Operatic License

Life has come full circle for Richard Bado. Almost 30 years ago, he worked on his first opera—Hansel and Gretel—when he was a sophomore in college. Today, Bado is back in a university setting—in the recently created position of director of the Opera Studies Program at the Shepherd School of Music—and the first piece he conducted there was Hansel and Gretel.

Bado was smitten with music as a kindergartener, finding himself fascinated by a teacher’s piano playing during a class sing-along. “I went up to her afterward,” he says, “and asked, ‘Is it marked in the music when you put your foot up and down?’”

Richard Bado

That Christmas, Bado got a little chord organ. By the end of the day, he had taught himself to play Christmas carols on it. At age 6, he was taking piano lessons, and in the fifth grade, he conducted his first show, a musical.
Bado’s involvement in musical theater grew as he did, especially after he discovered opera while in college. “My first thought was, ‘This is like a musical but with better music,’” he says. “From then on, I was hooked.”

Bado earned music degrees from the Eastman School of Music and West Virginia University, and by the mid-1980s, he began a long-term relationship with the Houston Grand Opera (HGO). In 1988, he was named the HGO chorus master, a role he continues today. He is responsible for supervising recruitment, engagement, and training of chorus members for all of the opera’s productions, as well as conducting backstage instrumental and vocal ensembles.

In 1989, Bado made his professional conducting debut, leading HGO’s acclaimed production of Show Boat at the newly restored Cairo Opera House in Egypt. Thereafter, he conducted at Teatro alla Scala, Opéra National de Paris, New York City Opera, the Tulsa Opera, the Florida Philharmonic, HGO, Houston Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, Wolf Trap Opera, and the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. The accomplished pianist also has accompanied such performers as Cecilia Bartoli, Denyce Graves, Susan Graham, Marcello Giordani, Ramon Vargas, and Nathan Gunn, and he regularly appears in recital with famed soprano and longtime friend Renée Fleming.

Dean of the Shepherd School Robert Yekovich is delighted that Rice will be the beneficiary of these thousands of hours of practice, rehearsal, and performance. “Richard’s wealth of experience, both in the professional opera world and in conservatory-level opera programs, makes him the ideal candidate to lead our newly configured Opera Studies Program,” he says.

Bado admits that, initially, he had no interest in leaving his full-time HGO position. But the opportunity to build something new at the already highly regarded Shepherd School was simply too intriguing to dismiss. “I had been auditioning people right out of college and could see what they had and what they didn’t have,” he says. “I had a sense of what I thought was needed at that level.”

As director of opera studies, Bado will choose the operas, cast them, and conduct them, as well as teach and shape the overall curriculum of the opera program. His sights are on crafting a program that attracts top-tier students to the school and gives them real-world experience.

To that end, he’s looking toward, among other things, additions to the facility. “We definitely need a new opera theater,” he notes. The current facility, a traditional black-box theater in Alice Pratt Brown Hall, accommodates only 200 and has a small orchestra pit and stage. The physical constraints limit the choice of repertoire with regard to orchestra size.

In the meantime, Bado seeks to make the most of what he has for the students’ futures. He cited, for instance, the spring opera production: Cavalli’s La Calisto. “It is an early opera, which they’ve not done much of here, so I was excited to do that,” he says. “It’s a great piece for the voice, and it’s a style that’s being done a lot around the world.”

Bado also hopes to increase to three the number of operas performed with an orchestra each year. Currently, the school does a fall and spring production with an orchestra and a winter “scenes” program, in which students perform seven or eight scenes from different operas accompanied only by piano.

The program is a demanding one, but nothing foreign for Rice students and faculty. “I always keep in mind that this is only one of many things that they’re doing,” Bado says.

And this is but one of many things Bado, himself, does. “Consistent with the best traditions of the Shepherd School,” Yekovich notes, “Richard, like other Shepherd School faculty, will remain professionally active outside the hedges.”

Bado seems to draw nourishment from his many involvements, fueling his creativity and enthusiasm. It’s not unlike the way he describes opera: “The great thing about opera is that it takes all the art forms—theater, music, and art—and puts them together into a visual spectacle. If they all work, it’s truly great.”

—Jennifer Evans