This interview was originally recorded on April 24th, 2024.
The Oral History Project is supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.

Darren Woods, director and arts administrator

Darren K. Woods is the artistic director of the Seagle Festival, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious singer training programs, and also of the American Center for New Works Development. Woods has been with Seagle in some leadership capacity since 1996. He specializes in training singers in the skills they need to create successful careers, and Seagle artists can be found on the stages of virtually every opera house and concert hall in America. From 2001 to 2017, Woods was general director of Fort Worth Opera, a company that was transformed by a restructured festival format and a devotion to new American opera. Woods had a career as a character tenor for 20 years singing in the U.S. and Europe. He performed in some of the most prestigious theaters in the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, New York City Opera, the Santa Fe Opera, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Italy, and the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain. Woods is a frequent judge of vocal competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, the Richard Tucker Award, and the Dallas Opera Competition.

Transcript

Marc A. Scorca: Darren Woods, thank you so much for taking time today to contribute to our Oral History Project. Thank you and welcome.

Darren Woods: Thanks so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

Marc A. Scorca: It's great to see you, and I will not spare you what everyone else has to answer, which is: who brought you to your first opera?

Darren Woods: Well, that's interesting, because my first opera I ever saw I was in. And the short answer is: I went to college to be a band director. I'd sung through college and been in high school, but I went to college to be a band director, (trombone major and piano minor), and they had voice lessons, so I thought that would be pretty cool. And my second year, I was doing a recital and I was singing some Benjamin Britten songs, and a woman walked in, Betty Ruth Tomfohrde, and I was to turn pages for her that night, and she heard me sing. We did the concert; I turned pages, and she turned to me and she said, "I never ever do this, but you have to transfer to the University of Houston. You need to be a voice major. You need to study with (Elena) Nikolaidi. My daughter works for Houston Grand Opera, and we're going to get you a chorus audition". And she did exactly that. And I drove to Houston a month later and sang a Brahms song and an Italian song, and got in the chorus, and my first opera was Norma with Renato Scotto, Tatiana Troyanos, Paul Plishka and Ermanno Mauro. And that was (my first opera).

Marc A. Scorca: Oh my God. That is just remarkable.

Darren Woods: My little 19-year-old body - I remember standing there in act two on the side of the stage listening to Scotto and Troyanos sing, "Mira, o Norma" and I'd never heard anything like that in my life. I was transported and that was it: I was hooked. And the next opera was Jenůfa with Pat (Patricia) Wells and Dick (Richard) Cassilly. Then it was Werther with Flicka (Frederica von Stade), then it was (Catherine) Malfitano in Traviata and (Elisabeth) Söderström in Rosenkavalier. I mean, that was my opera education in undergraduate school.

Marc A. Scorca: Unbelievable. And you were in the chorus through your undergraduate time?

Darren Woods: I spent three years at University of Houston, because I transferred in as a second year sophomore. And for three years I was in the HGO (Houston Grand Opera) Chorus, and then I went into Texas Opera Theater right after that, so I could stay studying with Nikolaidi. But yeah, I learned everything I knew about opera in the chorus of Houston Grand Opera with David Gockley and Conoley Ballard and Craig Rutenberg and all those amazing people. They were my teachers.

Marc A. Scorca: I'm just kind of curious, when you were thinking about band, what was your instrument in high school?

Darren Woods: I was a trombone player. Also at Sam Houston State University, I went in as the drum major, so they announced me as the shortest drum major in the Southwest Conference.

Marc A. Scorca: Well, just a demonstration of your leadership capacity, even from those early years. You mentioned something I wanted to pursue that I hadn't thought about, which is the Texas Opera Theater. Because there was a day when there was, on the east coast going west, the New York City National Company. There was on the west coast going east, the Western Opera Theater out of San Francisco, and Texas Opera Theater, which toured at first just through Texas, but then beyond. So after you graduated college, you worked with Texas Opera Theater. Tell us what that was. What was Texas Opera Theater?

