Opera Warhorses

Hector Berlioz’ musical composition, “La Damnation de Faust”, never ceases to be both bewildering and beguiling. Much about it seems to belong in the opera house, but its mixture of  irresistible music and episodic subject matter has made its introduction to the operatic standard repertory as elusive as its message.

Lyric Opera, which had never performed any Berlioz stage work in the five and a half decades of its existence, chose to leap into Berlioz by creating an ambitious new production.  That production was the conception of English stage director Stephen Langridge, the talented son of the famous Britten tenor Peter Langridge (who died at age 70 during the seven performance run of son Stephen’s work in Chicago).

Stephen Langridge assembled a team, some of whom, like him, had not worked in the United States previously. The team new to Chicago consisted of the Cypriot-born British set and costume designer George Souglides and the German lighting designer Wolfgang Goebbel. Among the team’s veterans with prior Lyric Opera experience were Projection Designer John Boesche, Choreographer Philippe Giraudeau and Ballet Mistress August Tye.

Berlioz created a musical masterpiece that is so unconventional that to describe it, he created a unique category that he called a legende dramatique. (To the best of my knowledge, the only other artist to use that term was Maurice Pottecher, who competed for France in the Arts Competition at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic games. Whatever his talents at creating a legende dramatique, Pottecher, like the more famous Italian competitor, Gabriele d’Annunzio, failed to win the 1912 Gold Medal, and the sport eventually disappeared from the Olympic games.)

Although Berlioz clearly wished to mount his legende dramatique as an opera, it presented production problems from its earliest days, that defied even his expansive imagination as to how it could be staged. Yet, its music was so irresistible that performances defaulted to oratorio format, with its soloists and chorus statically singing with a symphony orchestra. No matter how suboptimal, experiencing “Damnation” performed as an oratorio was preferable to it remaining an unperformed opera.

(”Damnation” gets little attention as an influence on the development of the standard repertory in opera. But it was Berlioz (who with the assistance of writer Almire Gandonniere) who selected and strung together the episodes that form “Damnation’s” plot (and would gives some hints to librettist Jules Barbier and composer Charles Gounod to the story line that could be mined from Goethe’s sprawling work. Barbier and Gounod would find elements both within its dramatic and melodic structure to create their own revolution in French opera. There is insufficient appreciation for just how different Gounod’s “Faust” was from the operatic conventions of its time.)

Even so, the relationship (while on Earth) between the title character and Mephistopheles in the Berlioz version differs from their equivalents in the Gounod version. Berlioz’ Faust is a rational thinker who is disillusioned about his intellectual work. The realities of war are an affront to him. At first merely a voyeur to earth’s sensual life, he comes under the spell of Satan, who introduces him to the vision of Marguerite and simultaneously the vision of Faust to Marguerite.

Desirous of spending time alone with Faust, Marguerite inadvertently overdoses her mother with sleeping bills, and she is arrested for murder. Satan gives Faust the option to save Marguerite from execution in exchange for his soul.  Faust agrees to this bargain and, signing away his soul in blood, is taken by Mephistopheles to Hell.

Obviously, Faust’s string of experiences had meaning to Berlioz, but what those experiences mean was to an extent lost in the translation of Goethe’s unorthodox literary creation to Berlioz’ unorthodox musical ideas. Berlioz, who is a closely identified with the Romantic movement as Lord Byron and Berlioz’ friend, painter Eugene Delacroix, was first attracted to Goethe in the 1820s.  But nearly two centuries have passed since then and the Europe to which Goethe’s writings relate is no longer recognizable.

Thus, Langridge the production designer created a backstory, with a more contemporary relevance, to explain Faust’s intellectual quest and disillusionment. His Faust is a mathematician, whose mathematical speculations are aided by modern computer technology.

Mathematics is a discipline that is constructed by humans, but consists of abstractions that exist independently of human social interactions and concerns.  Yet every mathematician not only works in that world of abstractions but, as a human, also exists in a particular space at a particular time. Where to place Faust in time and space is the choice of production designer Langridge.

There are three geographic reference points in “Damnation”, one specific – a particular tavern that Goethe frequented as a medical student at Leipzig University – and two more general  – the plains of Hungary and the banks of the Elbe River.

Langridge uses these geographic reference points to invent a quite specific time and place to fix our Faust – at a the bulky monitor of a desktop personal computer in East Germany, prior to the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

Modern stage directors, particularly those of British heritage, seem fascinated by the five-decade period in the 20th century, when the Soviet bloc of police states held much of the population of the Eurasian continent in its thrall.

