NEW YORK – While singing on the big stages of the world, Nathalie Stutzmann thought of light lager beer.
“In Europe it is common for the conductor to get a beer right behind the stage. I was so thirsty when I got off the stage after a performance that I always dreamed: it would be nice to be a conductor and get it,” she said, laughing.
Minutes after a successful debut on the New York Philharmonic podium in February, Stutzmann had a beer in hand before she reached her dressing room.
“This is the best beer ever that a conductor gets right after the performance,” she said.
Stutzmann gave up a quarter-century career as an alto to become a conductor. She took over the musical direction of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra last fall and is making her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in a New production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” on Friday evening, one day before her 58th birthday. On July 28, she will be the second woman to conduct the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.
“She takes familiar lyrics personally, like a great singer would, but can translate them to a large group of musicians,” she said Conductor Simon Rattle, one of Stutzmann’s mentors. “Nathalie is such a complete musician that our conversation has more to do with the psychology of dealing with orchestras, how to ask for more without getting discouraged. For me, her expected strength is breathing, phrasing naturally, and instinctively finding musical solutions. Unexpected: how deeply she can rethink so-called standard repertoire and make it sound new without exaggeration or emphasis.”
As the daughter of musical parents, the soprano Christiane Stutzmann and the bass Christian Dupuy, Nathalie learned piano at a young age, then cello and bassoon. She studied at the Ecole d’Art Lyrique of the Paris Opéra and sang her first concert at the Paris Salle Pleyel in 1985.
“As a teenager, I was trying to get into the conducting class,” she recalled during an interview between Met rehearsals. “It wasn’t forbidden for a girl, but the teacher was very misogynistic, so I could never conduct the orchestra.”
She won first prize in the Bertelsmann Foundation’s New Voices competition in 1987, made her US singing debut in a recital at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in 1995, and made her Carnegie Hall debut two years later in a Symphony No. 2 Mahler Philadelphia Orchestra and Rattle She sang in Carnegie in 1988 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa, who also became a mentor and provided a technical foundation.
“Because I started singing so young, I’ve realized almost all of my dreams as a singer,” said Stutzmann, “I pushed the limits of this alto voice to the maximum. I explored the maximum of the repertoire.”
She began considering switching to conducting in the early 2000s after a change in attitude.
“You can’t constantly fight against the mentality of society,” said Stutzmann. “People started talking more about what equality is, why a woman couldn’t do this and that. So, I thought, maybe it’s time for me to give it a try. And I also wanted to try it when I was still at the peak of my singing career, to avoid anyone saying, ‘She started conducting because she doesn’t have a voice anymore.’”
Stutzmann turned to Jorma Panula, a Finnish conductor and teacher who is now 92 years old.
“All he says is two words a day at most,” she explained. “But these words are very important. He never shows you how to behave. So, firstly, when he takes you, he thinks you’re natural. He just instinctively takes natural conductors. He films you conducting an orchestra. And then you sit with him and he criticizes — lots of ‘that’s bad’.”
Stutzmann founded the chamber orchestra Orfeo 55 in 2009 and has conducted it throughout its decade-long existence. In September 2017 she became Principal Guest Conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, Ireland and the following year Principal Conductor of Norway’s Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra.
She was engaged as Principal Guest Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2021 and last fall succeeded Robert Spano as music director in AtlantaThis makes her the second woman to lead a major American orchestra after Marin Alsop with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 21.
Stutzmann will also conduct Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Met from May 18th.
“Nathalie naturally brings special attention to Mozart’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. It’s bubbly and light, but not dainty or stuffy,” said Met concertmaster Benjamin Bowman. “She thrives on extremes and her attitude towards music seems anything but lukewarm. She conducts with sensitivity and yet makes high demands on the singers, as perhaps only a female singer can be!”
The Met believes Stutzmann will become the first conductor since Rafael Kubelík in 1973-74 to lead two new productions in a debut season.
“She can demonstrate how she wants to sing a line. She can actually show us the feel and the phrasing,” said soprano Erin Morley, Stutzmann’s Pamina. “At first it’s just a pleasure to hear her sing in rehearsals sometimes, but it’s also informative, I get a direct sense of what she wants.”
Stutzmann still sings – in the shower and while rehearsing.
“I know my voice is in perfect shape,” she said. “I thought she would turn it down, but she doesn’t. So it’s a bit challenging because sometimes I feel like, ah, I’d love to sing that instead of explaining something about the music.”
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