Darren Woods: It was glorious, really. The year I finished college, I went to Santa Fe for my first year as an apprentice in '82, and then went right into Texas Opera Theater. And it gave you a chance. For instance, I did Don Basilio and that was when we were doing a national tour. So I probably got to do Basilio 80 times, which you rarely get to do. I'd done Curzio in Santa Fe that summer. So I did Basilio. I did probably a hundred Goros the first time I got to do Goro. I toured in Barber. So it gave you the chance to just sort of really dig into a role, learn a role. It was real bus and trucks. So you left in the morning; you got to your place at three o'clock in the afternoon; you had an early dinner; you got make-up and you sang, and you got up the next morning and you went to the next town. But it really taught you how to do it, how to pace yourself. You know, I was a character tenor, but like watching people like Maryanne Telese sing Susanna that many times (was inspiring). We were double cast often, but still to really pace yourself and know what you had to do to keep singing for those three or four months (was a great lesson). And I was lucky the two years I was at Texas Opera Theater, we really had almost an eight month contract. And I was also, because of the character tenor, was sort of (an) ancillary part of the Houston Opera Studio. So when they would do a new work, and they would need a character tenor (and) they didn't have one, and I would get to do it. So I was sort of the beneficiary of both of those worlds.

Marc A. Scorca: If folks listen in our oral history series to Justino Díaz, to Sherrill Milnes, who all did the bus and truck tours in their youth, and what it was like to sing their first roles multiple times. And Sherrill Milnes goes on about when you've done it 10, 20 times, you begin to play with it and learn what you can do with it, and you begin to make it your own - all of those with Boris Goldovsky. He just goes on, as Gus Díaz did, about how important those were, and you're saying the same thing a generation plus later.

Darren Woods: Yeah. And in my career I probably sang 400, 450 Figaros, and to think that almost a quarter of those were the first time that I did it at Texas Opera Theater. That's exactly right. I remember doing Goro the first time and wanting to really get it right, and there was a woman in Houston who was a geisha, and so I went and studied with her, because I wanted the fans to be right, and the poses to be right. And it just gave you an opportunity to really delve down into every character that you got to do.

Marc A. Scorca: That's great. And my first administrative job at New York City Opera was with the National Company, so I remember what it was like booking those hotels and buses for the Traviata tour that was double cast. And an incredible cast in those days - Jerry Hadley as Alfredo and Marianna Christos as Violetta with Candace Goetz. They were spectacular. John Branstetter as Germont. They were great casts.

Darren Woods: And I bookended my career because the last thing I did was a City Opera National Tour before I retired for good.

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, I didn't realize that.

Darren Woods: I did the Butterfly tour before I was like, "That's it. I'm gonna be a general director now".

Marc A. Scorca: We'll get to that. Staying with you as singer, you have used the phrase 'character tenor' to describe what it is you did. What do you mean by character tenor?

Darren Woods: It's often the secondary tenor - in Germany often called a Spieltenor. It's the older guy, the mean guy, the funny guy. You know, I was short of stature, and I was a funny guy, and I knew I was never actually going to be a leading tenor, but I loved opera, and being in the chorus, I had the opportunity to watch great people like Nico Castel and Joey (Joseph) Frank and Jimmy (James) Atherton, and say, "Wow, they're singing these smaller parts, but they are just as integral, if not more to the plot of the show". Sometimes the plot turns on these characters. They didn't carry the show, and yet they were so important. And the more I watched those men - and also character mezzos - I was thinking, "This would be a really wonderful spot to be". And later when I sang for John Crosby, and he said, "So few young singers come in and they just know exactly what they want to do. You came in and you sang character tenor repertoire saying, 'This is what I wanna do'". And he said, "It was so easy to hire you and give you the roles and covers that I did". It's a specialty that sadly doesn't really exist as much anymore, except at places like The Met or San Francisco. It goes largely to young artists now, and while that's wonderful for a young artist, you know, you really train as a character tenor. Your languages have to be spot on; the dramatic skills that you bring to it. I remember that I got my European debut singing Brighella in Ariadne, because I could juggle and I could walk on my hands, and that's what the director wanted. And believe me, singing a high C as Brighella, walking on your hands is no easy feat.

