A fresh start for the new season

The National Theater officially opens its 2009/10 season Sept. 10 with a concert performance that builds on its 126 years as the cultural cornerstone of the nation and looks ahead to the promise of youth and fresh energy. That spirit is embodied in conductor Tomáš Netopil, who will be leading the orchestra in his debut performance as the theater's new music director.

Netopil, 34, is no stranger to the National Theater podium. He made a strong impression conducting the opening concerts of the past two seasons, as well as the 2008 and 2009 Mozart birthday concerts. This past season, he also showed a fine sense of opera, in particular for his handling of Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera. And that's only part of his larger career, which he has built mostly abroad, conducting at houses like the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Teatro Regio in Turin and Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

Given that stature, it's a bit surprising when a down-to-earth, totally disarming young man shows up a few minutes late for an interview at Café Slavia with a suitcase and apologies in tow. "I just got a flat in Vinohrady, and I'm still learning the walking distance here," he says.

That's a good hike, befitting a jogger, tennis player and conductor who has a markedly physical style. Netopil is constantly in motion onstage, active and quick on his feet like a boxer, carving out musical phrases with a sweep of his arm or curve of his hand, and punctuating explosions of sound with a right jab. By the end of a performance, his hair is usually plastered to his forehead with sweat.

"That's not by design," he says. "It's just me."

Netopil grew up (and still lives part-time) in the south Moravian town of Kroměříž, perhaps best-known as one of the filming sites for Miloš Forman's Amadeus. He studied violin at the conservatory there, and, after deciding he was more interested in conducting, continued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Royal Academy in Stockholm.

"It's difficult for a young conductor to get noticed after school," Netopil notes, which is why he started entering competitions, despite his distaste for them. "It's really unpleasant," he says. "You're like a trained monkey. You have to show the judges something they haven't seen before."

He endured half a dozen with no success. But perseverance paid off when he won the first Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition in Frankfurt in 2002. After that, the offers began to pour in, and Netopil started building an impressive résumé in opera houses throughout Europe and concert halls as far away as Tokyo and Sydney. National Theater officials first approached him about the music director position in Prague two years ago, but wanted to see how well he fit with their operation first.

"I needed to work with the orchestra for a couple years," Netopil says. "Finally, last year we agreed, and I accepted the position."

It's a big responsibility, though perhaps less so musically than in the challenges faced by any newcomer to a hidebound institution. Prague orchestras have been known to literally sit on their hands if they don't like a conductor or piece of music, and, at the National Theater, there are also innumerable layers of bureaucracy to deal with. All of which Netopil seems well aware of, and none of which seems to bother him.

"I feel the orchestra needs some leadership to take it to the next level," he says when asked how he'll approach his new job. "There's no question about the quality. But I'd like to see more happy faces and more enthusiasm for the music. The players should enjoy coming to work."

Netopil's own tastes run to Brahms, Bartók, Shostakovich and, in particular, Mozart, not only for the composer's music but the content and structure of his operas. "For me, this is the basis of Romantic opera as it developed afterward," he says.

Asked how he feels conducting at the Estates Theater, where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni in 1787, Netopil gets a glow on his face and says, "That's something!" He hopes to further embellish the theater as the house of Mozart with continuing performances of La Finta and Le nozze di Figaro and, in May next year, a new production of Ideomeneo.

For the opening concert this week, his attention is focused on two Czech works: Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 and Martinů's The Epic of Gilgamesh, two pieces that could hardly be more different. "The symphony is typical Dvořák: classical structure, fresh and charming, full of folk tunes and beautiful melodies," Netopil says. "Gilgamesh is a very deep and sensitive work, a meditation on life and death, not quite a cantata or an oratorio, something absolutely different. It's unique in the whole history of music, and I am happy to have a chance to conduct it."

Knitting together those two disparate works into a unified evening is no small task, but a worthy measure of a new music director. This will be a touchstone concert for the young maestro in more ways than one.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at
fkuznik@praguepost.com