Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Journey

Epilogue: Still in Progress

• Epilogue • Still in Progress W hat an incredible half-century! Over these years, I have helped make opera happen in nearly five hundred productions—in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, Argentina, Yugoslavia, Iran, Australia, and Japan—in all those countries and in many, many languages. As I write these words, plans are now under way for a new project in Mexico. What a journey, and what a cast of characters! I have been blessed by saints and locked horns with devils. I have experienced the gamut of everything life has to offer and sustain: joy, sorrow, love, hate, friendship, betrayal, success, failure, intrigue, cabal, and hostility; rave reviews and devastating pans, opportunities offered, missed, and denied. And like everything else in my life, this book is just a way station. I could never have made it this far without a sense of humor. No matter how bad things may get—and I have experienced some barely endurable low points—if you can find the funny side, you’ve conquered challenge. Come to think of it, my own pretensions may have been the most ridiculous part of it all. Starting off as a kid in a dysfunctional family in Persia, and moving on to a career in opera that took me all over the world, demanded all my energy and ambition. Over the years, I may have turned my back on my Persian culture, but I never jettisoned one of its most important teachings : kismet. My name is Mansouri; I believe in kismet. But of course I could never have done as much as I did by sitting back and waiting for fate to take a hand in my life; on the contrary, I have tried to walk hand in hand with destiny, as an equal partner. In the final Still in Progress { 295 analysis, the most important events are determined by kismet—what we do with them is up to us. I have tried to make good on whatever was destined for me and to take things as far as I could. When Midge and I met, it was kismet. She has been a partner throughout this half-century, with all its ups and downs, in different cities and countries, giving me our daughter and compensating for everything I may have lost in Tehran. We were destined to meet. But we were not destined to succeed—we made that happen. Destiny determined a career in opera for me, then brought me together with the Zweigs, who gave me whatever taste I have in music, with Jan Popper at ucla and with Herbert Graf, who took me to Europe and gave me every opportunity a young man could ask for. Destiny sparked my encounter with Herman Geiger-Torel, who suggested my candidacy for the post of general director in Toronto, and with Terry McEwen, who recommended me for the same position in San Francisco. When these remarkable strokes of fate came about, I took over from there and did my best to make a career. And because so much has happened in the art during my lifetime, I continue to believe in it as an ongoing, vibrant form with a glorious future. New artistic visions and technological developments offer us an amazing array of production options, unknown at the beginning of my professional life. Of course, like any other gift of the gods, it can be used to obfuscate or to add profundity and significance. The bottom line here is never losing sight of the continuum and respectfully honoring the spirit of the creators in our interpretations. From there on, the sky is the limit. I hope I will be around to witness some of this progress, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make my own contributions. In this spirit, I continue to pursue my career, knowing that all action is ultimately interaction . If in this volume I have succeeded in thanking the wonderful people who have nourished my life with their interaction, I will be happier yet. In this spirit, I greet them all with these thoughts from the final words written by the greatest author the world has ever known, William Shakespeare , in his epilogue to The Tempest: Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails, Which was to please. Now I want 296 } e p i l o...