Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 3- Fiddler #2

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 34 LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO: DO YOU HAVE SOME PERSONAL HISTORY WITH THIS SHOW? BARRIE KOSKY: My parents had the original Broadway recording with Zero Mostel, which I used to dance around to in my bedroom before I’d seen the film or the show on stage. I can still see the record cover as I speak. I danced around to the music, which I found very infectious, and also I loved the sort of melancholy without knowing what melancholy is. LYRIC: DID YOU SEE IT WHILE YOU WERE STILL A KID? BK: I remember trying to sit through the film on television, being a bit bored by it when I was an adolescent—too long, and something about Topol [who played Tevye] irritated me and still does. Then I saw it on the stage around the same time. The production was done by Opera Australia in Melbourne, so it was a larger, operatic version, and I loved it then when I saw it onstage. LYRIC: AND IT WAS YOUR PARENTS’RECORD… IT MUST HAVE HAD SOME CONNECTION WITHYOUR FAMILY. BK: In any diasporan Jew’s upbringing, in the English- speaking world, Fiddler plays a part. Fiddler on the Roof is either something you adore and love or something you run away from. I have a lot of Jewish friends who can’t listen to one single note of it, but I think it’s ingrained in the diaspora’s DNA, for good and for bad, too. LYRIC: DNA! THAT’S GOING BACK A LONG WAY. BK: The other bit of connection personally is that the shtetl Anatevka is exactly like the shtetl that my grandparents came from when they left Belarus in the early part of the 20th century, almost the same time as Tevye. There’s a very beautiful poster on my wall in Berlin of my very young grandfather before his bar mitzvah, so he must have been around 10 or so, with my great-grandfather, who just looks like Tevye from central casting. So I’ve always had this slight fantasy that my great-grandfather was Tevye. LYRIC: WAS IT A DREAM OF YOURS TO HAVE A CHANCE TO DIRECT FIDDLER ON THE ROOF ? BK: Oh yes. I’ve done three musicals at the Komische Oper in a way that no ordinary production could do. I did Kiss Me, Kate in 2008, West Side Story in 2013, and Fiddler on the Roof . All three were with a very large orchestra, as they were written for, which you never get now. When you hear Kiss Me, Kate or West Side Story performed by an orchestra of 60 or 70, it’s a very different experience. If you do Fiddler on the Roof with an opera company, you can have a real shtetl on stage; you can have over 150 people on stage. No Broadway or West End theater could ever do that. LYRIC: VISUALLY,WHAT WERE YOU HOPING FOR WITH THE PRODUCTION? BK: Our set is made up of hundreds of pieces of second- and third-hand furniture from East and West Berlin shops. Bits of wardrobes, bits of tables, and it’s all piled together like the shtetls were. People lived side by side. There are no rooms in our production. People enter through doors that are in the wardrobes. People can hide and move and climb. This is like a potpourri of furniture. This furniture that we got, none of it is made for the show. Some of it is from old East German families, and some of it is probably—because it was still in Berlin—from old Jewish families from the ’30s. So it has an enormous power. LYRIC: ONE SIMILARITY WITH NON-OPERA-HOUSE PRODUCTIONS IS THAT THESE PERFORMERS COME MORE FROM THE MUSICAL-THEATER WORLD THAN THE OPERA WORLD. BK: I did not use opera singers for the main roles because the main roles, I think, are acting roles. They need actors who can sing, not singers who can act. The last thing I want to hear is an opera singer sing Tevye. LYRIC: YOU THINK ACTING IS PARAMOUNT FOR A GREAT TEVYE? BK: I think—I’m putting myself on the line here—I think Tevye’s the greatest role in musicals for a man. I do. I think it’s the Mother Courage of male musical roles. It’s existential. He talks to God. He talks about really large issues with great irony and humor. Tell me another musical where the lead male carries the show with such complexity and humor and emotion. LYRIC: HE HAS TO SHOW HEARTBREAK,AND HE ALSO HAS TO COMMUNICATE THAT HE RECOGNIZES THE NEED TO CHANGE. BK: In rehearsal, we talked about what happens to Tevye and Golde when they land at Ellis Island. I imagine Tevye had a great time in New York. And then his daughters of course went to school, went to university, and became famous lawyers. That’s the great joy of immigration, and second- and third-generation immigrants. What’s great about the piece is it’s not didactic. It doesn’t say to the audience, “This is what you should feel, this is what you should think at the end.” It’s all before the Holocaust and never mentions the Holocaust. And yet the shadow of the Holocaust is right through it. You think to yourself, “Uhhh, the daughters that stay—are they going to get out in time?” I always had the feeling that Hodel and Perchik Jan Windszus