Make that a double bill：COT's staff conductor Alexander Platt thrives on challenges

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(Free-Press-Release.com) May 7, 2007 -- He is a spotter of young singing talent unlike almost any other. And he is an active citizen in Chicago's wide-ranging cultural life.

But too little is made of his contribution in bringing two outstanding conductors to local prominence. Dickie recruited Jane Glover from England for her American debut to launch his first fully produced COT season with Monteverdi's "Orfeo" in 2000. These performances, co-produced with American stage director Diane Paulus, were such a success that Glover not only became a regular with COT, she was also hired to be only the second music director in the history of Chicago's much-loved Music of the Baroque, where she has excelled.

But Dickie does not confine himself to British imports. In the case of COT's resident conductor and music adviser Alexander Platt, he simply did something few other managers or company and orchestra directors do -- he answered a letter.

"Brian is of the old school," said Platt, 41, on a brief and rare break between rehearsals for COT's upcoming double bill of modernist one-acts and work with his regional orchestras in Waukesha, Wis., and Marion, Ind. "I had just moved back to Chicago from Wisconsin and read that Brian was coming in to reinvigorate COT, so I wrote to him. He not only answered, he invited me to lunch, we talked for hours, and he offered me a job."

A tireless researcher

It's not surprising that Dickie, who became something of a legend as the head of the renowned Glyndebourne Opera Festival in England and energized the Canadian scene as chief of Canadian Opera Company, would appreciate Platt and eschew the red tape of hiring committees and multiple interviews to bring him aboard. A New York native who grew up in Connecticut, Platt graduated from Yale and then won a coveted Marshall Scholarship to study at King's College, Cambridge, in England. He's been putting on operas and staging rare revivals since his college days and while many would-be maestros rely on packaging and promotion, Platt is an intellectual and tireless researcher.

"From the first full-scale revival -- and recording! -- of Robert Kurka's essentially lost American masterwork 'The Good Soldier Schweik' to Benjamin Britten's rarely presented 'Rape of Lucretia' to Britten's towering late masterwork 'Death in Venice' to last year's belated Chicago premiere of 'Nixon in China' by John Adams -- where else could I have done all of this?"

And now Platt has the daunting task of leading a double bill of two of the most musically challenging one-act operas ever written -- Bela Bartok's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" (1911) and Arnold Schoenberg's monodrama "Erwartung" (1909-10).

Source: http://www.msn.com