Sills Gave Her Conductor Room to Grow

The staging of “Rigoletto” that the New York City Opera will be using is by Tito Capobianco, as re-created at the Performing Arts Center by James Furlong, an assistant stage director with the company.

For Scott Bergeson, who will be conducting “Rigoletto” here, Capobianco has provided much more than just staging.

“We have a path that goes way back in my apprenticeship,” Bergeson, 37, said recently. “ Protege isn’t exactly the word, but he has been very helpful to me, giving me the opportunity to do some conducting and also in offering me extremely valuable advice.”

Bergeson worked with Capobianco in 1975 at the Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia and in 1980 in the Young American Opera Conductors’ Program at San Diego Opera, where Capobianco was general director in 1975-83.

“Fortunately, Mr. Capobianco is a thoroughly grounded musician and has tremendous respect for music itself,” Bergeson said. “When it comes to musical matters, he always defers to the conductor.”

Born in St. Charles, Ill., Bergeson came late to his field: “I didn’t actually start conducting professionally until I was 29, but it had been in my mind from the time I was 12. I decided I had better form a solid musical base before getting up on stage to conduct. So I spent years working as a coach and chorus master. I worked all over the country for a lot of companies and used that for an apprenticeship in the classical European style, but I did it here.”

Bergeson has worked with the Washington Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, the Dallas Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre and Opera Memphis.

His relationship with City Opera began in 1977 when, straight out of Juilliard, he got a job as assistant conductor. In 1980-82, he was also a recipient of the company’s Julius Rudel Award, a program designed to help promising young conductors develop musical and administrative skills.

He made his company debut in 1981, in classic, 24-hour fashion, taking over for an ailing colleague in Nicolai’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

“It’s been about 225 performances since then,” Bergeson said, including several of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” by City Opera at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in January, 1987.

Responding to suggestions by some opera world insiders that he has been passed over for the glamour assignments at City Opera, Bergeson said:

“Glamour and vanity last about 15 seconds after a performance is over. I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted. Miss (City Opera Director Beverly) Sills has been very sensitive to helping me grow and develop and to what kind of repertory I’m well suited to. . . .

“One thing I’ve never been is in a hurry. I’ve seen too many people get in above their heads too far too fast and be able to rattle off a list of very impressive-sounding places where they conducted once and were never invited back again. And that is not my style.”

In regard to the transition at the helm of City Opera, Bergeson professed detachment: “There are no promises for anyone from anyone in this world. You really are only as good as your last performance. You have to do your best no matter who is at the helm.