Longtime Orlando actor, director, and opera aficionado Eric Pinder is the new Artistic Director for the sister organizations Central Florida Vocal Arts and Opera del Sol.
Pinder says he’ll expand on the group’s mission to make opera accessible for everyone — in some surprising ways.
Despite his encyclopedic knowledge of opera and his extensive directorial experience, Pinder tells WMFE's Nicole Darden Creston he’s coming to the job with humility.
Eric Pinder:
It's so interesting because I always kind of envisioned my career going this way. But now that it's happened, I'm slightly shocked.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Why do you say you're slightly shocked?
Eric Pinder:
While it seems real, I also think, wow, I have this position I've dreamed about for so long and now it's slightly nerve-wracking because I get to help shape arts in this community now, which is really exciting for me. But yes! And more importantly, trying to bring opera to people. I am actually currently working - and hopefully, it'll be in Fringe [the annual Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival] if we make the lottery [process for choosing Fringe shows]. I am working on "Cocaine Bear: The Opera."
Nicole Darden Creston:
Oh, my goodness. [laughter]
Eric Pinder:
It's a perfect Fringe idea. I've already been working on it. It's funny, before I even saw the movie, I started working out how it was going to happen. And the movie was completely different than I had thought. And so I thought, "Oh, well, maybe I shouldn't do that." And I thought, "No, opera has a long tradition of taking plots from other people and completely changing them to suit their whims." [laughter] So I think it's a time-honored tradition that I'm following really.
Nicole Darden Creston:
One of the things that I've noticed about Central Florida Vocal Arts and Opera Del Sol, is that they do have a history of making opera cool, making opera accessible to people who might not normally find themselves buying an opera ticket. Do you plan to continue that and to build upon that sort of approach?
Eric Pinder:
Oh, definitely. Well, right now, we're doing "A Little Night Music," which is a lovely Sondheim that no one has done in this town for over 10 years. And I'm sort of shocked by that, actually, because it's so fantastic. And it's a great musical. People just know "Send in the Clowns," which is justifiably famous, but there are other amazing songs in it. And it's really lovely. You know, people do "Sweeney Todd" and "Into the Woods" a lot, which is great, because those are fantastic pieces. But I also think one of the things I want to do with my mission is bring works that people may not know, but are going to enjoy. Opera never used to be sort of like, 'we dress up and go and sit quietly,' opera was always kind of a riot in a lot of cases, or rich people, as it started in Italy, had orchestras and they would perform operas, and a lot of these Baroque operas were maybe done in theaters for like 25 people at the most. So it's interesting now that some of these operas are now being done on huge stages as reverent pieces, as they should be. But it's also interesting to think, oh, it started out as, 'well, I'm going to hire some people to do an entertainment for my party.' And opera in the 1900s in Italy was filled with factions - people would hire people to go boo their rivals when they were singing. There are famous sort of riots that happened. There's a story about Wagner's "Tannhauser" in Paris, and he upset the very influential Jockey Club who wanted to come late and see the ballerinas in the third act. But Wagner put it in the first act. And so they staged sort of a semi riot. In the theater. Still, opera is always kind of been dangerous and exciting. And I really want to bring that feeling back. So much of what I love about opera is the humanity it contains in the music, and what I've always sort of stressed to opera singers, when I work with them is in a play, we are given the words, but we don't have a rhythm, we decide that on our own based on the characters, but in an opera, that rhythm and how you do a line louder, or softer, is all given to you by the composer. So it's interesting that you sort of have this director already in the opera, if you will, helping you along with the music. And I always was intrigued at how the music would service the drama. And I love working with opera singers to find out more about that, because the stories are full of great love, great tragedy, and they're relatable. And I think certainly updating, when you possibly can, is important to sort of get the idea of what the opera is to people. A lot of times, if they're doing say a "traditional" production, where it's like costumes that would have been seen at the premiere...today, a lot of times what people will do is put them in different outfits that we readily understand. And we can see. Costumes that talk about them as characters, not just as historical people.
Nicole Darden Creston:
It gives the audience a clearer understanding of what's happening in the opera without them needing to read a long director's note or having been familiar with the material beforehand.
Eric Pinder:
Yeah. I just also think it's really important that when we do problematic operas, say "Carmen"... "Carmen" is a famous example now of people doing an opera and having it be more of Carmen having agency in what she's doing instead of being a woman who's abused. There are a lot of stories about the fact that opera is slightly misogynistic, and that women always seem to come to the most harm. I mean, you know, the tenor usually befalls some fate too... unless it's a comedy, and then they get married. But I guess that's a different kind of fate. [laughter] But the sopranos, famously Madame Butterfly - I was just reading about a production of Puccini's Madame Butterfly that instead of her killing herself, she takes her son and walks off stage, which I find very interesting. Now, does that dilute the drama? Does that dilute the pathos we're supposed to feel for this character? Or does it change it for us and say, no, she was right to do that? Now, obviously, in the story and the time period, she wouldn't. But I think it's interesting to look at that opera, especially one as famous as Puccini's Madame Butterfly that everyone knows, even if they don't know they know it. It's always problematic, obviously, to have white singers portray an Asian character. And now more Asian singers are getting to do this role. The latest one in this production I was reading was Korean, actually. So it's very interesting. They're also having Asian people direct it, because it's a beautiful piece. But is it really something that is offensive? I find that very interesting in the opera conversation and doing operas in different ways to highlight (a) how they may work better, or (b) how they didn't work at all in its time.
Nicole Darden Creston:
You mentioned in looking at sort of changing sensibilities, that some pieces - some very well known pieces - can be viewed as offensive historically, and with stereotypical representation, maybe directed by people or performed by people who don't have the lived experience to communicate the story properly. What are your thoughts on the possible offensiveness of opera? Do we update? Do we acknowledge that times have changed and leave it alone? Or is it a case by case?
Eric Pinder:
I would agree with you, I think it's a case by case. But there's always the case to be made of not doing something in its time period, there are a lot of things, I think that don't work anymore, but that you can do without changing if you direct it properly, or you change the look of the characters or, say, the production. Interestingly enough, there have been a lot of productions now that take operas and start them in what looks like a mental institution. And it seems like people are play-acting these roles as part of their therapy, in cases. And it's almost actually become kind of a cliche now, which is a shame, because that does seem like a valid way of doing things to say, all right, these are people working out this trauma. And there are problematic bits to most everything now. I mean, certainly even in Mozart, people talk about Don Giovanni, but it's - well, trigger warnings abound for it. I mean, he is a libertine and a horrible person, but it's set to this glorious music, right? So obviously, we want to do that now. So it's interesting to see how Don Giovanni changes for us. When it was first done, it would have been presented very stagey to our eyes. And now people want a psychological look at Don Giovanni, which I find interesting. For example, Leporello has an aria, a famous "Catalogue Aria," and he's Don Giovanni's servant. So he has catalogued all the women that the Don has seduced. It's this very funny, lighthearted piece, the music is delightful. And he's just listing off conquests. So how do you do that now? Does he seem ashamed? Is he proud of that? What are you saying when you do that? And I think that even back like saying, like the 1950s and 1960s, people weren't thinking about presenting these pieces in that way. And now what I like about how people are doing opera and looking at these problematic things, is that it's making it a psychological story, and one that hopefully serves the music, because ultimately, the music is the key to it for me. And this is music that exists for years for a reason. It still talks about us and our humanity today, even something written 200 years ago can enlighten us about who we are. And I think that's miraculous.
