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There is always at least one major surprise, says English conductor Paul Mann when I ask him about returning to work with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for the fourth time.
"And they're always good ones. This orchestra responds in a very natural way to conductors. I can be as emotionally extravagant as I feel the need to be, which is not always the case. You can come to an orchestra and have to decide which sort of version of yourself you are supposed to be."
Mann, who is still principal conductor with the Danish Odense Symphony Orchestra, has also been making his mark in France, touring with the Orchestre National de Lille and the United States, where he is a regular visitor with the New York City Ballet.
"Ballet can be a bit of graveyard for conductors," he says with a wry laugh. "But it is different in New York. When they do Firebird they use the original Chagall sets and they stage those rare Stravinsky ballets that are not played in the concert hall. Balanchine, by choreographing these scores, has single-handedly kept them in the repertoire."
He laughs at the occasional instances of the music being mildly molested - a Bach slow movement that is so slow it is "beyond Glenn Gouldian" or the Tchaikovsky Serenade with its last two movements reversed in order ("pointless musically but on stage it's beautiful"). Nevertheless, for Mann, Balanchine is a rarity, "as great an artist as the music he was working with".
If New York gives this self-described "balletic conductor" the chance to "express aspects of my craft physically", tonight's performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and a line-up of soloists including Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Zan McKendree-Wright, unleashes all the drama of the opera house.
I mention George Bernard Shaw's mocking remarks about this oratorio, but Mann will have none of it. "Elijah's reputation of being a dusty old work is entirely undeserved," he says. "This is the opera that Mendelssohn never wrote. It's a lively, dramatic and emotional response to the Bible story. It doesn't matter one iota whether you have any faith in your bones, all you need is the imagination to feel for these people who are dying of hunger and thirst, and whose lives are saved by Elijah."
He warns there will be some cuts, many sanctioned by the composer; and he cannot hold back his enthusiasm for some big moments, such as the climax of Part One. "Three times the child goes up to look for rain and each time there is nothing. Elijah, with increasing urgency, says, 'Look again and again.' Finally there's this famous image of a cloud no bigger than a man's hand."
At this point trembling strings suggest a downpour to Mann. "I tell the chorus here to sing as if you're drenched and your hair is sticking to your face; as if you're so thirsty you are licking the water off your skin."
So you can expect a certain physicality in this performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio and few baritones are more accomplished than Teddy Tahu Rhodes in bringing just this quality. The singer's recent turn as Stanley Kowalski in Opera Australia's A Streetcar Named Desire had one critic dubbing Rhodes "Oz Opera's Hunk du Jour". Tonight Rhodes covers his oft-exposed pecs with a tuxedo when he plays the Old Testament prophet but I suspect the drama will not be dimmed.
Not if Paul Mann's baton has anything to do with it.