Marc A. Scorca: We've never had a live demonstration in any of our oral histories...

Darren Woods: And you shan't. There might be film somewhere. But yeah, it was very specialized. And again, I take my hat off to Nico and the real masters who created that fach for us, and you know, Dean Anthony and myself, we might be the last of those that really specialized in that. And I wish that was a part of our business that would sort of come back again. I made a living singing character tenor roles, and I'm not sure that's possible these days.

Marc A. Scorca: And you know, a good opera can exist with great lead singers, but a really great opera has great people singing the smaller roles. And you're absolutely right that frequently these days, they're going to the young apprentice artists, and there's value in that. But sometimes these characters are old people. They are sometimes awkward people; they aren't young and virile necessarily. So to have a really good opera, you do sometimes need to have the right people playing these great characters.

Darren Woods: One of my favorites was Spoletta in Tosca and vocally, that is not really a challenge, but when you're up against Jimmy (James) Morris's Scarpia and Carol Neblett's Tosca, and you were responsible for so much of the drama that goes on behind the scenes and within it...I always loved doing that and felt such an enormous part of that opera and really helping along, with the Sacristan and the Sciarrone, to make that opera even greater than it could be. It was a wonderful thing to be able to do for 20 years.

Marc A. Scorca: And how do you train to be good at that? Because I can imagine to be a soloist to sing, going to Tosca you really work on 'Vissi d'arte', and make sure it's beautiful, or 'Recondita armonia', but how do you coach? How do you rehearse? How do you practice being a really good character singer?

Darren Woods: I think for me, and it helped me be a general director too - I was always a real keen observer of other people. I mean, the first time I was doing Arnalta, which is a female part in The Coronation of Poppea, I remember going to Central Park and watching older, heavyset women, carrying their bags. How they would walk and how they would reach out. I just would go watch people and say, "That's gonna be useful". Or seeing Joe Frank do Goro and seeing Joe Frank doing the Tanzmeister and going, "Okay, how can I - not copy that - but what is he doing that's great that I can add to my toolbox? And I think it's the same thing as I would always watch at a company when I was singing, (to see) how were the development efforts? How were the marketing efforts? How did the company treat artists? And so observation was just always something that I did, and I think it's because when I first got into the Houston Chorus, I was starting from zero, and everybody else knew what they were doing, and so it was easy to feel like an outsider (now they call it imposter complex). So I had so much to learn so quickly, and so I just tried to always be a sponge. And watching how people behave, walk, sang, talk, accents, all sorts of different things.

Marc A. Scorca: How did you like the traveling artist life?

Darren Woods: It's a love/hate relationship. When you go to sing in Europe and you're there for two months, it's great because you're in an apartment, you feel like you have a real life. And places that I sang often, I'd go back and I knew the donors by that time, but the places where you just sort of came and went, and it never was just a job and you never felt like you were phoning it in, but I began to really want to have a more stationary life. That's why Santa Fe was so wonderful. You know, my husband Steven (Bryant) and I worked there for over 10 or 12 years. We went there in June, we had a house, we had a car. Our friends were all there. So it was like we were going to work, doing what we loved. And yet we were having dinner parties with each other. We were having a normal life that wasn't in a hotel, where you took your CD player and pictures and made it look like a little home, so you could live there for three weeks. And even at City Opera when you were in New York for a long period of time, and you were walking to Lincoln Center, I just began to think (about the future) - and I always knew that administration was gonna be a part of my path - so that's why I was always looking toward how companies behaved and what they did. But I just wanted that life where I lived in one place and had one set of donors, and artists came there and just a different chapter. It's wonderful; it kind of is for the young. You know, by the time I got to be 40, I was like, "I've lived in my last Holiday Inn for a while".

Marc A. Scorca: So you say that administration was always in the back of your mind? How and why?