Time-shifting operas from previous centuries to 20th century “Iron Curtain” countries – real or imagined – often seems contrived, as one may discern from my recent reviews of productions of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” located in an imaginary Soviet Bloc Brabant (see: Summers Leads Sumptiously Sung “Lohengrin”: Houston Grand Opera, November 13, 2009) or Handel’s “Tamerlano” located in a Soviet Bloc Samarkand (see: Domingo’s Towering “Tamerlano” Bajazet: Los Angeles Opera – November 22, 2009).

But for “Damnation”, not only does the time-shift to a police state work, but, as will be argued below, it connects many of the dots in a libretto whose elements many find difficult to rationalize.

Notes on the Performance

Sir Andrew Davis leads the Lyric Opera Orchestra in the beautiful first passages of “Damnation”. Faust appears is a small rectangular room that is several feet above the stage floor. The room is enclosed by the stage curtains so that the image we see is like a framed picture, or the screen of a television set. Here we see the first of John Boesche’s projections, that flash first mathematical formulas, then streams of light. Paul Groves sings Berlioz’ Faust in the classical French style, including the use of head tones. [For my review of another Paul Groves performance in a French opera, see: Christine Brewer, Paul Groves Lead Elegantly Sung “Alceste”: Santa Fe – August 1, 2009.]

[Below: the mathematician Faust (Paul Groves) using his PC to expand the horizons of  his profession; edited image, based on a Robert Kusel photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

After Faust contemplates nature in his monologue Le vieil hiver, Faust’s computer cubicle is lowered to the stage floor where the chorus, spreading red and white checkered tablecloths for their picnic lunches, represents the townfolk.

The dancers have several distinct roles as non-singing actors. The men dancers are soldiers in their camouflage fatigues, the women are in cheerleader outfits. Occasionally, cheerleaders will cross the stage pushing baby buggies. Later in the performance we understand that the townsfolk engaged in the bucolic picnic, the soldiers and cheerleaders are all agents of infernal forces.

I had previously discussed the inspired work of the choreographers Giraudeau and Tye at the San Francisco Opera (See: Night at the Museum: “Iphigenie en Tauride” Springs to Life in S. F. – June 17, 2007), a production, in which Susan Graham and Paul Groves starred, that was later seen at Lyric Opera. But production designer Robert Carsen’s concept for staging Gluck’s “Iphigenie” emphasized movements en masse of the dancers onstage, while the chorus sang seated in the orchestra pit behind the orchestra’s musicians.

By contrast, Langridge’s concept integrates Giraudeau’s dance team and the Lyric Opera chorus onstage in ways that I found to be spectacular (and, yes, fantastic in the adjective’s original sense).

It is this picnic scene, and the immediately following scenes of the advancing Hungarian army and church service that we experience the true genius of Langridge’s production. Langridge has devised a way to connect these seemingly disparate scenes (whose sequence and rapidity baffled would-be production designers for a century and a half). He integrates the large Lyric Opera chorus under Donald Nally with the work of 20 solo dancers, choreographed by Giraudeau and Tye. (Chorus and dancers were further augmented by the children of the Anima-Young Singers of Greater Chicago, and by actors and supernumeraries.)

He uses central themes to integrate those elements. The townspeople act as a mob, the soldiers and police perform their official duties, the soldiers’ wives and lovers bear children and participate in memorial ceremonies for their fallen spouses. Yet, all these police state citizens double as demons from hell engaged in securing the one soul whose intellectual pursuits had until then allowed him to be impervious to what was happening in the society around him – that of the mathematician Faust.

Those themes fit any police state (and some would extend the metaphor to whichever democracy with whose domestic or foreign policies they might differ at a point in time). But Langridge has chosen the DDR, the former East German socialist republic, as the symbol of the police state. It is one whose former flag is deliciously theatrical and it is one that has conveniently disappeared from Earth (perhaps resurrected in Mephistopheles’ Hell).

[Below: the flag of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR); resized image of a Jaume Olle design.]

Although I enjoyed the Giraudeau-Tye choreography for “Iphigenie”, I found their work with “Damnation” to be particularly ingenious. Most of the male dancers attend the picnic in Army camouflage fatigues. Their “girls back home” appear in the cheerleader/”song girl” outfits associated with American high schools. Faust, his computer cubicle having descended into the picnic grounds, sits on a park bench where one of the town’s young men is making out with his special song girl.

Faust exclaims that the sons of the Danube are preparing for combat (Ah! les fils du Danube aux combats se preparent!) Suddenly, soldiers in camouflage grab the lover boy. His hair is shaved into a military buzz cut, and he is stripped to his tidy whites, dressed in his own camouflage fatigue uniform, then joins the other soldiers into the dance routines that represent training for military ground maneuvers.

