that if he had been offered the job, he would have combined it with his Virginia Opera post.
For Mark, a four-production season on a small stage is not fraught with limitations. He produced Puccini's lavish ``Turandot'' last season, to nearly identical positive reviews in The Virginian-Pilot and the New York Times. He was delghted to toss off a list of works he'd like to mount in Norfolk, a list that started with Wagner and got bigger.
``I wanna do `Dutchman,' Janacek's `Jenufa,' `Girl of the Golden West,' Monteverdi, `Onegin,' `Boris,' `The Ring,' `Elektra.' ''
But ``The Ring of the Nibelungen''? All 17 hours of it? With Valkyries, dragons, Rhinemaidens and fires? On that itty-bitty stage?
`` `Turandot' didn't look bad up there,'' said the self-made leader of the hand-made opera company. ``I'd find a way.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff color photos
ABOVE: Peter Mark reacts backstage during a rehearsal for ``La
traviata.''
RIGHT: Mark is vigilant of every detail during rehearsal.
FAR RIGHT: Mark conducts the Virginia Symphony in rehearsal.
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff photos
TOP AND ABOVE: Peter Mark talks with performers before a rehearsal
of ``La traviata.''
LEFT: Mark speaks to the Virginia Opera board during a board
meeting.
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