WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.140 --> 00:00:07.180 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 2 00:00:07.180 --> 00:00:07.480 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 3 00:00:07.840 --> 00:00:08.900 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 4 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:11.740 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 5 00:00:13.840 --> 00:00:15.680 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 6 00:00:15.680 --> 00:00:21.820 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 7 00:00:21.940 --> 00:00:23.340 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 8 00:00:23.340 --> 00:00:26.760 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 9 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:28.920 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 10 00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:31.580 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 11 00:00:31.580 --> 00:00:34.920 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 12 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:34.920 13 00:00:39.400 --> 00:00:40.840 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 14 00:00:46.580 --> 00:00:46.680 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 15 00:00:49.480 --> 00:00:50.880 I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you. 16 00:00:50.880 --> 00:01:02.040 Are we ready? 17 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:03.440 Here we go. 18 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:09.880 Do you remember, can you recall the very first time you met Ruth Page? 19 00:01:11.500 --> 00:01:11.580 Do you remember, can you recall the very first time you met Ruth Page? 20 00:01:11.580 --> 00:01:15.640 I first met Ruth Page in 1954. 21 00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:21.740 She came into the Lyric Opera Offices where I was working as a clerk. 22 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:23.540 She came into the Lyric Opera Offices where I was working as a clerk. 23 00:01:23.540 --> 00:01:29.300 She was the most glamorous artistic personality I had ever met. 24 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:34.700 As a matter of fact, she was probably the first glamorous artistic personality I had ever met. 25 00:01:35.160 --> 00:01:42.300 I found her such a gemmelle type, scintillating and charming. 26 00:01:42.300 --> 00:01:47.720 It didn't matter to her that any of us in the office were lowly clerk typists. 27 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:53.200 She loved all of us and was nice to all of us in a way that warms your heart. 28 00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:58.220 To me, Ruth is one of the really great people of this world, 29 00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:03.620 not just for her artistic abilities, but for her humanness, 30 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:07.740 her kindness, her sympathy to her, to everybody. 31 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:11.980 It's true. She treats everybody the same. 32 00:02:14.520 --> 00:02:19.540 She treats your secretary very much differently than she treats one of her dancers. 33 00:02:19.880 --> 00:02:22.860 Her love for her dancers is always terrific. 34 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:27.840 Whenever there are parties, sometimes you invite the stars and you don't invite the little people. 35 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:35.260 Ruth invited everybody to her parties, invited the stars and the other people. 36 00:02:35.260 --> 00:02:39.700 They were all exactly the same. She loved them all and they all loved her. 37 00:02:40.060 --> 00:02:45.820 It was a remarkable thing to witness and to observe. That's what I liked about her. 38 00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:53.220 A lot of Ruth's career was tied up in choreographing ballet sequences for the opera. 39 00:02:55.640 --> 00:03:01.520 I don't think that people exactly understand that there's ballet in opera. 40 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:09.580 Can you sort of in a nutshell explain what the demands of or what ballet in opera is? 41 00:03:10.500 --> 00:03:13.920 Ballet in opera has a very interesting history. 42 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:19.480 Grand opera, really grand opera, must have ballet in it. 43 00:03:19.660 --> 00:03:27.580 There must be a ballet sequence. At the Opera in Paris, there was never an opera that didn't have a ballet. 44 00:03:27.580 --> 00:03:32.680 If the composer hadn't written one, he was asked to write one so that the ballet could perform. 45 00:03:33.100 --> 00:03:34.900 That's just sort of an anaside. 46 00:03:35.660 --> 00:03:43.900 Now in our present day, things have changed and some of the music in opera that's written for ballet isn't performed by ballet anymore. 