Shades of Light and Dark: Conductor Gary Thor Wedow on Seeing Colors in Music, Leading Handel's Atalanta at Juilliard Opera, and Living the Queens Life
Gary Thor Wedow.
Conductor Gary Thor Wedow has often found inspiration for his music-making in the visual arts. But a recent visit to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave Wedow, a specialist in Baroque opera, an altogether new view of ancient Greek and Roman art — and early music.
"We used to think all Classical Greek and Roman statues were all virginally white marble," Wedow says on the latest episode of the Classical Post podcast. "But [historians] have learned that most of them were painted with a bright array of colors, which made me think so much about early music. We used to think of it as something remote, restrained, but now I feel as performers we have to find more colors and more variety."
Wedow will soon have ample opportunity to find colors and chiaroscuro — strong contrasts between light and dark — in Handel's seldom-performed opera Atalanta. Beginning on November 9, Wedow leads singers from the Juilliard Opera and the school's period-instrument ensemble, Juilliard415, in three performances of this delightful but seldom-performed work. A mythological opera written in 1736 to celebrate the wedding of England's Prince of Wales, Wedow likens Atalanta's plot to that of Hallmark Channel rom-coms, filled with comical misunderstandings, love at first sight — and a whole lot of sunny, exuberant music.
In this episode, Wedow talks more about the joy of working with young artists at Juilliard, where he serves on the Vocal Arts faculty, and how he sees the role of a conductor as "bringing the ship safely into harbor through a storm."
Plus, he shares a slew of recommendations for exploring the Queens borough of New York City — from his favorite spots for Mexican, Japanese, and eastern European food, to drinks at the Museum of the Moving Image and a trip to the grave of Mozart's notorious librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte.
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