Thus the picnic is transformed into the Rakoczy March scene (a Berlioz invention, not present in Goethe’s work) with the symbols of the militaristic DDR dominating the scene. The song girls lead cheers for the soldiers and help them don facial paint to complete their camouflage for battle. The projections utilize the electronic gun site targeting that is essential to computer-assisted modern warfare.

[Below: the soldiers who serve both the police state and the legions of Hell; edited image, based on a Robert Kusel photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

Then seven coffins, each draped with the DDR flag, are brought on stage by the soldiers in their omnipresent fatigues. Widowed (and pregnant) song girls receive the flags of their fallen soldier spouses in ceremonies that observe the precision of solemn military funerals, with their choreographed “about faces” and other rituals of soldiers honoring their dead.

We are now in the church scene where a monkish figure is in evidence among the congregation singing its hosannas. He stands near a tall pole in center stage. We come to be aware that the monk is Mephistopheles (John Relyea), and, in time he discards his robe, revealing a shimmering blue-violet coat like that of a Las Vegas lounge singer. He stands behind Faust, his hands tracing the shape of Faust’s head, as if staking his claim to Faust’s soul. He enters into a conditional agreement with Faust to show him the worldly delights his life of scholarship has denied him, without any obligation on Faust’s part. Trust the Devil that there are no strings attached!

Mephisto has a succession of arias that includes some of the most interesting (and often hauntingly beautiful) of French vocal music. Bass-baritone John Relyea, who is increasingly associated with the diabolical roles, was superb as Mephistopheles, with a beautiful sound throughout the range of the role.

[Below: Mephistopheles (John Relyea) determines to earn the soul of Faust (Paul Groves); edited image, based on a Dan Rest photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

Two of the coffins have been opened to reveal two voluptuous maidens in rat costumes. The scene transforms to Auerbach’s tavern in Leipzig, where a Tim Burtonish Brander (Christian Van Horn) is host, who sings a rousing “Song of the Rat”.

[Below: Christian Van Horn as Brander, host of a popular Leipzig night spot; edited image, based on a Dan Rest photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

Once the University students begin their revels one of the rat ladies begins a pole dance on the very pole that the monk Mephistopheles stood near in the church scene.

[Below: a pole-dancing rat enlivens the entertainment at Auerbach's Keller in Leipzig; edited image, based on a photograph, from stephenlangridge.com.]

As the University students begin the “Requiescat in pace” the rat ladies return to their coffins. Mephistopheles, of course aware that Faust finds no happiness in the bar scene and pines for a long term relationship, has offered him the vision of Marguerite, who is first seen briefly pushing her mother in a wheelchair. As Relyea’s satan sings the magical Voici des roses, Faust’s dreams of Marguerite (Susan Graham) become more vivid.

[Below: Marguerite (Susan Graham) sits in her apartment; edited image, based on a Dan Rest photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

In another of this production’s truly inspired elements, the characters that represent the Gnomes and Sylphs that sing that most magically beautiful of Berlioz choruses Dors! heureux Faust (Sleep, happy Faust!), repeat the symbology that will continue throughout the production. We become aware that the townspeople, the soldiers in camouflage, the song-girls, and the students at Auerbach’s tavern are as much part of the forces of evil as Brander’s diabolical coterie, the rat girls and the chorus of demons. All these recurring images represent for us the wide-ranging imaginations of Berlioz and Langridge.

But, as the second part of the evening commences after the intermission, the dancers and chorus have another assignment – as Mephistopheles’ agents to bring about Faust’s seduction and disgrace of Marguerite. A stage above the stage is divided into three parts. Two are the adjoining rooms of Marguerite (in the center) and her mother (to the audience’s right). On the other side is a balcony terrace that Marguerite uses for fresh air and for her trysts with the Fausts, both real and in her fantasies.

As we drift into the entangled dream worlds of Faust and Marguerite, pairs of dancers portray Faust and Marguerite in increasingly complex interactions, at times with Groves and Graham acting as themselves, at other times, when they are sleeping, with their avatars acting for them in their dreams.

Marguerite brings a cup of tea to her mother, who sits in her room watching television. Soon the dream images make us aware that the tea contains the contents of a prescription drug bottle (the “sleeping potion” of Goethe’s play) and Marguerite’s avatars continue to bring her mother more cups. Satan is at work, with Relyea’s Mephistopheles passing through the wall between the apartments, at one point watching TV with Marguerite’s mother.

