Conductor Mauceri Lets Verdi Set the Tempo for ‘Aida’ at Arts Center

While many musicians today busily dispute what were authentic performance practices in the Baroque era, conductor John Mauceri would be happy if we could just get the 19th Century straight.

Specifically, the operas of Verdi.

More specifically, “Aida,” which Mauceri is conducting for Opera Pacific’s second season at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“Certain aspects of Verdi’s notation are totally ignored today,” Mauceri said recently.

In particular, Verdi’s tempo markings are commonly disregarded, he said.

“People think that tempo is a matter of artistic license and look at you strangely if you suggest otherwise, particularly about Romantic music of the 19th Century. Verdi, they’ll say, had a genius for melody but was not a great intellect. . . .

“But Verdi built his operas--structured them--in terms of tempo relationships, the way Wagner uses melodic figures. Verdi uses tempo to bring you back to a certain scene and mood,” said Mauceri, who will lead the final performance of “Aida” on Friday with Carol Neblett and Stefano Algieri as the new Aida and Radames.

Most noticeable to Center audiences has been the famous Triumphal Scene, which Mauceri starts more slowly than most listeners are accustomed to.

“The marking for the beginning of the scene is 100,” Mauceri explained. “Verdi wants you to start off going slow and then wants you to accelerate to 120. Then the tempo goes back to 100; in fact, it goes back and forth.

“If you start at 120 and keep it there--Toscanini did and most conductors do--it’s more exciting, but you can’t accelerate.

“I could do that. I grew up with that. But that’s not what Verdi wrote. After setting the tempo like a mountain, Verdi moves it like a mountain.”

Mauceri said that the change in speed is not a case of slamming on the brakes.

“It’s more like downshifting, going from fourth gear to third,” he said. “It’s very easy to get there. Verdi provides for it.”

Mauceri lays the cause of ignoring the composer’s tempo markings at the feet of conductor Arturo Toscanini, whom he called the “greatest and most influential conductor of the 20th Century.”

“Toscanini really modified and updated music to make older music sound new,” Mauceri said. “He exaggerated fast music and made slow music slower. It was part of his cleaning out what he thought were the excesses of the 19th Century. It was terrific.”

But it was not exactly what Verdi wrote, Mauceri added.

Opening his conductor’s score of “Aida,” Mauceri began pointing out a series of examples.

“After subjective words like allegr o agitato , there would be a metronome marking of 144,” he said. “Or here, the feeling should be andantino, but the speed should be 84.

“In ‘Rigoletto,’ ” Mauceri added, “every metronome marking of 63 is described differently--andante, allegro and so on. The pulse is the same, but the feeling is different. A conductor in the 20th Century would look at that the other way round.”

Mauceri said choosing between editions of the score is immaterial because tempo indications in “Aida” are always the same.

“That’s what makes it so interesting,” he said. “The tempo markings are all consistent. Wagner did not use metronome markings in his mature works, but Verdi always did. In his letters, whenever he was not present at a performance, Verdi always asked what the tempos were, which showed his preoccupation with speed. Wagner never asked that question.”

Mauceri called those differences “a matter of different philosophy.

“Wagner allows the conductor to find the tempo from the meaning of the description given, whereas Verdi gives you precise instructions as to the speed and expects you to achieve the mood within it.”

Mauceri agreed, however, that tempo is not an absolute.

“How you start an opera temporally doesn’t matter,” he said. “You could make the whole opera faster, depending upon the acoustics of the hall. Segerstrom Hall, for instance, is very bright. The stage is extremely live. . . .

“And there is deviation from the tempo (markings), but within (them). That’s where you as a conductor are an interpreter. Those are questions of taste, perception and musicality. But when a metronome marking of 88 comes back, it should be the same speed.

“So I’m faced with the question, ‘Do I do what the audience is expecting, or just teach a musicological lesson and disappoint them because it’s not like their recording and they’ll think it’s wrong?’ ”

The issue is the tension between surprise and predictability in performance, Mauceri said.

“If I were to conduct everything as a surprise, you would say I didn’t understand the style,” he said. “But if I did it the other way, you would say I was a routinier. But somewhere between both poles are the great performances.”

Mauceri said that the cast of “Aida” has reacted in different ways to his unconventional approach to tempo.

“It depends on the singers and their ability to change or study it that way. Also, it depends on amount of rehearsal time. Most singers find it easier.

“I would say that overall about 50% of the tempos are the same; 25% are faster, and 25% are slower,” he said. “But you don’t hear the faster sections; you hear the slower ones. That’s where the psychoacoustics kind of thing comes in.

“A great deal of ‘Aida’ has fairly steady tempos that accelerate. That’s much more shattering, like an earth tremor, because it’s unexpected.”

Mauceri admitted that he was reacting to “predictable performances I grew up with and love.

“But that Oedipal journey is also normal. If you wanted to hear what you already knew, you might as well stay home and listen to your recording.”

But he also feels that a conductor should respond to the latest discoveries of musicologists.

“Performers and musicologists live in separate worlds and rarely communicate with each other. It’s true that musicological findings are sometimes remote from the practical problems of performing artists.

“How I balance the two, that’s my problem. But I want all the information I can get. Ignorance is never a strength.”