DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Success for me would include: to be able to play the repertoire you love, always have a next project/ concert/ recording to look for, and have a dear audience to share music with.
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Italy gave birth to opera, but in its home country the art form now carries a distinct air of maledizione (curse). Of Italy’s 14 major opera houses—the ones supported by the federal government—12 are in the red. The Opera di Roma is now one of two major Italian opera houses to be making a profit.
On the other hand, opera is now one of two major Italian opera houses to be making a profitis booming in new markets such as China and South Korea, but Italy has a responsibility to keep the genre alive.
At American and British opera houses, corporate sponsors and philanthropists top up public funding.
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What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Listen to the advice, but decide yourself. One day a good friend told me he enjoyed my music, but thought it was too slow and too sad. I decided to focus on that, and make it even slower and sadder! Do not let criticism stop you. There are no limits. Art is art, so don’t be afraid to dare. Be open minded and keep learning all the time, from everything.
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What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Generally speaking, I thrive on musical challenges and seek them out, because that’s how I learn. These have included trying to establish the alto flute as a credible recital instrument, starting at a point where there was very little repertoire; learning the baroque flute from scratch to premiere a piece with lots of microtones, and developing an efficient way of practising so that I can learn a lot of difficult music in a short space of time.
Of course, the biggest challenge that has happened to me in my life was the arson attack on my home in the riots in 2011; I lost literally everything apart from the clothes I was wearing. Rebuilding my life after that was an enormous challenge, both personally and musically. It took 2 years before my alto flute was replaced, and it really made me look at everything in my life and work out my priorities. I had so much support from the music world in particular, and I can’t express just how important that was in helping me to keep going. It was a difficult time and it still affects me every day – but I’ve tried to find as much positivity in the experience and come back stronger.
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The show, Genius, airs on National Geographic, and Rush tells NYT that he’s always been drawn to playing what he calls ‘outsiders:’
“I suppose I’m drawn to — I’d call them all outsider figures. In my theatrical repertoire, I rarely played the central character. I was not the young heroic model for “Hamlet.” I tended to play those characters that orbited around them: the rogues and the rat bags and the idiots and the fools and the clowns that sway the plot somehow from a tangent.”
And what made him think that he could play Einstein in particular? Well, the answer is certainly amusing:
“I got a classic photo of the older Einstein. And I got a friend to take a photo of me and morph 15 percent of Einstein into my photograph to give me an indication [of how] to create a credible likeness. Then I got out a [marker] and put in the eyebrows, and some Wite-Out, and I drew in the halo of the hair. So that was my own audition for myself. I sent it to Ron [Howard, director] and said, “I think we can do this.””
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What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
I think we have to re-think the role of artists in this world. For me, the mission of an artist is to share the wonder of classical music with as many people as possible, and to reach a different public, because this music has a secret capacity to really console people, to give them dignity, and to reveal something inside which is greater than us.
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