[Below: Marguerite (Susan Graham) listens for her mother, while Mephistopheles (John Relyea) lurks in her mother's room; edited image, based on a Robert Kusel photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

Although Graham appears in the first half as the mute vision, she is a dominant presence in the second half of the evening, beginning with the enchanting recitative Que l’Air est Etouffaint and the first of her two great arias, Autrefois un Roi de Thule. Of her performance, the highest tribute possible is that it was consistent with her reputation as an incomparable artist. She met my high expectations of her. [For my review of another Susan Graham performance, see: Graham, Swenson, Prina Luminous in S. F.’s Stellar “Ariodante” – June 15, 2008.]

Graham’s Marguerite is joined on her balcony by Groves’ Faust. Her ecstasy at being with her dream lover in person, causes her to dose her mother with increasing amounts of the sleeping pill-laced tea.

From this point in the opera, Mephistopheles takes charge. In a grand coup de theatre, impressively singing what is probably the most famous aria from the opera, Devant la maison, he enlists Wills o’ the Wisp and other infernal forces (of course the now familiar Langridge images)  to confuse and destroy Marguerite. Marguerite’s vigilant neighbors, suspicious of the goings on, crowd into her mother’s apartment to determine if there is foul play.

[Below:  at right, a group of neighbors enter Marguerite's mother's room to check on her, in the center Mephistopheles communicates with townspeople milling below from Marguerite's bedroom, and, at left, Faust and Marguerite are together on her balcony; edited image, based on a Robert Kusel photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera.]

Finally, in a chilling succession of scenes, Graham’s Marguerite sings her second aria, L’amour l’ardente flamme. The neighbors have reported a crime to their local police, who now have crime scene investigators determining the cause of the mother’s death. A police matron stands ready to arrest Marguerite, and does so as soon as the CSI team has confirmed that criminal evidence implicates her.

Marguerite has been convicted of murder and is to be executed. Mephistopheles, who has promised Faust that he can determine his own fate, gives Faust the choice to save Marguerite in exchange for agreeing to serve him in Hell. Faust signs the document in his own blood (Mephistopheles having the instrument for a blood draw handy, as if it were a ballpoint pen). Then the terrifying Ride to the Abyss takes place, in which Faust’s eternal fate is sealed.

Personal observations

There are many elements to praise in this production. First, the trio of principals are deservedly recognized as performers of the first rank in each of these roles, and the chorus and orchestra performed excellently. Langridge’s ideas consistently made sense and brought a unifying theme to a work of genius so sophisticated that successful realizations of it have eluded many who have tried to mount it.

I, myself, was so impressed by the 20 solo dancers that I believe each of the – Kurt Adametz, Victor Alexander, Leah Barsky, Andrea Beasom, Melissa Bloch, Karen Castleman, Paul Christiano, Kari Gregg, Veronica Guadalupe, Jessie Gutierrez, Jarrett Kelly, Hogan McLauglin, Dmitri Peskov, Todd Rhoades, John Ross, Yael Levitin Saban, James Monroe Stevko, J. P. Tenuta, Nefertiti Thomas and Tiffany Vann – should be separately identified in this review.

In my judgment, the Langridge production has advanced the cause of  presenting “Damnation of Faust” as an opera. The integration of music and dance, the classical ideal of the great 18th century composer Gluck, is achieved, in a reading of Berlioz’ libretto and score that has relevance to our century.

Its revival may be limited to opera companies with the stage equipment to handle complex sets that appear to be suspended in air and to assemble a large cast of dancers and chorus to support the four principals. But for a company with the resources to mount it, this is a production that I would not hesitate to recommend for revival in Chicago and for presentation elsewhere in future seasons.

This post continues the essay I began in the feature Opera in Live Performance: Thoughts and Assessments at the End of 2009, Part One. I don’t know if I would characterize the Part One as necessarily pessimistic, even though I argued that a considerable amount of the revenues that operatic performance received from philanthropy may be thought of as “bubble-generated”.

This is partly because the philanthropists’ contributions included some significant percentage from an unsustainable economic expansion, and partly because wider societal needs are cutting into the philanthropic revenue base on which the arts are dependent. This opinion is not my own, but appears to be a consensus among opera company administrations that I have interviewed in several parts of the United States.

*****

[Below: Tosca (Adrienne Pieczonka) seeks to comfort the tortured Mario Cavaradossi (Carlo Ventre) as Spoletta (Joel Sorensen) looks on; edited image, based on a Cory Weaver photograph, courtesy of the San Francisco Opera.]

