Mozart composed his first opera at age 12, but Giuseppe Pietraroia, the conductor-in-residence at Pacific Opera Victoria, discovered a fascination with singing at an even younger age than that. Pietraroia remembers loving all music and singing when he was three years old.
“I used to enjoy listening to music from playing records, and I used to like to sing when I was a young child,” he says. “I always had this sort of attraction to music.”
When Pietraroia was in Grade 5 he fell in love with the sound of the saxophone. He took lessons through middle school and high school and eventually did his undergraduate degree in saxophone performance.
When he graduated, a new conductor program was starting, so he decided to try his interest in conducting as a way to get involved in opera. He says that he went full circle when his love for vocal music came back all those years later.
Now, Pietraroia is an established conductor. He’s currently working on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, presented by Pacific Opera Victoria.
The story is about a woman’s faithfulness and complete devotion to a man. Pietraroia says all of Puccini’s stories have central female characters that are strong, even if they may have a frail side to them.
But are love stories revolving around a female lead appealing to men? According to Pietraroia, as long as you have some sense of romance in your heart, this story isn’t just relatable to women.
“I think you can relate either way if you’re a romantic at heart,” he says. “Whether you’re male or female, I think a story like this is really touching.”
The story of Butterfly is a sad one. As a young geisha, she turns her back on her family to marry an American man who doesn’t quite understand how devoted she is. When he returns home he leaves his life in Japan behind, and that includes her, his now-pregnant wife.
Butterfly waits with her son for her love to return, and years later, with a new wife, he does. When the man discovers the love she’s harboured for him all this time, he truly realizes the mistakes he’s made.
Pietraroia says that sometimes the man is referred to as the moral conscience of the piece, as he embodies the audience’s mind. He represents the human condition of making mistakes and going through a process of realization that makes him relatable; it makes him lovable, and, most of all, it makes him human, which is how Pietraroia connects with him.
It also helps that the story is told through music and voice, which is even a bigger dealmaker for Pietraroia.
“If you don’t like him right from the beginning, none of the love duet, none of that part makes any sense,” he says. “You have to almost believe, like Butterfly, that this is the right man; you almost, as an audience member, have to fall into it in order for the heartbreak to be even harder.”