Next week, on Thursday, 8 August (starting at 8.30 pm), the 72nd Ljubljana Festival brings a taste of life in bohemian Paris to Križanke. After an interval of ten years, George Pehlivanian, one of the greatest conductors working today, returns to the Festival stage with his own Pehlivanian Opera Academy to present a concert performance of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, an opera that is part of the standard repertoire of every opera house.
George Pehlivanian, a French-American conductor born in Beirut who lives between Los Angeles, Paris and Ljubljana, continues the tradition of his former mentors, the most famous of whom were Pierre Boulez and Lorin Maazel. He began playing the piano at the age of just three and the violin at six. He attracted international attention in 1991 when, at the age of 27, he became the first American to win the Grand Prize at the prestigious International Competition for Young Conductors in Besançon, France.
Maestro Pehlivanian has worked with more than 300 orchestras and opera houses and countless acclaimed artists over the course of his career. From 2005 until 2008 he was the first foreign principal conductor of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. Committed to passing on his knowledge and experience to future generations, in 2020 he founded the Pehlivanian Opera Academy, which represents an extraordinary opportunity for singers and conductors from all over the world to develop their skills while preparing an opera production.
The Academy helps conductors learn to work with singers, and vice versa, something that is of crucial importance for a balanced career in the world of opera. The Academy’s motto is “Opera for the people” and reflects Maestro Pehlivanian’s intention to stage, every summer, an entire opera that is accessible to Slovenian audiences and tourists in various locations. This year the Academy will give nine performances of La bohème around Slovenia and also in Italy over the course of eleven days.
It is worth highlighting the professionalism involved in preparing the annual production: this year around 100 candidates from various countries applied to the Pehlivanian Opera Academy. Pehlivanian will relinquish the conductor’s podium to young conductors during the performance of La bohème, while the singers will also exchange roles among themselves, meaning that we will hear multiple singers in the same role. This is a unique opportunity for the audience to experience at first hand the diversity and richness of operatic art.
This time the Pehlivanian Opera Academy will transport us, with La bohème, to the Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century. The famous opera by the great Italian composer Giacomo Puccini shines a light on the cruelty and poverty of the artistic life. Puccini, a master of orchestration who was skilled at depicting the full range of human emotions, places two great operatic love stories at the centre of the work: the tender, tragic love of Rodolfo, a poet, and Mimì, a seamstress; and the passionate, turbulent love of Marcello, a painter, and Musetta, a singer.
La bohème is famous for its wonderful arias, including Che gelida manina and Si, mi chiamano Mimì, which are among the most popular in the entire operatic repertoire. Beloved throughout the world, this opera about human relationships, dreams and loss continues to captivate audiences. La bohème remains one of the highlights of Italian opera and reminds us of the power of music to express human emotions and experiences.