[For my performance review, see: House of Puccini: Striking San Francisco Opera “Tosca” with Pieczonka, Ataneli and Ventre – June 14, 2009.]

*****

Nor do I believe that the opera companies in some European countries that are used to generous governmental subsidies  are necessarily immune from the consequences of economic forces impacting their social systems. However, to paraphrase San Francisco Opera’s David Gockley, American opera company general directors would probably prefer to be dealing with the issue of large, but declining governmental subsidies, rather than the American situation of having (if at all) only small, though, of course, very welcome, government support (while competing for the “name” singers and other artists in the international marketplace for their services).

Thus, around the world, but particularly in the United States, I believe that the resources at the disposal of producers of grand opera will be much more constrained for the indefinite future than has been the case in the recent past. If, indeed, my supposition is correct, it is a worthwhile to discuss where these constraints may be most in evidence.

*****

[Below: although engaged to another, Gerald (Bryan Griffin) falls in love with Lakme (Leah Partridge); edited image, based on a Deborah Gray Mitchell photograph, courtesy of the Florida Grand Opera.]

[For my performance reviews, see: Leah Partridge’s Splendid “Lakme” – Florida Grand Opera, Miami: February 27, 2009 and  Evelyn Pollock, Chad A. Johnson in Revelatory Florida Grand Opera “Lakme” – Miami, February 28, 2009.]

*****

The Subscriber Pushback

There is a consequence of the decline in philanthropy, and of the absence of generous governmental subsidies. Every opera company’s subscribers have become ever more important. It is a remarkable group in every city. I doubt if any company can be said to have taken their subscribers for granted, but as resources decline or fail to increase, what this group thinks and does is (or unquestionably should be) an increasingly important concern to opera managements.

I think many opera company general directors would accept a church analogy as not inappropriate. (The reader may substitute whatever religious entity is preferred.) The subscribers are the core congregation, as opposed to those who come to church only for the “high” religious holidays (their metaphorical equivalent are those who will only buy the “hot ticket” to see a world famous superstar in a popular opera) or who visit the church from another area.

You, as the church leader, may want to lead your congregation into new directions, and expose them to some different ideas about how to do things. Because there is almost always a degree of trust in any church’s leadership in the early days, you can expect the core congregation to support you, for a while at least. But you will know when the congregation is beginning to become unhappy, and  the unhappier they get, the more uncomfortable will be life for you as the church leader.

If you no longer can depend on the congregation’s support, it doesn’t help much if you get accolades from all over the world at how brilliant you are or how “in the right” you are. If your congregation is split, or, even worse, is pretty well in agreement that what you are doing is wrong, it’s time to change course. You leave, or you take significant and maybe painful steps to reconcile your ways of doing things with the preferences of the core congregation.

As instructive as this metaphor may be, there is one part of it that doesn’t work so well. In a church, the leader may be preparing for the weekly service on a week by week basis, so that directions can be changed very quickly. Conversely, an opera company may make decisions several years ahead of time and find itself trapped in commitments that prove to be unpopular with the subscribers, or far more costly than expected, or both.

It is probable that in such a situation, one of two things will happen. The director whose artistic choices ultimately proved to be unpopular will have to leave, or signal that the future will be much different from the past, and the company will find itself concentrating its energies for several seasons on producing operas that they are certain the subscribers will wish to see.

[Below: the Rhine Maidens plead with Siegfried to return the Ring in Seattle's "Goetterdaemmerung"; edited image, based on a Rozarii Lynch photograph, courtesy of the Seattle Opera.]

[For my performance review, see: Astonishing End to Seattle Opera’s “Goetterdaemmerung” – August 14, 2009.]

(The company, of course, will be grateful if the critics are happy, and, as well, the standees, and the people who help buy the tickets that sell out the house when there is a superstar. But you cannot survive as an opera company, absent a giant, predictable subsidy from somewhere, on the good will of critics, standees and a superstar’s affluent fans. They alone don’t generate enough of a revenue base.)

Possibly the most obvious area where “subscriber pushbacks” have made the lives of opera managements very, very uncomfortable, has been the mounting of operatic productions that make no sense to the opera’s subscribers, or, even worse, offend them. One can lecture subscribers on why they should not regard opera as a “trophy art for the middle class”, and that a company should not shy from enlisting production designers that set out to offend that “middle class” and make fun of the traditional ways of presenting the operas they like.

But unless most of the company’s revenues are derived from sources other than subscribers (who in the United States are both the principal ticket buyers and the philanthropists), the operatic management that feels that tradition-shredding “shock and awe” is the proper way to produce opera should be certain that their subscribers are unanimously with them.