Darren Woods: Maybe 'cause I'm a control freak and I like to run things. I found an article. I was doing The Witch in Kansas City, and Scott Cantrell did a feature article on me, and I found it in a pile of stuff. And I said in there - this is years ago, and probably 10 years before I became a general director, or took Seagle, "I wish I had three lives. I loved being a singer. I would love to be a teacher, and I would love to run an opera company, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do all that". And in truth, I've been able to do all three. So I mean, I think when looking at things like watching the way the Santa Fe Opera...I mean, even as a singer there, the way the development department would make sure that we felt welcome in the donor lounge so that we could speak to the donors that came in there, and visit with them. I would know that there was a guest general director coming in and they would put an invitation on a seat that that person was going to sit in, or they would treat donors just so magnificently. And I thought, "That's the way to do it". When we were artists there, when I commented to someone who said (to me), "Why do you love singing at Santa Fe so much?" I said, "Because the only thing I have to worry about is singing. They take care of everything else for me so that I can just go be the artist, free of any other worry". And so there are a few companies around the country, but that was one that I worked at often that just spoke to me at all levels of how well to do it. And so I always said if I ever got a company, I was going to treat my artists like I was treated at Santa Fe and Houston and the places that really looked after their artists.

Marc A. Scorca: And then you got companies. Seagle Colony, where you are right now, and Shreveport Opera was your first general director position. You had observed, you had absorbed for nearly 20 years. What surprised you most when you first started being a general director?

Darren Woods: At Seagle, which is now Seagle Festival, when I took it...I'd been a Seagle singer back in 1980. That's where I met Steven, so I sort of knew that game. What surprised me when I retired from singing and I went to Shreveport, and the first show we were doing - I was over it, but it wasn't my show - the previous administration had cast it - was Romeo and Juliet. And Tybalt was one of my roles, and I had sung it several times. And I sat in the audience at that first dress rehearsal, and I thought, "I wonder if I'm gonna miss it". And I didn't. I thought, "I'm glad it's you singing that high A natural right there, doing that sword fight". And I found out that I loved being the person that put it on. And I loved the casting, and I loved bringing the artists and pairing directors, and I joke that my superpower is that I can hear this singer in California and this singer in New York City and they can all come together and I can go, "That's what it sounded like in my head", and just putting those puzzles together was so wonderful. My staff in Fort Worth, in particular, used to laugh because every time we would start an opera, I would say, "Everybody, remember, these artists are coming to give their gifts to our community, and our job is to make sure that their lives are so wonderful, that that's all they have to worry about doing". And so we really became, both companies - and at Seagle as well - companies for artists. And every decision we make or made, we really tried to put the artists at the forefront of those decisions.

Marc A. Scorca: And of course, something that an artist can bring to the company in switching over to administration, is to raise a level of care and professionalism in relation to the artist, because you understood that. Was there another part of your life as an artist that served you well as a general director?

Darren Woods: Yeah. I've always been a people person and a good schmoozer. And I remember calling you actually and saying, "How do you work with donors?" And you said to me, "If you do it right, you'll fall in love with them, and they with you". And you were absolutely right. They've become my dearest friends. They still are. I love to have my patrons and donors in our home. We love to cook. We make space for those people, not only because they're giving us their gifts, but because they genuinely move our art form along, right? It wasn't necessarily a surprise, (but) the biggest thing was how much I enjoyed extra time, being with donors and being with patrons and going out on fundraising calls and talking about investing in opera. And someone said, "Well, it's so hard to raise money". I said, "It's not. You talk to people about what you love and what it's doing for the community". Here at Seagle, we talk about (being) at the beginning of these singers lives, and "Look, they're at The Metropolitan Opera and you did that". So that part of administration where some people say, "Ugh", I love that. Even to this day, I love that so much.

Marc A. Scorca: I know you do. I've never been to a dinner at any home of yours that was not filled with a mixture of artists and patrons and just all of them able to enjoy the shared love of opera. It's a great gift that you have. You certainly are a people person. You're also really committed to new work. And you were talking about Basilio or Tybalt or Goro - 19th century Italian repertoire, early 20th century Italian repertoire; that your singing career as described thus far, was in the inherited repertoire, and you emerged as one of the leading proponents of new work. Where was that commitment born?

