Music genius cultivates young talent on farm for Castleton Festival

A row of barnlike sheds stands on Lorin Maazel’s farm in the rolling hills of Rappahannock County. They’re simple prefabricated sheds, the kind you can pick up at any home-supply store, decorated like miniature barns: the kind of sheds people set up in their yards to store the power mower, the mulch, the lawn tools. On Maazel’s farm, they contain high-quality Yamaha keyboards. They’re practice rooms for the young opera singers and instrumentalists taking part in the Castleton Festival.

They also have air conditioning. “The first week,” says Nancy Gustafson, an operatic soprano who finds herself in a role she hadn’t prepared for as Castleton’s general director, “everyone was coming to me going, ‘It’s really hot in there.’ We knew we were putting in air conditioning; we just didn’t have time to put it in.”

Castleton Festival performances

• La Boheme -- Opening Night

  June 25. Festival Tent. 6 p.m. $85.

  A Soldier's Tale & Master Pedro's Puppet Show

  June 26. Theatre House. 2 p.m. $75.

  All-Bizet Program with Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano

  June 26. Festival Tent. 7 p.m. $60.

  Music Inspired by Shakespeare, with Dame Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons

  June 30. Music Center at Strathmore. 8 p.m. $25-$150.

  La Boheme

  July 1. Festival Tent. 7:30 p.m. $85.

  Family Day

  July 2. Castleton Farms/Theatre House. 2 p.m. $30.

  All-Gershwin Program, featuring pianist Kevin Cole

  July 3. Festival Tent. 4 p.m. $60.

  Porgy & Bess in Concert

  July 7. Hylton Performing Arts Center, Manassas. 8 p.m. $30-$60.

  The Seven Deadly Sins

  July 8. Festival Tent. 7:30 p.m. $85.

  A Soldier's Tale & Master Pedro's Puppet Show

  July 9. Theatre House. 7 p.m. $75.

  La Boheme

  July 10. Festival Tent. 4 p.m. $85.

  Stars of the Future

  July 11. The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Va. 7 p.m. $20.

  Il Tabarro & Gianni Schicchi

  July 14. Hylton Performing Arts Center, Manassas. 8 p.m. $30-$60.

  The Seven Deadly Sins

  July 15. Festival Tent. 7:30 p.m. $85.

  A Soldier's Tale & Master Pedro's Puppet Show

  July 16. Theatre House. 2 p.m. $75.

  La Boheme

  July 16. Festival Tent. 7 p.m. $85.

  Music for Violin and Orchestra

  July 17. Festival Tent. 4 p.m. $60.

  Sylvia McNair, soprano

  One-woman show "Subject to Change" (with pianist Ted Taylor)

  July 18. The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Va. 7 p.m. $20.

  150th Anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run with Denyce Graves, mezzo-soprano

  July 21. Hylton Performing Arts Center, Manassas. 8 p.m. $30-$60.

  The Seven Deadly Sins

  July 23. Festival Tent. 2 p.m. $85.

  Opera scenes from "CATS"

  July 23. Theatre House. 7 p.m. Free, must RSVP.

  Finale Concert

  July 24. Festival Tent. 4 p.m. $60.

  For more information,go to http://www.castletonfestival.org.

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World-class music in Home Depot sheds: It’s the epitome of the Castleton Festival’s distinctive blend of the first-rate and the down-home. And it’s not what anyone expected from Lorin Maazel.

Maazel, 81, has long represented the most elite side of classical music: brilliant talent, an imperious manner and a reputation for not suffering fools lightly. No one questioned his musical genius; lots of people questioned the warmth in his performances. He headed some of the most renowned classical music organizations in the world: the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna State Opera and the New York Philharmonic, where he was music director from 2002 to 2009. His home in rural Virginia was a retreat fully in keeping with an elitist reputation: 550 acres of rolling farmland in an unspoiled and expensive area where he and his wife, the German actress Dietlinde Turban Maazel, raised three children and cultivated a literal menagerie including, after the zebra and donkey had been kept together in close quarters, a zonkey. When Maazel built a home theater, it was to present chamber concerts by the most famous musicians in the world — Emanuel Ax, Itzhak Perlman — for a select audience.

The Castleton Festival is showing a side of Maazel few people suspected was there. Its can-do, homemade spirit smacks of the fresh-faced naivete of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney: “Let’s put on a show! There’s a barn out back!” For two months every summer, the family property is overrun with musicians. Maazel and his staff (that would be, largely, Gustafson) hand-pick a group of talented young artists — instrumentalists, singers, conductors — who come live on the grounds, work intensely with Maazel, and put on staged performances of opera and concerts for the public that rival the best of Washington’s professional offerings. The third season begins on Saturday with Puccini’s “La Boheme,” performed in a new pavilion Maazel has erected to replace the old festival tent. (“What bloom! What volume!” he says excitedly, of the pavilion’s acoustics.)

The Maazel family pitches in. Dietlinde works with Gustafson as an unofficial second in command. The youngest of the Maazel children, Tara, offers German coachings; Leslie, the second son, helps chauffeur members of the children’s chorus back and forth for rehearsals in a function they have dubbed “Maazel’s Limousine Service.” And Maazel himself, in blue jeans, can be found leading rehearsals two and three times a day, working nine hours in front of the orchestra, for no remuneration. Castleton’s budget this year is $2.5 million; until now, Maazel has been paying for almost all of it himself.