*****

[Below: Tamerlano (Placido Domingo) consoles his daughter Asteria (Sarah Coburn); edited image, based on a Robert Millard phtograph, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera.]

[For my performance review, see: Domingo’s Towering “Tamerlano” Bajazet: Los Angeles Opera – November 22, 2009.]

*****

Ticket Price Inflation

When, in the 1960s, a year before beginning college, I bought my first ticket for an orchestra seat at the San Francisco Opera, it was only $10 to see an opera starring Renata Tebaldi and Tito Gobbi. (Tebaldi didn’t show, but the experience convinced me that the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House “orchestra section” is a great place to watch opera.) My subscription seats have been there ever since. No one will be surprised that the tickets are priced quite a bit higher now.

I am unaware of any company anywhere that has been able to hold cost increases for subscriptions in line with the per capita income growth for their community over any substantial period of time. One could object that it is the opera’s cost increases that should determine the increase in ticket prices rather than the increase in the community’s per capita income, but, it seems to me that ultimately economic forces will prevail. Increases in opera production costs cannot outstrip increases in a community’s wealth indefinitely.

Any long term opera company subscriber anywhere has seen ticket prices soar, even as that subscriber’s opera company has seen the percentage of revenues raised from ticket sales decrease over time. Although some subscribers have substantial personal wealth, it is likely more typical that most opera season subscribers, like persons who hold season tickets to, say, the home games of a National Football League team, must devote an ever greater portion of their income each year to be able to hold onto a prized possession.

Therefore, most opera managements, certainly in the United States, have reconciled to the reality, even with some brilliant marketing and popular offerings, their revenue bases will likely be constrained, and, where there may be new growth, it will be wise to devote much of that to replenishing and augmenting depleted endowments. The hope for the future is in reining in and substantially decreasing costs.

Perhaps the non-subsidized opera companies are the operatic canaries in a coal mine. What happens to opera in the United States could well become a model for opera companies everywhere in the future.

I argue that there are several areas where there is hope for bringing costs in lines with the new economic realities: 1) a better use of the world’s existing operatic physical resources, and 2) a better appreciation of the world’s current abundance of first rate opera singers and the other artists that support them.

*****

[Below: Production Designer Achim Freyer's disk for Wagner's "Das Rheingold"; edited image, based on a Monika Rittershaus photograph, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera.]

[For my performance review, see: Achim Freyer’s Fascinating “Rheingold” Begins L. A. “Ring” – March 11, 2009.]

*****

What should be better appreciated: operatic singers and orchestras

My reviews on this website have made the point that most of the singers that are hired in principal roles (and many in small roles) are extraordinarily good – and I have attended live performances of most of the major opera singers of the past half century. There are more good opera singers than there are opportunities for them to sing.

In fact, it is my opinion that it is now becoming rarer to see a bad performance of a principal in an operatic role than it used to be to see a very good performance. I also believe that the orchestras in those cases where my experience with them covers several decades, are consistently better than they ever were.

I suspect that quite a few critics would disagree with me on this, although many of them will not have attended performances of reigning superstars in the late 195os and the 1960s, as I have, and will not have the same basis for making a comparative evaluation, just as I cannot speak for performances that took place in the 1930s and 1940s.

Some critics will have criteria that can be explained, and respected (”Baritone X doesn’t pronounce his French covered vowels correctly”), even if I have  a different perspective on what constitutes a world class operatic performance. But there are some critics, and I suspect many of this website’s readers will concede this, that just don’t seem to know what they are talking about.

There is a point to be made about the emergence of great operatic talent that is readily available to all major and many smaller companies. As opera patrons begin to appreciate how good the contemporary singers are, and how many deserve to be regarded as “world class”, the worry that one is going to spend a fortune on a ticket for a substandard vocal performance  may not be justified. Things can always go wrong, of course, but confidence in the casting decisions of most of the major operatic managements is probably well placed.

And some of these voices you’ve not heard of may become famous later on. Consider some of the artists that I saw at San Francisco Opera in their 20s or early 30s when their fees were still relatively low: Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price, Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras are a few that come to mind without even researching the subject.

One likes to see artists that have had great successes elsewhere in the world at the home company, but I suspect the top ten artists in fees charged per performance at any given time are almost never the top ten best voices at that moment. If one has confidence in your opera management’s ability to engage wonderful voices (particularly those of artists with a great stage presence and acting skills), then assume that they will find people you have never heard of (and whose fees are not now exorbitant) who will really impress you.

