An interview with Tobias Ringborg

‘Things must be going well,’ I remark to Tobias Ringborg, and
the Swedish conductor confirms that the cast and creative team are greatly
enjoying the excitement and intensity of these initial rehearsals. There is,
however, an enormous amount to take in during the limited preparation time
available, and that day he’d judged that the singers needed to pause,
absorb and reflect on the day’s work. Director Tim Albery, with whom
Ringborg worked on Opera North’s production of Verdi’s
Macbeth in 2014, pushes every one hard; his direction is incredibly
detailed and he takes trouble with every single word — what it means,
what it infers, how it should be delivered.

The rehearsal studio contains a model of Hannah Clark’s design —
though Ringborg didn’t let slip any clues — and Clark and Albery
have been visiting Garsington/Wormsley to see the set constructed on site. It
will be Ringborg’s début in architect Robin Snell’s
award-winning Pavilion at the Wormsley Estate, though he enjoyed the 2014
production of Fidelio as an audience member and is looking forward to
the exploring the venue’s potential and its challenges.

It must help that for Ringborg Idomeneo truly is ‘in the
blood’. He is returning to the work for the third time, having conducted
the opera in Malmö in 2012 and before that for Danish National Opera in
2010, where he led 25 performances with 5 different orchestras —sometimes
presenting an evening performance with one orchestra, having been rehearsing
with another during the day! But, each production brings fresh ideas and
insights, he explains, as one sees new things in the score and hears new things
in singers’ interpretations. Ringborg finds Idomeneo a very
‘modern’ work, whose harmonic ambiguity is present right from the
overture. Indeed, in his Cambridge Opera Handbook on the work, Julian
Rushton commented that ‘part of the abiding fascination with
Idomeneo is the tension between conventional forms and a radical form
of continuity’.

Ringborg has a terrific cast to work with. Toby Spence is making his
Garsington Opera début in the title role, alongside Caitlin Hulcup —
who was Ringborg’s Dorabella in Così fan tutte at Scottish
Opera in 2009 — and Louise Alder who makes début with Garsington
Opera as Ilia, following her highly regarded ROH début as Euridice in
Keith Warner’s production of Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus at the
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse earlier this season.

While he is an experienced Mozartian, Ringborg explains that his heart
really lies in nineteenth-century Italy, in the ‘big’ Romantic
works of Verdi and Puccini. The latter, in particular, gets straight to the
soul, bypassing ‘thought’ and touching the essence of human emotion
and feeling.

In fact, Ringborg began his professional career as a violinist and still
performs as a soloist and chamber musician — although he admits that an
international opera schedule does not facilitate a regular practice routine.
Having begun learning the instrument at the age of three, in 1994 he won the
prestigious Swedish Soloist Prize and graduated from the Royal College
of Music in Stockholm, before moving to New York where he spent two years
studying at the Juilliard School. While his career as a professional violinist
began successfully, Ringborg later reflected on where his musical passions were
taking him and took a diversion from the concert hall to the opera house.

I ask if he had always had a yearning to be a conductor and he replies that,
while he had no conscious plan to pick up the baton, a subconscious desire may
well have been present. He remembers a performance of Tosca when he
was ten-years-old which left him transfixed and which sowed the seeds of a
life-long fascination with the music of Puccini. He still owns the copy of the
score of Tosca over which he obsessively poured — he wonders why
a young boy who knew nothing of love, hatred, torture should be so overwhelmed
by Puccini’s opera? — and has memories of his younger self
listening to other operas, score perched on a music stand as he conducted along
to the music flowing through the headphones.

Success as a conductor came swiftly. Having participated in a masterclass,
he quickly found himself winning a conducting competition in Helsingborg in
2000, and the following year made his operatic début at the Stockholm
Folkoperan with Verdi’s La traviata, and at the Royal Swedish
Opera with Puccini’s La Bohème. A two-year
association with Malmö Opera followed, leading to performances of diverse
repertoire including Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Strauss’s
Ariadne auf Naxos and Verdi’s Otello.

Ringborg reflects that he was fortunate in the early stages of his
conducting career to do school and youth concerts — educational
programmes are an essential part of Swedish institutional music-making —
which offered the opportunity to perform wide-ranging repertoire and to
re-visit and repeat works many times. He might find himself conducting the
first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony ten times in a week —
where else would one get that chance?

