Shepherd School’s Bado pursues his lifelong love for music

Shepherd School’s Bado pursues his lifelong love for music

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

Richard Bado worked on his first opera when he was a sophomore in college. It was almost 30 years ago and the production was “Hansel and Gretel.” Today, Bado is back in a university setting — in the newly created position of director of the Opera Studies Program at the Shepherd School of Music — and preparing for the school’s first production this season: “Hansel and Gretel.”

Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Richard Bado was recently named the director of opera studies at the Shepherd School of Music. In this newly created position, Bado will select, cast and conduct the operas, as well as shape the overall curriculum of the opera program.

Life has come full circle for the man who was smitten with music as a kindergartener.

He became fascinated by the teacher’s piano playing during a class sing-along. “I went up to her afterward and said, ‘Is it marked in the music when you put your foot up and down?’”

That Christmas Bado got a little chord organ. By the end of the first 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.

His involvement in musical theater grew as he did, but in college he discovered opera.

“My first thought was, ‘This is like a musical but with better music,’” he said. “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 his longtime relationship with the Houston Grand Opera (HGO). In 1988 Bado was named the HGO chorus master, a role he continues today. He’s 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, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, Wolf Trap Opera and at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. The accomplished pianist has also 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 said.

Bado admitted that he had no interest initially in leaving his full-time HGO gig. 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 said. “I had a sense of what I thought was needed at that level.”

As director of opera studies, Bado will be choosing the operas, casting them and conducting them, as well as teaching and shaping 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 said. 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 they’re doing: Cavalli’s “La Callisto.” “It is an early opera, which they’ve not done much of here, so I’m excited to do that. It’s a great piece for the voice, and it’s a style that’s being done a lot around the world,” he said.

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

The program is indeed a demanding one, but nothing foreign for students or even faculty at this institution.

“I always keep in mind that this is one of many things that they’re doing,” Bado said.

And this is but one of many things Bado is doing too. Yekovich noted, “Consistent with the best traditions of the Shepherd School, 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 enthusiasms. It’s not unlike the way he described opera itself: “The great thing about opera is that it takes all the art forms — it takes theater, it takes music, it takes art — it takes this visual spectacle and puts them all together, and if they all work, it’s going to be truly great.”