Daniel Auf der Mauer for The New York Times
The city was blanketed in winter, but in a kitchen with a bird’s-eye view of Central Park, Fabio Luisi was conjuring up spring.
Like a modern-day alchemist, he counted drops of essential oils — oak moss, rose, sandalwood, sweet basil, rosemary and bergamot — into a glass beaker, occasionally pausing to contemplate his potion. A bit more lavender, both Bulgarian and a vintage variety from a very good year. Linalool, a chemical found in mint, laurel and cinnamon. Hedione, likened by some to the aroma of jasmine and by others to rain-touched flesh.
Then, after diluting the mixture with grape alcohol, he filled a tiny atomizer and spritzed a strip of paper.
The scent, neither masculine nor feminine, was hard to define. Garden clippings in a straw basket, perhaps. A stroll through the fields of Provence. Line-dried sheets against a lover’s skin.
“This is the magic of perfume: It’s something where words are unnecessary,” Mr. Luisi said. “I think it’s quite close to music. After all, how do you describe a sound? It’s not only a question of words but a question of emotions.”
New Yorkers know Mr. Luisi, 55, as the principal conductor for the Metropolitan Opera who pinch-hit during the medical leave of the company’s music director, James Levine. In Europe he led orchestras in Vienna and in Dresden and Leipzig, Germany, before being named general music director of the Zurich Opera in 2012.
But when he steps off the podium, Mr. Luisi can be found in his ateliers in Manhattan and Zurich succumbing to his other great passion: perfumery. A one-man workshop — sourcing, blending, bottling, labeling and even packaging his creations himself — he has begun selling his fragrances online at flparfums.com (from $50 for 15 milliliters) and in a single store, Profumeria Mariarosa, near Genoa, Italy, where he was born.
The Italian pianist Carlo Grante, who recorded the Busoni Concerto with Mr. Luisi and the Vienna Symphony, was an early customer.
“Fabio’s personality is rather linear, concrete but wide-embracing and very multifaceted,” Mr. Grante said. “In his perfumes, one can find his alter ego, his other Fabio. What he doesn’t communicate with his friends, he does with his activity.”
Mr. Grante ordered Pouvoir Mystique (a mixture of helichrysum, labdanum, saffron and neroli that Mr. Luisi calls the most mysterious of his perfumes) for himself. He chose the marine-based Jeux de Vagues, inspired by Debussy’s “La Mer,” for his wife.
Mr. Luisi’s perfumes “remind me of his dreams,” Mr. Grante said. “They don’t remind me of him. With him there’s always a feeling of discretion, quietness and reserve. His perfumes are complex. You take a trip on a winged horse.”
The Austrian soprano Manuela Dumfart, a self-described perfume obsessive who met Mr. Luisi in an opera master class, was surprised when she heard of his endeavors.
Then she ordered testers and was impressed. “Even the cat was very excited,” she said. “He was always running after me when I wore Simplicité des Fleurs, so I thought I had to get that one.”
The fragrance, meant to evoke memories of flowers though it contains no floral oils, “is really amazing,” she said, “like a wonderful walk in our countryside, clearing my mind.”
Ms. Dumfart intends to wear the perfume when she performs. “It makes me feel good and protected in a way when I wear a fragrance onstage,” she said. “It’s a great perfume, he’s a great conductor, and it will give me strength. ”
Mr. Luisi has long been enamored of perfume, going so far as to scour eBay for discontinued classics. Three years ago he began poring over textbooks by Hippolyte Dussauce and Jean Carles, teaching himself the foundations of perfume-making: the base, comprising thick, large-molecule natural oils like vetiver and sandalwood; the top, those quickly evaporating notes that waft out when a bottle is opened; and the heart, which connects the two.
But on a visit to Firmenich, the fragrance company on Madison Avenue, he learned perhaps the most important rule of all.
“The first thing they told me was, ‘No rules,’ ” he said. “ ‘Forget everything you have read and go by your own rules.’ ”
Perfumers, known as “noses” in the industry, often construct best sellers around marketing research and trends. But Mr. Luisi, who has joined the Natural Perfumers Guild, was struck by one nose who preferred to let her fantasies guide her.
“She said, ‘I have this idea of a naked woman in a fumoir in France in the ’30s, and she’s smoking and exposing her beautiful body to the men around her,’ ” Mr. Luisi recalled, running a hand through his dark, wavy hair as he sat amid nude portraits of assorted subjects taken by his wife, the photographer and violinist Barbara Luisi, in the studio they share. “This is the perfume she wanted to make, and it’s the way I want to make perfume as a self-taught searcher. It’s not so important whether people are going to love it or not. I want to start with an idea and realize it.”
One of Mr. Luisi’s favorite perfumes, Don d’Amour, is described on his website as “made with a heart full of love (which it still is).” With his wife as muse, he blended vintage patchouli, two forms of ambergris, rose and tobacco in an effort, he said, to capture her softness and strength. The result made her very happy — until he decided to make it available for purchase.
“Why are you selling it?” he recalled her demanding. “It was a perfume made for me.”
He arched an eyebrow. “It’s a very good one,” he said.
In mid-January Mr. Luisi the perfumer received his first official review in ÇaFleureBon.com (following a round of snark on the opera blog Parterre Box).
“Subtle sophistication radiated from each and every one of these 13 samples,” John Reasinger, the blog’s natural perfume editor, wrote in the review. “Dabbing, sniffing and taking ‘notes’ over the next two weeks, I was consistently pleased and impressed. The maestro seeks as much perfection in composing at his scent organ as he does at conducting his orchestra.”
Mr. Luisi said he would donate the profits from his perfumes to the Luisi Academy for Music and Visual Arts, founded by his wife to eventually send American students to the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Italy, where for 15 summers he worked as a vocal coach and eventually a conductor.
“I do not have to live on this profession,” said Mr. Luisi, who will resume his day job at the Met with performances of “La Cenerentola” and “Madama Butterfly” in April and May. “I do it for my pleasure and the pleasure I can give.”
