Interview for BBC Radio 3 Music Matters, 12.15pm

24 January 2009

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gsp1f

The programme will be available to listen again for 7 days

Tom Service compares two modern dystopian visions of the world about to hit the London stage: Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt at the Royal Opera House and John Adams’ Dr Atomic at the ENO. He also speaks to Canadian baritone Gerald Finley on singing the title role in Adams’ opera.

“Canadian baritone Gerald Finley sings in both operas – he created the role of Robert Oppenheimer in Doctor Atomic in San Francisco three years ago, and has sung the opera around the world since then. There aren’t many singers who started life as scientists, but Finley’s first passion was biochemistry; he even spent some time in a government research institute in Canada, looking at the zinc content in lamb faeces. Seriously. It may have been the drudgery of that experience that turned Finley towards a musical career, and science’s loss was opera’s gain. The role of Oppenheimer brings together Finley’s twin passions for music and science, but it also symbolises how much Finley wants to communicate with contemporary audiences on big issues: unlike many starry singers, new music is at the heart of his repertoire – Turnage, Saariaho, Picker – as much as Mozart. How does he handle both?”