The aforementioned Così in Scotland marked his first
performance in the UK and he returned to Scotland for Rigoletto in
2011 and Il Trovatore in 2015, while at Opera North he has since
conducted La Bohème, Don Giovanni, Verdi’s
Macbeth (with Albery) and, most recently, Donizetti’s
L’elisir d’amore.

I ask what works are top of his wish-list. Inevitably, Puccini looms large:
Ringborg would really like to tackle Il Trittico, having previously
conducted Il Tabarro (along with Leoncavallo’s
Pagliacci). Does any less familiar repertoire tempt him? After all, it
was Ringborg who rescued the Italian/Swedish composer Jacopo Foroni’s
1849 bel canto masterpiece, Cristina, Regina di Svezia, from
obscurity when he conducted the opera at the 2007 Vadstena Summer Opera
Festival, subsequently making the world premiere recording of the work with
Gothenburg Opera in 2010 (Cristina). I recall
the Wexford Festival Opera production of 2013 ( Wexford 2013)
and Ringborg is full of enthusiasm for Foroni who, he is certain, would surely
have rivalled the ‘greats’ of Italian Romantic Opera had not
revolutionary events in 1848 led him to leave his native land for more northern
climes — ‘At that time Sweden was like the North Pole!’
exclaims Ringborg.

He would also love to conduct Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of
Orleans
, with its fantastic role for the eponymous mezzo soprano, and,
venturing into the twentieth century, Wozzeck and Peter
Grimes
both appeal.

But, first there is more Mozart and Italian repertoire. Just days after the
close of Garsington’s Idomeneo run, Ringborg will find himself
back at Danish National Opera rehearsing Bellini’s last opera, I
Puritani
, with director Annilese Miskimmon — and he notes that it
was interesting to hear the composer’s first opera when
Opera Rara gave a concert performance of Adelson e Salvini at
the Barbican Hall earlier this month (
Adelson e Salvini
). Despite the ‘weaknesses’ of the student
score, one could hear where things began and where Bellini was heading. Then,
in October, Ringborg returns to Scottish Opera for a revival of Sir Thomas
Allen’s much-loved production of The Marriage of Figaro.

When Ringborg conducted Il trovatore at Scottish Opera in
2015 the critical press was eulogistic, praising the ‘near-perfect
balance between pit and stage’ (Herald), ‘razor-sharp
rhythms and ominous bass lines … true Verdian music-making’ (
The Times), and the ‘clarity of texture and energised, but
disciplined, pacing’ (The Scotsman). The Stage reviewer
declared that much of the credit for the ‘taut music-making and
unstoppable dramatic momentum … goes to Swedish conductor Tobias
Ringborg, who pushes the score along as if he had real fire and brimstone in
his veins’. This energy and passion is evident throughout our
conversation: despite the day’s strenuous and demanding rehearsal,
Ringborg is animated, intent and lively company.

No doubt he will bring this characteristic vigour to Idomeneo,
which opens at Garsington on 19 June and continues in repertory until 11
July.

Claire Seymour


Garsington’s 2016 season presents four masterpieces by some
of the most enduring composers of all time. Tchaikovsky’s most famous and
exquisite opera,
Eugene Onegin , is brought to life for the
first time at Garsington Opera by Michael Boyd together with the
company’s Artistic Director, Douglas Boyd. The work of Rossini makes a
return to the Festival with his sparkling
L’italiana in Algeri , led by
David Parry.
Idomeneo , Mozart’s sublime early
masterpiece is directed by Tim Albery and conducted by Tobias Ringborg. In
addition, Garsington Opera collaborates with
Rambert on a joint project,
providing a rare opportunity to see Haydn’s
The Creation illuminated through
dance.

For further details see:
Garsington 2016

Eugene Onegin will be screened to the following locations as
part of the Opera for All project:

Skegness — Saturday 2 July; Ramsgate — Saturday 23 July;
Bridgewater & Burnham — Saturday 20 August; Grimsby — Friday 30
September.

www.operaforall.org


image=http://www.operatoday.com/tobias4.png
image_description=Tobias Ringborg [Photo by Ryan Garrison]
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product_title=An interview with Tobias Ringborg
product_by=An interview by Claire Seymour
product_id=Above: Tobias Ringborg [Photo by Ryan Garrison]