A common but to me unnatural situation in opera houses is what the Germans call 'Nachdirigate' - conductors taking over a piece midway through a run of performances after the busier or more expensive big-name conductor leaves to go and do something else. It's actually a very good thing for young conductors (or repetiteurs wanting to get into doing more conducting) because it increases the opportunities available to the less experienced of us who aren't yet getting offered our own productions, so I'm not complaining. But the trouble with it is that conductors in this situation do not generally get to rehearse with the orchestra and will have limited (if any) time to rehearse with the singers, so they can't really come in and do everything differently from the person they're taking over from. Some people would argue they shouldn't do anything differently - same tempos, same beat patterns, same fermatas. Most people would say there's some room to make it your own but few people, I think, would suggest you can be as free in this situation as you could with your own production.
Suppose you're the conductor taking a musical rehearsal (accompanied by piano) with singers who have done 6 performances of a piece and you're taking over for the last two. Well, first of all, you're lucky to be working in a house that affords you this luxury. But are you, really? What is the rehearsal for? The singers know what they're doing, they have done it enough to have got used to doing the piece a certain way, they have sung it into their voices at your colleague's tempos and while they should be professional enough to cope with small deviations, they will be unlikely to give performances as assured as usual if they are too focused on having to change everything. Remember that anything you change is going to be new for the orchestra as well and they may also be hard to coax into anything very different.
So how far are you going to try to pull the singers in a different direction? Do you give them a whole load of new ideas about how to sing the role, on the basis that they may need an injection of fresh thought to get back to the level of inspiration they felt before they got into a routine? Or do you take the view that if it ain't broke don't fix it?
There are arguments both ways but I think one thing is clear: you should only say something if you have something to say. I think if you have something new to offer and have a sound musical or dramatic reason for persuading a singer to change their interpretation, there's no reason not to throw it out. They will say if they find it too difficult to change at this stage (or don't agree). But it's a big mistake to start trying to change things for the sake of putting your own stamp on something. That's just as true with something you're conducting from the beginning as with a takeover situation: meddling for the sake of it is never a good idea. One sometimes sees that conductors feel they have to say something or people will feel they're being passive; if they don't specify, they seem to worry, they will seem not to care on way or the other.
The trouble is that there is some truth in this. Really strong musicians with a very clear sense of how the music should go probably won't agree with every aspect of someone else's interpretation. They probably will see things differently and will not feel comfortable doing it a way that doesn't fit their conception. Musicians who are not quite as brilliant - or perhaps not quite as experienced - may have figured out that the conductors who impress the most are the ones who come in and instantly know what they want to change, but they may not (yet) have figured out enough about the music they're conducting to know what needs changing. So they fiddle about so as to look more assured than they really are. It might even be a good career strategy; it would be easy to say that everyone sees straight through it but actually I'm not sure that's even always true. But of course it's not a very honest way to make music.
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