Alexander Pereira
'I hoped that they would ask me one day to direct the Zurich Opera House – and they did!'
From Olivetti to Opera
As always, Alexander Pereira is under pressure. He rushes from his office on the fourth floor of the Zurich Opera House to the rehearsals and back and hardly has time to give the interview. The next premiere is coming up. But as soon as the charismatic 58-year-old from Vienna starts talking about music, his passion, his eyes light up and the pressure of deadlines is forgotten. Originally he wanted to be a singer, and singing is still his hobby. But his professional career took the opera director with the typically impish smile first into tourism marketing and then into private enterprise. It was only after working for many years in an honorary capacity as an organiser of concerts that he made his passion into his profession. First he was appointed General Secretary of the Vienna Concert House and in 1991 he became director of the Zurich Opera House, which under his aegis has become one of the leading opera houses in the world. In private and in professional terms, Zurich is now the Austrian’s home. He praises the Swiss as modest, multilingual cosmopolitans, who are willing to give artistically gifted individuals a free hand.
The interview was conducted by Carola Schneider of Austrian television.
The photographs are by Marc Wetli.
CSCH: What thoughts go through your mind when you come to the Opera House every morning?
AP: Always new thoughts. Depending on the problems that I have to face that day. What I really appreciate is my short journey to the office. It takes me exactly seven minutes to get from the door of my flat to the Opera House. I live on the edge of woods, right in the countryside. That’s one of the major advantages of living here. Being in an international city and at the same time in a village.
CSCH: You became director of the Zurich Opera House in 1991 and roused it from its slumber. Today it is one of the most famous opera houses in the world. How did you do it?
AP: One cannot achieve anything if there is no real substance. The standard at the Zurich Opera has always been very high. Maybe here and there it needed a bit more glamour, needed to be ‘woken with a kiss’. During my previous job at the Vienna Concert House, I had always wanted to direct an opera house. Even then the Zurich Opera had one of the best reputations. I hoped that they would ask me one day – and they did! It wasn’t a case of waving a magic wand, it was a natural development, the kind of progression that has always taken place here. The atmosphere is very familiar, the solidarity between the artists is good and rivalry between them is kept to an absolute minimum. These are ideal conditions for doing a good job.
CSCH: You appointed conductor Franz Welser-Möst as General Music Director of the Opera House. He is also Austrian. Are Austrian artists particularly attracted to Switzerland?
AP: If you look at Austrian artists who have come to Switzerland in recent years, you notice immediately that Switzerland has always been a place in which artistically gifted people could develop their own profile and their own aura. In the case of Austrians, Swiss people may even credit them with a sense of humour and a strong sense of fun. (smiles)
CSCH: What is specific about the cultural milieu in Switzerland?
AP: Here you don’t usually find that people who have built up an aura have the ground cut from under them immediately. This is the danger in self-styled major cultural centres such as Austria or Vienna, where I see many very talented people fail because at a decisive moment they are unable to develop their specific abilities – what I call their aura.
CSCH: Is this different in Switzerland?
AP: Yes, here it is possible for artists to develop in peace. Here people with talent are allowed to emerge and to grow. Think of all the major international artists who have been able to develop their full potential in Switzerland!
CSCH: Has this got something to do with the Swiss mentality?
AP: Yes. On the other hand people often ask me how I can stand it in a boring backwater like Switzerland. They forget that Switzerland’s achievements – given the small size of the country – are considerable, including those of the Zurich Opera House, where Alban Berg’s Lulu and many other works were premiered. The self-effacement of the Swiss is completely unjustified. Nevertheless there is an inferiority complex here. And this gives those who do not suffer from this complex the chance to jump into the breach. (laughs) Especially in the field of culture, the Swiss allow people to breathe and to work and then calmly assess what they can do. This doesn’t happen so much in other countries such as Austria where I come from.
CSCH: You have to fight for subsidies, to be active in culture policy. Is that difficult in Switzerland?
AP: Yes, it’s much more difficult than in other places. As the director of a major institution, I am not in a position where I don’t need to worry about how to finance the Opera House. Comparable institutions abroad only need to finance 20 to 25 per cent of their costs themselves, but the Zurich Opera needs to cover almost 50 per cent of its costs from box offi ce returns in order to survive.
CSCH: That’s a very high proportion!
