KEY POINTS:
On Wednesday Aidan Lang sat in his office and listened to Paul Potts singing Nessun Dorma. This is the aria from Turandot which Pavarotti, who died last week, made famous as the Italian soccer anthem. It is also the aria Paul Potts sang on Britain's Got Talent, which
made him, sort of, famous.
Lang is the general director of the NBR New Zealand Opera, whose production of Turandot opens on Thursday. It seemed a good week to go to see him. He agreed that it was, down to the unlikely idea of the opera man listening to Paul Potts sing the aria in his office.
He said he would, and he did. He would not, you could guess, usually be listening to a CD made by a bloke who got famous on a naff telly show, but I gave him the Potts album as a present.
This was perhaps not an entirely kind gesture, although he tried to appear quite moved.
His gift is for theatre. "Thank you very much indeed," he said. Did he really want it? "Oh, can I have a listen?" he said, valiantly. Then: "No. You have it." But he took it; he's polite.
We talked about Pavarotti and he said that the singer the opera world was mourning was the one you hear in the recordings of the 60s and 70s. The Three Tenors concerts, he said, were just that: concerts. "It's easy to forget that opera exists in the theatre."
Of Pavarotti, he said, "he was potentially a caricatured personality. He was a big guy with the big beard and, probably for very canny financial reasons, he went along with that. But that's not the Pavarotti that one would hope is remembered".
Does he turn his nose up at Potts? "Look, don't get me wrong, but we're seeing him on television and we're hearing him on recordings and there is the world of difference between a voice you're hearing through a microphone and speakers and a voice on the stage."
It's all right, I said, to be snooty. "It's not snooty, it's a different world. But what worries me is that there's a blurring of perception of what opera is."
I can't think why he can't be snooty. It is, I'd have thought, his job to be so. Well, he isn't, he said, because if there is any crossover for those who love Potts and come to Turandot to hear Nessun Dorma, and think, " 'I want to give opera a go', that's fantastic. But what I want is them not to be disappointed that we're not doing an excerpt concert, that we're actually presenting a cogent bit of drama."
His idea of easy listening is Sondheim, so he must be a bit mad. He supports West Ham, fanatically.
He likes the drama and "the patterns" of soccer and says lots of opera people love the footie. Pavarotti did. Lang knows an eminent conductor who wanted to cancel a performance because Arsenal made the final and he had a ticket.
He confesses that he thinks whoever came up with having Pavarotti make Nessun Dorma the Soccer World Cup anthem was a genius.
HE emailed to say he was listening to Potts do the aria.
I asked: "Are people who like Paul Potts morons?"
"Hahaha. Ooohh. Now you are asking ... Of course, this is actually a really valid question. The worrying thing for an impoverished, serious arts organisation like ourselves is that the combined forces of a TV talent show, Simon Cowell and the record company, along with their associated marketing budgets, are indeed strong enough to put out a completely false impression of this genre, all in the name of commercial gain.
"It's not the commercial gain I have the problem with; it is the incorrect expectations of our work built up by such phenomena that concerns me. Paul Potts is probably completely aware that he will be a one-hit-wonder, and actually, good luck to him, I say.
"Who can blame him for being in a position to cash in on a very mediocre talent - despite the name of the TV show. But such shows ultimately debase the concept of true talent.
"I'd better get off my soap box before I get carried away."
He has presumably been employed to get carried away.
Lang's reputation is for "off-beat" productions, although he is instantly recognisable as a nice, middle-class - "most of us are" - boy who grew up in Kingston-in-Thames which "a recent survey deemed the most desirable place to live in the UK".
He went to Tiffin School, a grammar school, but an immensely desirable one, "where music was as important as the rugby team".
He is one of those lucky people who always seemed to know what he wanted to do, and went off and did it. He has a glittering CV. I wasn't sure how prestigious this New Zealand job is but he says, "oh, well, the level of performance has a very high respect worldwide".
He knows, because he learned, just how off-beat you can go. Any spectacular failures?
"Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, yes. Oh, wow. I suppose the one I shudder about was the first piece I did at the Buxton Festival [he was artistic director for seven years.] It was a piece by Schubert who was not an opera composer. I like different things but everyone told me this piece was unstageable. I thought, 'I don't believe it', I'll go for it. And it was."
He's a good-natured chap who could talk a Metallica fan into buying a ticket to Puccini. He looks like an accountant except for his pink shirt which is a little bit arty. Which about sums up his job, which is an odd mix of bean-counter and artist. He says he is an artist, really, having spent much of his career as an artistic director in Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and the Amazon where he, the mad thing, put on Wagner's Ring Cycle. "I hatched this idea to do the Ring Cycle over four years then in 2005 did the whole bang shoots."
This is the dottiest part of his CV - many have tried, and failed, to put on the entire cycle. He did it in the Amazon, which sounds more exotic than the reality. On paper it looks as though he staged it in the jungle. "That's it," he says, "but Manaus is [a city] of over two million people, but then again, beyond the city it is jungle. The road ends and the jungle begins."
Still, what was he doing there? "That is a question I ask myself frequently, too! And did when I was there, as you might imagine. But having done that, it is the Everest, it is the pinnacle of directing."
The thing about opera is that it is a ridiculous pursuit in so many ways, and you have to be a bit mad to want to run an opera company. "I have my nutty side," he said, eagerly. He meant, "because opera doesn't stack up. I mean it doesn't stack up financially. It has to be subsidised purely because of the number of people involved and a full house may pay for the performance but it doesn't pay for all the preparation costs".
No. It is a glorious, glamorous illusion built like a house of cards. "The reality is that it's cables lying everywhere and rather dingy dressing rooms and it's a curious blend of the very banal and the ordinary and the glamour. And of course theatre is an illusion, absolutely," he says. We're sitting in the ASB Theatre watching the set go up and a set builder shouts: "Get in the [expletive deleted] hole." This makes the artistic director in him laugh immoderately. "See! That's what it's about. The bit of scenery that won't go in the [expletive deleted] hole."
He says one of his "greatest defeats" was while working in Holland, with a chairman, a young self-made millionaire, "and I never persuaded him not to ask me this question: Every show he would ask me, 'is it going to be a success?' And I said, 'I cannot guarantee a success. We have human factors involved here. We can put the best eggs in the basket but if they all hate each other, this is going to reflect itself on stage.' "
What it is also about, in his job at least, is being a seriously good schmoozer. "Oh, there's an element of schmoozing. I think I am quite good at it. Yes, I am. Listen, if you're a director you know how to schmooze because you spend most of your time schmoozing singers."
You can see how he might have got rather good at dealing with singers who hate each other.
"You've got two people professing love for each other and basically loathing each other. And you do your best and say, 'come on, guys. For the show.' You plead to every single cliche known to man but ultimately these are two individuals who don't get on and we're thrusting them together as lovers. Or you find out they're ex-lovers and have fallen out and you're like, 'oh, bugger!' So reality can sometimes step in."
Here's the reality for a man who sells opera for a living. "Apparently, we have made a couple of bookings for Turandot on the back of [Potts], so who am I to complain?"
