Since I turned 63 last Dec. 30, I thought that my year-ender (or what passes for it) should pay tribute to those amazing senior citizen in the arts.
Just before the year closed, I learned that filmmaker and opera director Franco Zeffirelli directed his latest “Turandot” in—of all places—the Middle East. The new sparkling venue is the Oman Opera House right in Muscat, capital of the oil-rich nation in the United Arab Emirates.
So, what’s the big deal?
Nothing, really, except for the jolting discovery that Zeffirelli is now 88 years old. Opera production is not for the faint-hearted, and if you are 88, you will need the energy and stamina of a 25-year-old to survive as an opera director. But, lo and behold, El Zeffirelli is directing a grand opera at a ripe old age of 88 and giving interviews to CNN as though his latest project was a mere walk in the park.
I relate with this film and opera director because I saw his “Romeo and Juliet” when I was in college and loved it. To top it all, my good friend, Romanian diva Nelly Miricioiu, appeared in at least three Franco Zeffirelli productions at the Met and Covent Garden. Just three years short as senior citizen, La Miricioiu just sang “Tosca” at the Covent Garden and told reporters, “What’s wrong with singing ‘Tosca’ at 57? Opera icon Magda Olivares did just that at age 57.”
Placido, Otoniel
In the Oman production is the eminent conductor-singer—another senior citizen in his late 60s—none other than Placido Domingo! A few months back, he was doing a baritone role as Iago in a Covent Garden production of “Otello.” About Domingo’s age is the first and only Filipino Otello, Otoniel Gonzaga, who just sang King Herod in “Salome” in Austria.
Gonzaga was Domingo’s understudy in the Washington Opera production of “The Merry Widow” opposite another ageless senior citizen, the great Mirella Freni, in whose Italian master class our own Rachelle Gerodias had attended.
I saw Russia’s legend of dance, Maya Plisetskaya at the CCP in the early ’80s when she was past 60. Last November, I just learned that the great Maya just danced in Athens with a special Maurice Bejart work called “Ave Maya,” and she was in her mid-80s! Arts legends are either dead or dying at her age, and here she is dancing in 2011 and getting more fans in her mid-80s!
While I have worked with mostly young winners of the National Music Competition for Young Artists, from pianist Rowena Arrieta to cellist Victor Michael Coo, I have also worked with the veterans (no single or double quotes there).
Santamaria, Reyes
I am referring to the Romantic Piano Concerto team of pianists Ingrid Sala Santamaria (now 72) and Reynaldo Reyes (in his mid-70s or more). How do they differ from their junior editions?
Reyes, for one, had logged countless evenings of all-Beethoven and all-Bartok program with the energy of someone in the early 20s!
For the record, Santamaria and Reyes have logged more than 400 concerts nationwide since 2001 from Aparri to Davao, and had interpreted more than three concertos in one setting. Just imagine playing those concertos some 400 times in different places, and you can see what they went through. It’s like doing a Pacquiao workout without the benefit of a pay-per-view income.
Cecile Licad and other pianists do only one concerto per engagement (she did three concertos with PPO—then called the CCP Philharmonic—when she was 14, and that was in 1975 at the CCP).
But another senior citizen by the name of Dr. Raul Sunico (now CCP president and UST Conservatory of Music dean) did five Rachmaninoff concertos in one evening and survived it with fairly good aplomb.
Look at Plisetskaya, Zeffirelli, Domingo and Gonzaga on one hand, and Santamaria and Reyes on our native soil.
I have heard of music schools planning to retire their senior citizens for one reason or another. Let me just remind them that brilliant artists in the league of Cecile Licad, Joseph Esmilla and Victor Michael Coo learned a lot from dedicated teachers in their senior years than from cute, younger teachers with whistle-bait figures.
(With apologies to teachers below 60!)