AP: Yes, and that’s why we have to do a great deal of educational work, and on top of this we need to carry out a wide range of activities to prove to politicians and to sponsors that we are trying to reduce the need for taxpayers’ subsidies to the absolute minimum. But these activities are also very healthy because they force the director of the Opera House to fight for his institution. He has to be able to explain the needs and goals of opera to opinion leaders in the country. If he can do this, he has achieved something very important. He has created a greater awareness of the need for and the purpose of art.
CSCH: You have a reputation for being brilliant at bringing together art and business and at acquiring financially strong sponsors for the Zurich Opera House. Does it help that Switzerland is a rich country with numerous international corporations?
'Switzerland still has a system of values that does not exist in other countries.'
AP: If someone makes serious efforts to obtain support from prominent companies and from private sponsors, they are likely to be successful everywhere, not just in Switzerland – of course in relation to the size of the institution and the sum required. In this regard I don’t have a unique status here. Private sponsors in Switzerland still tend to be fairly reserved. However, companies have recognised their responsibility to their employees and to the population as a whole. They understand that a company can really achieve high quality only in a high quality environment. So from this point of view I believe that we have already done the educational work that other theatres in other cities still have to do. But of course it is helpful that some of the largest banks in the world have their headquarters in Zurich and so they are our major sponsors.
CSCH: Do you notice in your work that you are in a multilingual country with different cultures?
AP: Of course. The great thing is that when the Marriage of Figaro was performed in our opera house in Italian the Swiss audience laughed at all the right moments – as if it were their own language. When I perform the same opera in Berlin, this does not happen to the same degree. This multilingualism undoubtedly increases understanding of different cultures and also plays its part in Swiss peoples’ love of the various cultural traditions that come together in this country.
CSCH: Multilingualism as a locational advantage.
AP: Yes, the fact that the Swiss often speak several languages is a huge advantage. It is no coincidence – and this is one of the main Swiss virtues – that there are many young people here who work, for example, in irrigation projects in Mauritania or food projects in Cambodia. After a certain time abroad, where their language skills help them and where they can also extend these skills, they return home and open a locksmith’s or joiner’s workshop or work in a bank. This low-key exploration of the world followed by a return to their own world is a very endearing feature of the Swiss.
CSCH: Speaking of work, what is a typical working day for the director of the Zurich Opera like?
AP: There are three main areas. First comes artistic management, which involves casting for performances, the ‘invention’ of premieres, discussions with directors, conductors, stage designers and singers. Then there is the administrative part of the job, which concerns the budget and financial details. And then I have to go over what I have already planned and go to the performance in the evening. A working day usually lasts from half past eight in the morning until midnight or later. After the performance I often spend time talking to the artists because after a successful performance it is easier to persuade them to take on new projects.
CSCH: How do you recover from such long working days? Do you follow the example of many other Zurich people and go swimming in Lake Zurich, which is right next to the Opera House?
AP: Fortunately I don’t need a lot of sleep. If you are lucky enough to be able to make your hobby into your job, then you carry a kind of automatic battery charger around with you. I have far too little time to go over to relax in Ireland, where I breed horses. Opera director is a job that absorbs you completely, where there are no free weekends, because that is when people have time to go to the theatre. You just have to love what you do, then everything is fine.
CSCH: What do you say to the cliché that the Swiss are a bit phlegmatic, averse to reform and very self-centred?
'The multilingualism undoubtedly increases understanding of different cultures.'
AP: I don’t believe that people here are less enthusiastic about innovation than anywhere else. But I would argue that Switzerland still has a system of values that does not exist in other countries because these countries were far worse affected by two disastrous world wars. What I find positive about Switzerland is that there is no problem about the son of a bank manager becoming a carpenter. This would be considered a family disgrace in Austria but it is highly respectable here. I think this is very good because I reject the idea that people should be forced to conform to expectations. If this happens, all that people think of is grabbing advantages as quickly as possible. I have the feeling that in Switzerland the system of values is more intact.
CSCH: You come from the neighbouring country of Austria, which joined the EU in 1995. Do you think that Switzerland should follow suit?
AP: If you look at the map of the European Union and see the white space in the middle, you immediately realise how absurd Switzerland’s nonmembership is. But it was the same with the UN, where for many decades Switzerland contributed but did not have any say. Now the Swiss are getting into a similar situation. They have to accept the drawbacks of the EU but do not have access to the crucial advantages that it brings. Whenever this subjec comes up, I quote the example of the Zurich Opera House, where our 580 employees come from 55 different countries. Only internationalism and universality can guarantee the highest quality.
CSCH: Your name has often been mentioned in connection with management positions in other opera houses – the Bavarian State Opera, the Salzburg Festival and recently La Scala in Milan. Why have you remained true to Zurich?