Darren Woods: Interestingly enough, in my instrumental years, I was in advanced theory and Newton Strandberg, who had studied with Nadia Boulanger, was my theory teacher. And so we were all doing 20th century technique things. Vocally, Craig Bohmler, who was composer of Riders of the Purple Sage for Arizona Opera, was a graduate student at the University of Houston. And I asked him if he had a song cycle that I might premiere at my junior recital, which I did. I was also at the knee of David Gockley. I was in the workshop of Willie Stark, and then in the chorus of Willie Stark. And I was amazed again - that sort of sponge - that what we did in the workshop was so vastly different from what the piece became when we did it on stage. Then, John Crosby started casting me in the new works at Santa Fe, but still, there wasn't that much new work going on that wasn't either in Houston or Santa Fe. So when I started producing, I heard Little Women and fell in love with Mark Adamo's music. Then came Jake Heggie and Dead Man Walking, and I would fly anywhere I could, to go see Dead Man Walking. Jake called me a deadhead for so many years before I produced it. Then, just the joy of putting your name on something or your artistic mark on something that very few, or noone ever had before. And also from the beginning with Craig, the idea of creation instead of interpretation was fascinating to me: that from Mozart to Jake and Mark, and also Carlisle Floyd was teaching at the University of Houston, when I was there, so I was sort of always around it. But that ability to have something go from your head to the page in notated state, and then hand it to me to sing, that's almost godlike power to me. And so, the more I got into it, it just kept feeding on itself. And so then came Frontiers, where we had the competition for unpublished work in Fort Worth. The second stage that we did in Fort Worth gave rise to us doing chamber work, which we had never done before. A lot of it came from the OPERA America New Works Forum, quite frankly. It's hard to commission somebody that you just meet, but when you get to have meals with them and go to shows with them and talk to them in forums, and you're like, "I think I can work with that young, that woman composer. I think I would love to work with David T. Little. I really want to talk to Beth Morrison". So, the camaraderie that OPERA America sort of instilled really helped that along. Also, I said a long time ago, "You can't just do it once and say, 'Well, nobody liked that. I'm not gonna do it again'". You've gotta commit to it. And so when we committed to a 10 year cycle of American work, that was a real step forward for the Fort Worth community. And it was just a joy to find those things. So, I don't know what sparked it other than my idols and artistic and general directorships were David Gockley and John Crosby, and that was a part of their DNA. And so I think it just sort of rubbed off on me somehow.

Marc A. Scorca: No, it is just so important. And I love what you say about the difference of interpretation and creation, because when you're doing a work from the inherited repertoire, you frequently are just assembling the pieces that are known to everyone, as opposed to really turning a page and discovering something new, as you commission a new work and produce and perform it. And you come by it with great pedigree. Now, you said three things. You wanted to be a singer, general director, and a teacher. And we've talked about you being a singer and a little bit about being a general director. But you as teacher? And I think we're probably not talking about teaching in a pedagogical or academic setting, but in a way, a nurturer, a coach, an encourager. When did that begin to be an area of interest for you?

Darren Woods: Again, it was paying it forward, because so many of those great singers, when I was a young singer, Flicka von Stade and Evelyn Lear and Tom (Thomas) Stewart: they all were my opera family. They were my opera parents, and often when I was a principal singer at Santa Fe, I was younger than some of the apprentice artists. But as I grew older and would see people coming up, I was always available to talk to people for advice, and then when Seagle came available in 1996, I still had an active singing career. I sang for three or four more years after that. But the chance to get a group of young singers and to talk to them and sort of tell them about the business, and talk about my journey, and how their journey might be better, and just build a curriculum of things that they're not going to learn in university. For instance, another thing that I took from you, is that when they finish the summer, they have an exit interview with me. But early on we talked about having a strategic plan, and forming your own personal board of directors. And you're going to have so many people as a young singer give you all this advice, and some of it's good, and some of it's not. And some of it's with malice and some of it's with love, and it's gonna be really hard to filter all that out. I do do some dramatic coaching. I do love to work with them as singers, but really it's what are the life lessons that we, as singers and artists, who, for the most part, our careers are in our past? What pitfalls did we see? How do you handle an administration that decides that you're not up to snuff, and you don't know what you're doing? There's so many things you're gonna encounter in this business that you can't learn at university, and we try to cover that. But mostly, it's just knowing that someone's there in your corner. I always have, every year - after the first day where we have (what) we call 'Death by Aria', (where everybody sings an aria in front of each other, and we sort of assess where everybody is) - somebody come up the next day that says, "You made a mistake. You shouldn't have picked me. I don't belong". And I'm like, "You know what? Just wait for two weeks and then we'll talk about this again, but you're right where you're supposed to be". And then to see them fly, you know, it's just the biggest joy.