47 00:03:43.920 --> 00:03:47.240 It's performed by the chorus or something else. 48 00:03:47.340 --> 00:03:53.580 The styles have changed a little bit, but still there are some wonderful pieces that are written in ballets, 49 00:03:53.580 --> 00:03:57.180 in operas, just for the ballet to dance. 50 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:01.760 There are not long sequences. Sometimes there are very short sequences. 51 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:09.060 But every opera company has to have a ballet company attached to it to do the ballet sequences in the operas. 52 00:04:10.020 --> 00:04:17.200 The choreographer of opera ballet has different kinds of demands. 53 00:04:18.260 --> 00:04:18.880 Could you describe? 54 00:04:18.880 --> 00:04:24.320 Ruth Page was for us both the choreographer and the ballet mistress. 55 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:29.320 She did the design of the choreography. She did the steps. 56 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:36.500 She arranged, she was the stage director so to speak, but in ballet it's called a choreographer. 57 00:04:37.300 --> 00:04:42.280 She made up the plays that the ballet was to follow. 58 00:04:42.500 --> 00:04:45.880 In addition to that, as the ballet mistress for Lyric Opera of Chicago, 59 00:04:45.880 --> 00:04:52.180 she procured the ballet and put it together as a company and engaged the ballet dancers. 60 00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:58.460 I worked with Ruth all those years as the person who was her so to speak right arm 61 00:04:58.460 --> 00:05:04.560 in the engagement of all of these dancers for the corps and for the soloists and the stars. 62 00:05:06.100 --> 00:05:13.940 Now choreographing for opera is different than just going and making up a ballet for something else. 63 00:05:13.940 --> 00:05:22.140 What kinds of elements would you say impinge on a choreographer who has to make up a ballet that has to fit into an opera? 64 00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:26.420 Well, I don't think that it has to be different for opera than it is for anything else. 65 00:05:26.840 --> 00:05:33.380 The music is the motivating factor and the costuming is a motivating factor. 66 00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:41.280 This year, for example, when we did Giaconda, there was some conversation about doing Giaconda 67 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:45.960 in the manner in which it was done in San Francisco, which was not a classical ballet. 68 00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:51.060 But we decided here in Chicago that we wanted to do a classical ballet. 69 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:56.700 And so there are many artistic decisions that are made that directly influence 70 00:05:56.700 --> 00:06:00.180 how the choreographer puts together a certain piece. 71 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:06.160 When we did Paradise Lost, we didn't have the music. 72 00:06:06.160 --> 00:06:11.040 And it was choreographed without music for four minutes. 73 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:15.100 And the composer finally wrote two minutes of music. 74 00:06:15.900 --> 00:06:20.220 And there were two minutes which were filled with a certain kind of sound, which was interesting. 75 00:06:20.540 --> 00:06:27.860 And then a minute of silence as well. So things happen in an artistic world in a very different sort of way. 76 00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:36.140 But the piece itself, the music of the piece itself, is what dictates what the choreography should be. 77 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:39.180 Now every choreographer has a different idea. 78 00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:48.880 He or she hears the music and thinks of what kind of steps, what sort of dance would be best for that. 79 00:06:50.020 --> 00:06:51.440 And puts it into practice. 80 00:06:52.060 --> 00:06:56.480 I don't know any better way of saying, A, what a choreographer is, 81 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:01.000 or B, how he or she works in opera. 82 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:08.160 Can you remember any specific instances, any anecdotes about Ruth working on an opera, 83 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:11.300 working with you because you were of course involved, 84 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:14.500 and some unusual, surprising or funny things that happened? 85 00:07:15.880 --> 00:07:22.500 Well, every time anybody asks me for an anecdote about opera, things flee out of my mind. 86 00:07:23.020 --> 00:07:26.540 And I can only remember things I don't dare tell anybody. 