00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely
00:06 this morning to speak to Alexander Joel, who will be conducting La Traviata with Welsh
00:11 National Opera when you come to Southampton's Mayflower. And we've been talking about some
00:16 of the struggles to get people in to see opera, it's never that easy, is it? But La Traviata
00:21 is clearly a great place for anyone to start their operatic journey of discovery, isn't
00:28 it? Yes, hello everybody. I'm looking forward to coming to Southampton, it's a fantastic
00:34 venue and I invite you to come to see, to watch and listen to La Traviata, one of the
00:39 great all-time classic operas. Very accessible, very beautiful story, fantastic music, and
00:46 you may know some of it from the movie Pretty Woman with Julia Roberts in Vichy gear. And
00:51 that helps, does it? Let's hope so, yeah. Yeah, and you've done it so many times, haven't
00:58 you? You were saying more than 130 times over the years, you first did it 25 years ago.
01:04 What is it about it that keeps you coming back to it and discovering more? Well, the
01:11 piece is, as I said, a real absolute classic with a very moving story and the music is
01:17 very, it's one of his most famous operas and he was one of the most famous opera composers.
01:22 And it's got lots of subtleties and I said I've been doing it for 25 years, almost every
01:28 season, with lots of different singers, lots of different orchestras, and you learn a little
01:33 something new every time and you keep refining your interpretation as a conductor. That's
01:37 always very, very interesting. So if you see it, opera is like a, it's a living thing,
01:45 really. So you're always, it'll always be slightly different. And every evening with
01:49 the same orchestra and the same cast will be slightly different. And that's what keeps
01:53 it so interesting and exciting. And that's an interesting thought, isn't it? What degree
01:57 of latitude you have as the conductor when you return to an absolute classic? Yeah, in
02:03 fact, what I sometimes do is if we've played it too many times, I'll do something deliberately
02:08 slightly different to keep people on their toes. Does that make you popular? It's fine,
02:13 as long as you do it organically and people know what you're doing and follow you. And
02:18 don't take them too much by surprise when they go, oh, what's going on here? He's doing
02:21 something different tonight. So I'll out of the moment do something, I go, okay, I've
02:24 got to spice this up a bit. And the singers usually keep you on your toes, and they'll
02:29 do something different. And then you have to catch them or see how you react to what
02:33 they're doing. So this is sort of two way road, so to speak. Fantastic. So you're at
02:38 St. Hampton's Mayflower with La Traviata this November. Alexander, lovely to speak to you.
02:43 Thank you.
02:44 Great.
02:45 Thank you so much.
02:46 Thank you.
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