Marc A. Scorca: It must be so rewarding to see some of the young artists you have coached, mentored, taught, make it big - make it down to major stages. You must have a great sense of an extended parenthood over a lot of artists.

Darren Woods: You have no idea. I flew down to Houston to see Falstaff, because Reggie (Reginald) Smith is one of mine. Jack Swanson's one of mine, Andrea Carroll was in that. Emily Richter just got into the finals of the Met yesterday, so she's gonna be singing this week (in the Final). Jack's making his Met debut this year. What's great is - because we give access to our donors and our singers, we're gonna have a bus of probably 50 people that are gonna go to The Met to see Jack, just to cheer him on from up here. They feel that invested in his career, and they feel like they, by giving scholarship money and by being there and buying tickets, that they have a little piece in that success, and it's thrilling.

Marc A. Scorca: Let's talk about Seagle. Seagle for decades has been part of a kind of developmental operatic infrastructure that we have, because young artist training programs, apprentice programs, resident artist programs, - in the old days, the tours we were talking about - all of this is, as I say, an infrastructure, a series of steps that an artist can take, just to build their savvy and their technique and their understanding of what it is to be an opera singer. So where is Seagle's place in this infrastructure?

Darren Woods: We are the step between university and the opera programs like Glimmerglass, Santa Fe, Des Moines: the ones that pay you to be an apprentice artist. So while there is a modicum of training in those programs, it's mostly (that) you're there as a paid performer, and there are some voice lessons; there are some masterclasses. We're an opera finishing school. We're that entity that says, "Okay, your languages need a little bit of work, we're going to do that". All of our teachers have different specialties, so one teacher may say, "You know, Byron's specialty is French, so why don't you go try those arias out with him". We do everything we can to prepare them to have their own opera singing business. And so I have a financial planner come in. We talk about strategic plannings. We have an etiquette class, because they're going to be eating with donors and people don't do dinner in the evening with their parents like we did back when you and I were kids. Everything that we can think of that will help them take that next step. And so that's why when we look at the rosters of everybody in the summer, we see we've got five at Glimmerglass and ten at Des Moines and three at Santa Fe. That's what success looks like to us. It happens less now, because we really have people that are dedicated to being opera singers (but it) is, oddly enough, a huge success when someone comes to me and says, "You know what? Thank you. This is the best summer of my life, and I know I don't wanna get up every morning for the rest of my life and think about my voice and my ability to sing, and I'm gonna do something else". And I think that is an equally good gift.

Marc A. Scorca: Absolutely. And yet one can see performances at Seagle Festival.

Darren Woods: Absolutely. We always do two big book musicals. They're singing musicals, so we're doing Sweeney, Todd and Brigadoon this year. We always do an American opera - one of our operas is American, one is from the inherited repertoire. This year it's Giovanni, and we're doing Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain, because we realized that we had never done an opera by a female composer, and we decided to right that wrong. We've got a couple of world premiere-ishes coming up over the next two years, and even though the singers do sing in the musicals, they're all here to be opera singers. We do have three on Broadway, I think right now. And one more coming in, in a major role. But it's very, very opera focused.

