3 days to the Hansel premiere!

David Jackson is one of the Assistant Conductors on the Met’s music staff currently working on Hansel and Gretel. He will also be making his Met conducting debut with the final performance of the new production on January 31. “This is my seventh season,” Jackson said during a break in rehearsals on Wednesday, “and I’ve done two or three productions a year as a cover conductor. This season I have six productions that I cover, and then I’m conducting the last performance of the new Hansel and Gretel, which is wonderful, because [conductor] Vladimir Jurowski is a good friend who had me conduct for him before.” Having been with the company for several years, Jackson is excited to make his debut: “I’m thrilled. It’s a great honor to be entrusted with that performance, with keeping the high standards of the Met and keeping our wonderful production on its right foot.”

What are the duties of an Assistant Conductor? “There’s always a team working on a new production,” Jackson explains, “there’s always [an assistant] conductor, two pianists and a prompter, and we just put our heads together and see what needs to be done. Sometimes a singer responds better to a conductor because that person needs more rhythmic work. Another person might need more vocal or technical work. So we just try to pass things back and forth. We try to make everybody feel comfortable, especially since we have so many invited artists who are away from home. The more they feel they’re welcome, the better it is for the production.”

With this new Hansel and Gretel, Jackson feels that there are special challenges. “I think musically,” he says, “this production is kind of adventuresome. We’re trying to throw into relief the various kinds of music that are in the score. Sometimes they get, I’m not going to say glossed over, but not as drawn out. There are pieces in various keys that are in keys for a certain reason. We are trying to bring out the character of these keys, and especially the psychotic nature of the Witch music. The Witch has many different kinds of music that switch just like that from one to the other, and usually you’d probably hear a more integrated performance of the Witch scene. But here, whenever the music switches it’s going to be shockingly clear to the audience. And I think there’s a psychological reason for that. And by the way, how Richard Jones has brought it out on stage is just fantastic! So we go beyond the storyline, the Christmas-y holiday aspect, right into the psychology of the original Grimm tale.”

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 7:51 am and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.