AP: When you get a job like this, it is not like the image people on the outside have of it. You can prance around like a peacock for a week, but then reality catches up with you. If I compare the quality that I have here, and most of all the quality that I can achieve in the coming years, with what I can achieve elsewhere, then moving would be a step backwards. It would take me years to get where I already am in Zurich. I can develop far more here. All in all, I can achieve greater quality in Zurich. That is why for me personally Zurich is the best of all opera worlds.
CSCH: You originally wanted to be a singer. What has happened to this passion?
AP: I always wanted to study singing but my mother thought that I should study something ‘respectable’. So I worked for Austrian Tourism Marketing and then for the office machines company Olivetti. It was only when I was working as head of sales in Berlin that I again felt the wish to study singing. So I studied singing for eleven years in Berlin and Frankfurt, and the result was that I did not become the world-famous singer that I would have liked to become. Instead I started organising concerts in my spare time and found that I enjoyed it. Then the Vienna Concert House asked me if I would like to be its General Secretary. That was the moment when I gave up selling office machines and decided to make music my career.
CSCH: Don’t you sing at all any more?
AP: Not much at all, I’m sad to say. I sing to myself now and then to get back into practice again. I had a very good technical training. This not only helps me to judge singers but also to work with them. I can describe the tone I want to hear from them. These are the tools of my trade. When I listen to singers today, I hear how they will be singing four years from now. I am listening for the future because at an opera house a season has to be planned four years in advance.
CSCH: You are full of enthusiasm for opera, a character trait that is well known among theatregoers and sponsors. You genuflect to star singers at premiers…
AP: Oh, that’s just a playful and humorous gesture, part of the traditional Austrian love of ceremony perhaps…
CSCH: What do you appreciate most about Zurich?
AP: Living in an international city where there are so many leading managers of world-famous companies guarantees me access to global centres of power. At the same time I live in a pleasant village by the lake, where I find the same calm, modesty and intimacy that I find in my opera house. It’s the smallest of all the large opera houses, with only 1,100 seats, which means that there’s a tremendous exchange of energy between the audience and the stage. These are all aspects that keep me in this city.
CSCH: I would like to play a short word association game. What do you say to the word Confederation?
AP: It’s a word I think of when I am planning a performance of Wilhelm Tell or when the President of the Confederation is ‘enthroned’ in the opera house and the national anthem is sung.
CSCH: Swiss German?
AP: It sounds like a throat infection.
CSCH: Swiss cheese?
AP: Not bad at all. Let’s go on eating!
CSCH: Banking secrecy?
AP: This brings an amusing story to mind. A Swiss minister and I were having dinner with the Maharaja of Udaipur and suddenly he started complaining that his accounts were mentioned in the newspapers and that this was a scandal. This was in connection with the publication of dormant assets from the Second World War. In Udaipur they had used the account only once in 50 years, which is why it ended up on the list.
CSCH: Multilingualism?
AP: A huge asset for this country. Multilingualism makes the Swiss cosmopolitans who can communicate more easily with the rest of the world.
The interview was conducted in German and translated by Paul Knight.
Alexander Pereira was born on 11 October 1947. His father was an Austrian diplomat. He is one of the world’s leading culture managers, noted both for his artistic ideas and his business skills. On leaving school, he worked for the Austrian Tourist Board in London and Frankfurt, then worked for twelve years in the sales department of office machine and computer manufacturer Olivetti in Berlin. During this period he also studied singing and organised concerts. In 1984 Pereira was appointed General Secretary of the Vienna Concert House, where he had sole responsibility for artistic, organisational and financial matters. With his flair for art and for business, he modernised the concert scene and attracted new young audiences. In 1989 his name was mentioned as a possible artistic director of the Salzburg Festival but instead he was appointed director of the Zurich Opera House in 1991. He opened his first season with a sensational version of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin directed by Robert Wilson. In a short space of time, he succeeded in presenting numerous brilliant performances, in cutting debts amounting to millions of francs and even in making a profit. From the outset, Pereira identified continuity within the ensemble as a priority. He attaches great importance to the promotion of young talent, to accessible performances, to the inclusion of the audience and to cooperation with prominent artists. Under his aegis, the Zurich Opera House has developed into one of the leading opera houses in the world. Despite numerous offers, he has remained true to Zurich. Alexander Pereira loves the mountains and is a keen cook. He has two grown-up children and lives in Küsnacht near Zurich.