87 00:07:26.540 --> 00:07:33.380 But I remember the auditions that we held year after year, 88 00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:38.740 and Ruth's demand for beautiful people. After all, you want to have beautiful dancers. 89 00:07:39.480 --> 00:07:44.380 And her demand for beautiful legs, beautiful feet and ankles for the girls. 90 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:52.700 I can't think of any anecdotes about Ruth that were particularly funny offhand. 91 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:54.160 If I think of one as we're talking, I'll... 92 00:07:54.160 --> 00:07:55.580 Okay, just throw it in. 93 00:07:56.280 --> 00:07:58.700 Do you remember when Rudolf Nureyev came to dance? 94 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:06.100 One of the most important things that Ruth Page did for dance in America, 95 00:08:06.400 --> 00:08:12.060 and certainly opera dance in America, was to persuade Rudolf Nureyev to come 96 00:08:12.060 --> 00:08:14.600 to dance with Lyric Opera of Chicago. 97 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:19.540 He had first made his American debut after he defected from Russia. 98 00:08:20.120 --> 00:08:25.740 It was in 1963, and he danced in Brooklyn with Ruth. 99 00:08:25.840 --> 00:08:28.140 It was Ruth who arranged all of this. 100 00:08:28.840 --> 00:08:32.640 And Rudy was one of her favorite people, and still is of course to this day. 101 00:08:33.300 --> 00:08:39.280 I saw him in Paris not so long ago, and he asked how Ruth was. That was the first thing he asked me. 102 00:08:39.280 --> 00:08:45.380 But soon after the Brooklyn engagement, he came to dance Prince Igor 103 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:50.760 with Sonia Arova, and it was Ruth who brought him here. 104 00:08:50.820 --> 00:08:54.700 He made a sensation in Prince Igor, because those are the very famous 105 00:08:54.700 --> 00:08:57.340 Polovtsian dances, and everyone has heard those. 106 00:08:57.460 --> 00:09:02.960 He just went around the stage in a manner here to fore unseen in America. 107 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:08.340 And he danced, I wish I knew the names of the steps, but his leaps, 108 00:09:08.640 --> 00:09:13.740 he was poetry in motion, and it was the sensation of the 1963 season, 109 00:09:14.180 --> 00:09:16.740 and one of Ruth's great triumphs. 110 00:09:17.580 --> 00:09:22.320 I've always wondered, when you come to the ballet segment of an opera, 111 00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:28.660 if there is ever a problem between the choreographer and the director of the ballet 112 00:09:28.660 --> 00:09:34.040 with the choreographer saying, we need more room, you've got to move the chorus back. 113 00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:39.000 Does that ever happen? Or does the choreographer have to fit in the space 114 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:44.480 that's allotted and that's it? The choreographer and the director are very often 115 00:09:44.480 --> 00:09:49.860 at odds, but the director is the boss in this case. 116 00:09:50.260 --> 00:09:53.880 It depends on how much clout the choreographer has, I suppose, 117 00:09:53.880 --> 00:09:57.620 and some choreographers have decided they want to be stage directors of the opera 118 00:09:57.620 --> 00:10:03.400 so that they didn't have this problem. There are other problems with the space 119 00:10:03.400 --> 00:10:08.360 in an opera house, and that is that the chorus can never see the conductor when the ballet 120 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:12.700 is dancing in front of them. That's one of the big problems that we hear more about. 121 00:10:13.020 --> 00:10:18.800 But the choreographer must of course look out for his or her chickens to see that they have enough 122 00:10:18.800 --> 00:10:23.700 room to dance, and when the dance is going on, they are primary and everybody moves back 123 00:10:23.700 --> 00:10:28.980 and gives them the space that they need. Usually the choreographer and the director 124 00:10:28.980 --> 00:10:34.260 of an opera, the stage director of an opera, get together early on to talk about 125 00:10:34.260 --> 00:10:39.580 the production, the demands of the production, and how the stage director conceives of it. 126 00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:43.800 If it's to be done 20th century style, it's to be done 18th century style, then the 127 00:10:44.020 --> 00:10:48.960 choreography has to fit the stage director's conception of the opera. Usually choreographers 128 00:10:48.960 --> 00:10:54.640 are very, very applyable, very cooperative, and 129 00:10:54.640 --> 00:10:58.680 very inventive and ingenious. Indeed, Ruth was always one of those. 