{"id":10491,"date":"2015-04-01T06:22:41","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T13:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=10491"},"modified":"2015-03-30T14:26:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T21:26:50","slug":"madama-butterfly-conductors-love-of-music-started-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2015\/04\/01\/madama-butterfly-conductors-love-of-music-started-early\/","title":{"rendered":"Madama Butterfly<\/em> conductor\u2019s love of music started early"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to enjoy listening to music from playing records, and I used to like to sing when I was a young child,\u201d he says. \u201cI always had this sort of attraction to music.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Giuseppe<\/a>
Giuseppe Pietraroia is passionate about music and Madama Butterfly<\/em> (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Now, Pietraroia is an established conductor. He\u2019s currently working on Puccini\u2019s Madama Butterfly<\/i>, presented by Pacific Opera Victoria.<\/p>\n

The story is about a woman\u2019s faithfulness and complete devotion to a man. Pietraroia says all of Puccini\u2019s stories have central female characters that are strong, even if they may have a frail side to them.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t just relatable to women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you can relate either way if you\u2019re a romantic at heart,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether you\u2019re male or female, I think a story like this is really touching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s harboured for him all this time, he truly realizes the mistakes he\u2019s made.<\/p>\n

Pietraroia says that sometimes the man is referred to as the moral conscience of the piece, as he embodies the audience\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

It also helps that the story is told through music and voice, which is even a bigger dealmaker for Pietraroia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t like him right from the beginning, none of the love duet, none of that part makes any sense,\u201d he says. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cI used to enjoy listening to music from playing records, and I used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-april-1-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10493,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10491\/revisions\/10493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}