Marc A. Scorca: I get that, and I love good old singing musicals. Why do you do two of four productions as musicals?

Darren Woods: Everybody needs to be able to do it all now. You know, Chicago Lyric, Houston, everybody's doing book musicals. The skillset for the singer today just has to be far greater than it used to be. It's much more physical, it's much more (varied). I mean, I have got a couple coming this year that are jazz singers as well, and they've added that to their portfolio. You just can't be an Italian singer these days, unless you're the best Italian singer on earth and have a career; it needs to be much more varied. I also used to get into the conundrum where it would be, "I've gotta sing these five arias if I'm a lyric soprano", and "I've gotta sing these five arias if I'm a lyric baritone", and that's my audition package. And I had an epiphany about five or six years ago where I said to a singer, "You don't like singing those. What arias make you happy?" And he said, "Well, this, this, this". "So, why don't we try that? Why don't you work on those arias and present them?" And so I had a manager come, and was hearing all the singers. And they all know they're not ready for primetime players right now, but we have people from The Met and everybody come all summer long. And so this baritone sang the Faust aria, and the manager said, "What else should I hear? And I said, "Why do you hear the aria from Attila?" And the singer got through three lines, and the agent went (raises hand in 'stop' sign). "Don't ever sing that other thing again. You light up when you sing this; this is your repertoire". So I think part of what we do here is just giving the artist the freedom to be artists. And we say from the beginning, "Be your own artistic product starting today. There's no failure here except failure to try. So I want you to risk everything and find out who you are as an artist". And if you can do that when you're 22, you're way ahead of the game.

Marc A. Scorca: What luxury. So you must be asked for advice all the time. And I'm going to put this into three different categories because of the three different folders of your career. What's at the heart of Darren Woods' advice for singers?

Darren Woods: To sing what you love and do it with all the passion that you have. I would rather hear a singer with something to say - "Go out there and say it" - than a perfectly coached, tied-up-in-a-bow singer. Also, things go better with a plan, so sit down and sketch out what you want to be five years from now and put some goals to that and find out what you need to do to get there. Build your network around those dreams that you have. Have that plan. Have that board of directors, but basically sing what makes you happy.

Marc A. Scorca: How about advice for composers and librettists?

Darren Woods: Well, that's gotten a little dicier since Covid. Again, I would say write what you want and keep writing, because we need to have that creative force around us. It's more difficult 'cause commissions are far less than they used to be, and so some of the composers I advise or I'm working with, I just say, "Maybe we write this opera and we workshop this opera and we try to get it premiered, and it's for licensing fees instead of commissioning fees". Let's find a way to help you make a living doing this, but it might not be the $150,000 commission that was once available. So with all of the artists, but particularly composers and librettists, I think they're always having to adapt to the time that they're living in, and this has certainly been challenging. Someone even said to me yesterday, "Do we really need another big opera?" And I said, "Absolutely, we need another big opera, just as much as we need another chamber opera. We need opera in whatever form that takes". But I just encourage them to adapt, be keenly aware of the financial pitfalls of opera companies around the country. If you're gonna write an educational opera, be aware that it's gotta be SATB or it's not gonna get done. So I think my advice to composer/librettists are far more practical - (more) the nuts and bolts than the big dreamy thing, which they're gonna get to anyway.

Marc A. Scorca: Advice for general directors?

Darren Woods: Do it because you want to advance the art form in as selfless a way as possible. It's inevitable that ego's gonna get involved, because you're running a company. You have to have a healthy amount of ego to be a general director, I think. But if you start the day with the artist in mind and your genuine love for the repertoire, and your genuine love for moving our art form just further down the road. Then I think you're gonna be successful. Anything else, it's just a job. It can't be a job. For me, it's a life choice. It's the spirit of my life.

Marc A. Scorca: It does inhabit your life that way. It's a very hard job.

Darren Woods: Indeed.

Marc A. Scorca: Oh, Darren, it is so good to speak with you, to hear your thoughts on these important topics. I'm really grateful that you took some time at beautiful Schroon Lake today to talk. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in person, as soon as the way opens.