130 00:10:59.340 --> 00:11:03.300 Now, what about working with the conductor? An opera 131 00:11:04.020 --> 00:11:09.140 conductor interprets the music and works of course with the singers. Now, you know, 132 00:11:09.140 --> 00:11:14.560 I'm not familiar of course with the fact that dancers expect the tempi to be 133 00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:18.980 adjusted to them, and ballet conductors are used to this kind of thing. What about opera conductors? 134 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:24.560 Opera conductors are inclined, if I may say this, to be a little rigid 135 00:11:24.560 --> 00:11:29.600 about their ballet tempi. They think the tempo should be so and so, 136 00:11:29.780 --> 00:11:34.140 many of them. And the ballet mistress or the ballet choreographer 137 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:39.700 is constantly begging the conductor to go a little faster here or a little faster 138 00:11:39.700 --> 00:11:44.580 there. Some conductors are very thoughtful of the ballet, and 139 00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:49.880 some conductors are not. They seem not to understand that the ballet has to dance 140 00:11:49.880 --> 00:11:54.880 to the music. I've always felt that was a little short-sighted. I could never understand a 141 00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:59.680 conductor who didn't have the real sense of what the ballet was doing, and 142 00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:04.800 that he should go along with them and accompany them, as 143 00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:09.880 indeed he does with many of the singers. But I will not name 144 00:12:09.880 --> 00:12:15.220 any names as to who does what, but there are two sides to it. And 145 00:12:15.220 --> 00:12:19.720 of course the choreographer. I've heard Ruth say many times, 146 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:25.620 well, maestro, couldn't we have it a little faster here? She was a great diplomat. 147 00:12:25.620 --> 00:12:30.100 She usually got her way, but not always without a struggle. 148 00:12:31.140 --> 00:12:35.260 I never heard her have any fights with anybody, and everybody loved her so much. 149 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:40.660 She always would call people, darling, and it was wonderful. And she was always talking about 150 00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:46.300 stars. And I think that people loved her so much that they always 151 00:12:46.300 --> 00:12:50.320 tried to accommodate what she wanted because she asked for it so nicely. 152 00:12:50.960 --> 00:12:55.520 There was a lot of struggle that she was going through in terms 153 00:12:55.520 --> 00:13:00.320 of she did the opera during the season, and then she had her company that toured 154 00:13:01.060 --> 00:13:05.680 during the rest of the year and trying to get a company started. Do you remember 155 00:13:05.680 --> 00:13:10.460 any of the struggles? Did she ever talk about those with you, 156 00:13:10.460 --> 00:13:15.620 what she was going through? Ruth's major struggles when she was at Lyric Opera of Chicago were finding boys to 157 00:13:15.620 --> 00:13:20.760 dance. The ballet boy, the good ballet boy, is hard to find, 158 00:13:21.020 --> 00:13:23.680 and she took many trips to New York to bring them back. 159 00:13:25.520 --> 00:13:30.680 I never thought of Ruth struggling. She didn't talk about struggling. 160 00:13:31.620 --> 00:13:36.440 And if she did, she didn't let on that she was having any kind of a 161 00:13:36.440 --> 00:13:43.080 struggle. She had this wonderful sort of a positive 162 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:48.800 feeling about it, but it wasn't a positive this way, it was a positive this way. It was always smiling, always airy. 163 00:13:49.020 --> 00:13:53.340 Everything was always wonderful. And so things turned out for her, I think, 164 00:13:53.420 --> 00:13:58.300 because of the wonderful attitude she had about it. And of course I knew about all any 165 00:13:58.300 --> 00:14:02.820 struggles that she was having, but not because she talked to me about them, because I knew. 166 00:14:03.140 --> 00:14:08.680 And I always figured that Ruth had everything in hand and was going to always end 167 00:14:08.680 --> 00:14:14.000 in a wonderful position because she never took no for an answer. 168 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:19.600 She always moved ahead, and she formed her own company, she did a great deal of touring, 169 00:14:20.220 --> 00:14:24.420 she bought the Moose Lodge for her company, and 170 00:14:24.420 --> 00:14:27.160 has been a real fixture in Chicago, 171 00:14:28.780 --> 00:14:38.660 a beloved fixture for many, many years. So you never saw her 172 00:14:38.660 --> 00:14:43.200 I wasn't the general manager then, it was Carol Fox. I don't think that Ruth 173 00:14:43.780 --> 00:14:48.040 ever let on when she was depressed or unhappy. I never saw her that way. 174 00:14:49.480 --> 00:14:54.160 Maybe Carol did, but I never did. And of course Ruth was the choreographer 175 00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:58.760 of Lyric Opera from 1954 through 1968. 