What is Deplorable: Throw-away Art – Opera Sets and Costumes

Opera productions used in performance suffer wear and tear. The more popular the opera, the more damage to sets and costumes is suffered. In addition, there are new operas, and there is renewed interest in operas that have not been performed for a while, so there are good reasons for new productions. Even musicology can suggest new productions. We now have quite different ideas of how Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffman”, or Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” or Verdi’s “Don Carlos” should be performed than, say, 30 years ago.

For most opera companies, there is an ongoing expense to store old productions. There are  examples of newly installed opera company intendants arriving and destroying many (in one famous case, it is reported almost all) of the existing productions, giving them free rein to work with their favorite concept directors to create new productions.

However, once one has made all the qualifying statements, too much of the operatic heritage has been deliberately destroyed – for some discarded productions, I suspect there is not even a photographic record of what has been lost.

Opera sets are utilitarian things. If a great artist has created them, that does not seem to matter much. It’s like the monastery in Milan where Leonardo da Vinci painted the “Last Supper”. The monks need a wider door to the kitchen? Just cut a wider opening in the current door below Leonardo’s mural, even if you have to cut off the feet of Leonardo’s image of Jesus Christ. (At least they saved most of the monastery wall that Leonardo used for his painting, which is more than can be said for the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle productions of Wagner’s “Fliegende Hollaender” or Verdi’s “Rigoletto”.)

There should be an international movement to secure the remaining productions of Ponnelle, and Franco Zefferelli, and Ezio Frigerio, and other production designers of the first rank. (What “secure” might mean obviously can be the subject of more webposts. Intellectual property laws and customs surely have a bearing here. But as a point of principle, no work of art should be destroyed as a consequence of striving to preserve intellectual property, just as none should be destroyed simply to balance one institution’s budget or to clear the way for a  new production desired by management.)

My guess is that at least David Hockney’s productions in the hands of the Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Opera are safe, but Hockney is one of the very few opera production designers whose recognition as a great artist so transcends the opera realm that one could imagine his physical sets being housed for display in an art museum.

There is a history of sharing great productions between major companies, and increasing sophistication in building sets that can fit the stages of several companies, greatly reducing the costs. (I will begin a series of website articles on this surprisingly complex subject soon.) But another area is just in its infancy – production “makeovers” where a production for one opera, when there is no longer need for the sets, are not discarded, but are converted into something else.

When this June, San Francisco Opera audiences see Robert Perdziola’s attractive sets for Gounod’s “Faust”, they are seeing a production that originally was designed for Marilyn Horne to perform Rossini’s “Tancredi” at Lyric Opera in Chicago. Perdziola reconstructed the sets to house Frank Corsaro’s concept of how to stage “Faust”, but when they appear in San Francisco, stage director Jose Maria Condemi will have reworked the sets again to bring us his own ideas.

“Makeover” productions can, in the right hands (resourceful stage directors working with inventive production construction crews) have the promise of significantly reducing costs, without diminishing the audience’s operatic experience.

These are my thoughts and assessments ending 2009. I will have more to say on each of these subjects. As always, anyone who wishes to comment upon, or associate or disagree with these thoughts, should contact me, through the now old-fashioned mechanism of e-mail, at the address operawarhorses@yahoo.com.

[Note from William: Over the past several months, I have posted occasional interviews with opera singers and other artists, whose careers are obviously in their ascendancy, reflecting worldwide interest in securing their talents for future opera seasons. The current interview is with Raymond Aceto, the basso cantante graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Company's Lindemann Young Artists Development Program.  I interviewed him last month in Houston singing Baron Scarpia in the new Houston Grand Opera production of Puccini's "Tosca" and again last week in San Diego, where he sang Zaccaria in Verdi's "Nabucco" for the San Diego Opera.  The "Houston" half of the interview is published here. The remainder will be posted at a later date.]

Wm: How did you become interested in opera?

RA: It’s a funny answer. I grew up in Brunswick Ohio, outside of Cleveland. I went to Brunswick High School, where I  was in the band and choir and also sang in a rock band. I have a collection of guitars. I determined that I would pursue music in college.

[Below: Basso Cantante Raymond Aceto; edited image, based on a Dan Rest photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.]

I was admitted to the Bowling Green State University (near Toledo) and took the music courses. There, I had  a wonderful voice teacher, Andreas Poulimenos, who helped me discover that I  have more voice than I thought I had. Bowling Green offers extensive training in both music and the performing arts.  I switched into a performance major and fell in love with the idea of operatic performance. I was then accepted into the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program.

Wm: When did you establish that you are a basso?

RA: It was obvious as soon as my voice changed. When I was 13 and 14, I was singing lead vocals in a rock music band. However, at age 15, I was relegated to singing backup vocals. Bassos do not sing lead vocals in rock bands.

