Bravissimo!

“IF THE WORLD OF CLASSICAL MUSIC CONSISTED ONLY of piano, I wouldn’t be a musician,” says Marcheso, music director and principal conductor of Opera San Jose and a staff conductor at the San Francisco Opera. Growing up in New York City, Marcheso took piano lessons, largely to please his parents. He was far more interested in the music he heard in Star Wars and James Bond films. At age 8 he saw his first opera—a dress rehearsal of Hansel and Gretel. A few years later, after watching Amadeus on television, he listened to all of Mozart’s operas. “By the end of high school I had reached the end of Verdi and the beginning of Wagner,” he says. “Once I understood what a conductor was—once I knew a conductor existed—I knew that’s what I wanted to be.”

Marcheso graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in music and spent the next eight years at the Amato Opera, a 100-seat community theater in Manhattan. He worked his way up to music director, overseeing six operas a year, each with a dozen performances. In 2005 he left to pursue his master’s at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Last July he took on his new role at Opera San Jose—where he “did a superb job with the orchestra” in the 2014-15 season opener, Rigoletto, according to opera critic Michael Vaughn.

For those who wonder about a conductor’s gyrations, Marcheso explains that most listeners don’t understand “the amount of premeditation that goes into what they’re experienc- ing,” he says. “When you see the fingers really going and the con- ductors really gesturing, it looks like people are just letting their instincts speak. But the amount of time spent dissecting and experimenting before it gets to that point to make those things seem that way—for a quality opera production, every aspect has been thought of and tested.”

JOSEPH’S TOP 4 OPERAS ~ ~ Verdi’s Don Carlo: “Majesty, brooding and austerity personified” Wagner’s Parsifal: “Magical spiritual longing—and the transformation music is the most amazing stretch of music ever written.” ~ Adams’ Nixon in China: “I love minimal- ism, and this opera is startlingly original, human and fun.” ~ Britten’s Peter Grimes: “Dark story, beau- tiful, intricate music, heartbreaking text”

“Sometimes you’re just a cheerleader in the sense that you’re there to infuse your enthusiasm into the music.”