176 00:14:59.400 --> 00:15:03.660 And I didn't become general manager until 1981, so that was 177 00:15:03.660 --> 00:15:09.600 quite a few years after Ruth left as a regular member of the company. 178 00:15:11.220 --> 00:15:13.760 As I'm sure you know, 179 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:18.760 ballet had an enormous, opera had an enormous influence on the 180 00:15:18.760 --> 00:15:23.780 ballets that Ruth ultimately created. She created a number of what 181 00:15:23.780 --> 00:15:28.960 is called, this will horrify you, in dance books, her 182 00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:33.820 work of opera into ballet ballets. She did Carmen and the 183 00:15:33.820 --> 00:15:37.740 Merry Widow and Flater Mouse and something called Revenge, which is Trovatore. 184 00:15:37.880 --> 00:15:43.140 Revenge, oh you know, yes, and the Barber of Seville, 185 00:15:44.300 --> 00:15:49.560 a number of them. Were you aware, and those kind of happened 186 00:15:50.160 --> 00:15:53.960 simultaneously with her work at the Lyric, although she began when they were doing operas at 187 00:15:53.960 --> 00:15:58.440 Vigna. I mean she'd been choreographing for opera since 1926, 188 00:15:59.060 --> 00:16:03.600 really. Were you aware and can you, of how 189 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:08.420 her work with the opera influenced those at all? 190 00:16:08.940 --> 00:16:13.660 Well, I think that Ruth Page's interest in opera began long before 191 00:16:13.660 --> 00:16:18.540 Lyric Opera. And I think that 192 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:23.940 Lyric Opera didn't necessarily influence what Ruth did, 193 00:16:24.580 --> 00:16:29.040 because she came to Lyric Opera always with a very important 194 00:16:29.040 --> 00:16:34.140 sense of the opera. As a matter of fact, some of the first things that she did here were her 195 00:16:34.140 --> 00:16:39.180 Merry Widow Ballet, which was opera ballet, and opera made into ballet, 196 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:48.120 and the Revenge, which she did here in 1955, which was the 197 00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:52.900 first time that Ruth's opera ballets sort of went hand in hand with Lyric Opera. 198 00:16:53.040 --> 00:16:57.680 It all was sort of at the same time and seemed perfectly right, because Ruth always had a wonderful 199 00:16:57.680 --> 00:17:02.640 handle on what opera was all about, and she translated it into the ballet idiom, 200 00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:07.280 I think, very successfully. Really, so that you, 201 00:17:08.520 --> 00:17:12.120 when you watch a ballet, 202 00:17:12.120 --> 00:17:17.820 you don't say, oh, this is a travesty, this is wrong. 203 00:17:17.900 --> 00:17:22.720 No, I can make that, I can make a translation immediately from the opera 204 00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:28.660 into ballet and ballet back again. I think that we have the right, all of 205 00:17:28.660 --> 00:17:33.660 us creative artists, to do what we want 206 00:17:33.660 --> 00:17:39.620 with the pieces. No one said that you couldn't do a ballet 207 00:17:39.620 --> 00:17:45.220 from an opera, and I feel that that's a very creative kind of 208 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:49.980 impulse, and we should be permitted that how is our art form going to grow unless 209 00:17:49.980 --> 00:17:55.060 we take different paths and avenues. And this was Ruth's path and avenue, 210 00:17:55.060 --> 00:18:00.200 it was very successful, it was very successful with the public, and you know, Verdi always said, 211 00:18:00.860 --> 00:18:05.860 keep your eye on the box office, because it tells you how good you are, 212 00:18:05.860 --> 00:18:11.080 it tells you whether you're going over, and if we don't have a public for what we 213 00:18:11.080 --> 00:18:14.900 do, what good is our art form if nobody comes to see it? 214 00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:21.380 So I'm all for creativity, I'm all for taking chances and trying to do things in a 215 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:26.220 different way, especially if you have a good idea that it's going to be a box 216 00:18:26.220 --> 00:18:31.260 office hit, that I think is important. Sometimes you don't know, sometimes you just 217 00:18:31.260 --> 00:18:36.700 have to take the chance, and that we have to do in any art form, ballet, opera, 218 00:18:37.320 --> 00:18:41.620 symphony, anything has to, painting, everything has to 219 00:18:41.620 --> 00:18:46.340 burst its own bounds, peck its way out of its shell, and 220 00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:48.220 do a little fancy flying.