A 16-year-old lad takes in his first Ring Cycle at Glasgow. The following year he witnesses Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler’s 2nd Symphony at Usher Hall in Edinburgh, and his course is set . . .
The lad, now grown, is Donald Runnicles and some 30-odd years later he is regarded as one of the most compelling Wagnerians of our day. He’ll conduct productions of Parsifal and Der fliegender Holländer at the Wiener Staatsoper this season as well as Die Walküre at the Met. Then it’s off to San Francisco for Das Rheingold. A brand new Ring Cycle is in the works for Runnicles there.
What is it about Wagner’s music that draws him in so? Runnicles calls it, “a world that both envelops and resonates deep within you; an alternative, powerful universe in which the orchestra is prominent.” He finds an extra dimension in the aural and dramatic experience within Wagner’s gesamtkunstwerk.
“I think that it’s hard to be ambivalent to Wagner’s music. Either you’re swept away or repulsed by it,” says Runnicles.
Sit down and google “Donald Runnicles” and you’ll find that he’s well-informed about a range of musical styles. His catalogue of recordings spans Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Britten’s Billy Budd, Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, and Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk.
Runnicles’ latest recording—the “Vorspiel” and “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde and Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder, with Christine Brewer and the Atlanta Symphony—is a satisfying rendering and a treat for Brewer fans.
“Christine’s voice is an instrument, like a flute, oboe, or violin,” says Runnicles. “It never sounds applied, but emerges from the orchestra.”
The pair will collaborate again in May when they perform Henryk Gorecki’s hauntingly beautiful Symphony No. 3 in Atlanta.
Runnicles, currently music director and principal conductor at San Francisco Opera (since 1992), holds down a few other gigs as well. He is the principal guest conductor of the Grammy-winning Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the conductor of New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
At the end of the 2008-09 season Runnicles’ tenure in San Francisco will come to an end and he’ll take the helm at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as its general music director. He was also recently named the new chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony in Glasgow.
Runnicles grew up in Edinburgh, within a culture that is known for its great amateur music making, so it’s not surprising that both of his parents were accomplished musicians—his father an organist and choirmaster, and his mother a pianist. The future maestro studied to be a concert pianist at St. John’s College Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh.
“I was a capable pianist, but I knew that I wasn’t good enough to be a concert pianist,” Runnicles confesses.
Runnicles emulated his father and took his first job at the National Theater in Mannheim as a répétiteur—a musician on staff who coaches singers and sometimes rehearses sections of the orchestra. That theater put up 53 titles a year and Runnicles was able to learn a vast amount of repertoire and start conducting. Never formally trained as a conductor, Runnicles proceeds in an unconventional manner, with the baton in his left hand.
Runnicles’ first love has always been opera, but he “cut his teeth” with regard to orchestral repertoire in Freiburg, where he served as general music director from 1989-93. Then, in America, he was able to explore this literature more fully after he accepted the post in San Francisco.
Runnicles likens conducting great music to climbing a high mountain. “Summits keep appearing. There is no definitive performance. There’s always room for more depth.”
When asked about the future of opera and opera audiences Runnicles says he’s optimistic, but warns, “Opera should never be like a museum.” He says the key is to commission new works—and to promote the second performances of those new operas—as well as to revisit the timeless classics. He believes that opera companies should explore every technological avenue that can help make its art form accessible to audiences.
Runnicles, who has two young children, is also interested in creating a future generation of artists, patrons, and arts administrators. “The education of children about opera should take place in the schools earlier and more consistently,” he says. His own kids are mesmerized by opera and have been cast as supers in some of the productions at San Francisco Opera.
Runnicles has conducted many worthy endeavors in San Francisco, including the premiere of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic in 2005. The plot of Doctor Atomic revolves around scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the creation of the first A-bomb. Within Adams’ opera, personal, moral, and ethical conflicts arise, leading up to the imminent test detonation in July 1945.
The opera garnered a huge amount of local interest and sparked ancillary events and lectures about the Manhattan Project in the Berkley area that year. Successive performances of Doctor Atomic have since been seen in Amsterdam and Chicago, and Runnicles plans to record the opera for Nonesuch this fall with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
“Sadly, the subject—man’s relationship with technology and this Faustian bargain—is always timely,” says Runnicles. “The opera is gripping, powerful, devastating, and the last 20 minutes leaves the audience stunned.”
Although Runnicles will be leaving San Francisco, his relationship with the opera company is open-ended, according to General Director David Gockley. Maestro Runnicles has already been invited to return and lead the Ring Cycle in its entirety—and he’s engaged to conduct a new production of Peter Grimes.
In Berlin, Runnicles will hardly have a moment to look back. The Deutsche Oper Berlin is one of the bigger houses in Germany—comparable in size to those in Munich, Stuttgart, and Hamburg. There he’ll be conducting no less than 40 performances each season, in addition to his commitment to the BBC Scottish Symphony—which includes both touring and recording.
Now back in Europe, you might say Donald Runnicles has come full circle. It’s a familiar landscape, yet with new mountains to scale—and of course, always summits beyond summits.