Wm. Possibly to the annoyance of some baritones with empty weeks in their schedules, you continue to perform not only Scarpia but Escamillo as well. For a role that has such familiar music, Escamillo has always seemed to me to be a tricky role to sing. Obviously, you believe the role lies in your voice. Do you believe that having a voice that lies lower than most baritones brings advantages to singing Escamillo?

RA: Escamillo’s part has a high tessitura, but also much of it lies low. A lot of baritones handle the high parts well, but cannot make the low sections of, say, the Toreador Song, sound good. A basso who has the ability to negotiate the top, can, in my opinion, get better coverage of the role throughout its range.

[Below: Escamillo (Raymond Aceto) has become the new lover of Carmen (Victoria Vizin); edited image, based on a Robert Millard photograph, courtesy of the Los Angeles Opera.]

Wm. With the Puccini sesquicentennial behind us and casting for operas during the Wagner and Verdi bicentennials currently in progress, you have amassed a significant repertory of roles for all three composers. To begin with Puccini, you have sung smaller basso roles in “Tosca”, but there are relatively few bassos historically that have assayed the role of Scarpia. Were you inspired on those occasions when you sang those comprimario roles in “Tosca” to consider Scarpia as a future role? What attracts you to the part?

RA: I have been attracted to the role of Scarpia since I was 17 or 18. I always thought it was a great role, I studied it and always wanted to sing it. Conductor Patrick Summers approached me in 2006 when I was performing the role of Fiesco in Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” in Houston.

[Below: Fiesco Grimaldi (Raymond Aceto, left) threatens the life of Boccanegra, the pirate, (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) in the 2006 Houston Grand Opera production of Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra"; edited image, based on a Brett Coomer photograph, courtesy of the Houston Grand Opera.]

I love singing Puccini, but he did not write that much for the basso voice. I do sing Timur in “Turandot” and  Colline in “La Boheme”. I love these roles, but none of these are as satisfying as performing Scarpia. It is an intense, driven role. It suits my personality. I love the challenge, the danger, the intensity.

I think it can be a role that can sound wonderfully sung by a lower voice. It does take a great deal of technique and skill to get through the singing. Some baritones that I have heard bark some of the passages, but I cannot do that physically or vocally. Since I find Scarpia calculated and sinister, I have a smile on my face masking the calculating demeanor. (For the performance review, see: A New “Tosca” for Houston Grand Opera – January 30, 2010.)

Wm: Although it’s rare to hear a basso cantante sing the role, a few have done so. I saw Giorgio Tozzi perform the role opposite the Tosca of Magda Olivero at San Francisco Opera.

RA: Giorgio Tozzi is one of the basso cantantes I most admire.

Wm. My website reviews have characterized you among the leading basso cantantes of our day. Do you believe that basso cantante describes your voice, even though you also sing Escamillo and Scarpia?

RA: I think basso cantante describes what I am always striving to do. At every point that I am singing, I am driving to produce the most beautiful sound that I can sing.

Wm: As we move into the Verdi bicentennial you are singing such basso roles as Zaccaria, Banquo, Fiesco and Ramfis. Even though you are not particularly associated with the bel canto repertory, it seems possible that Zaccaria could become one of your signature roles. “Nabucco” was an opera that Gaetano Donizetti actually conducted, and of which he very much approved. Does performing Zaccaria appeal to your inner bel canto?

RA: Most definitely. Even though I have been singing Escamillo and Scarpia, I truly do feel my soul and my voice is in bel canto, particularly Verdi. I find nothing so rewarding as a good legato line to make the voice feel right at home for me.

Wm: One can hear how Verdi’s use of the basso sound evolved over his career. Do you as an artist find that you approach singing, say, the role of Zaccaria differently from Fiesco or Ramfis?

RA: Well, I think that Fiesco is written in the same vocal style as some of Zaccaria’s music, whereas Ramfis is declamatory, except for the Temple Scene.

Zaccaria’s three arias are each written in a different style. The first aria, D’Egitto la sui lidi , represents Verdi’s very early style. However, the second act Preghiera, Tu sul labbro de’ veggenti, reminds me of the later Verdi that you encounter in “Don Carlo”. (For the performance review of Aceto’s Zaccaria, see: Fink, Valayre and Aceto in San Diego Opera’s Exceptional “Nabucco” – February 20, 2010.)

[Below: Raymond Aceto is Zaccaria in San Diego Opera's production of Verdi's "Nabucco"; edited image, based on a Cory Weaver photograph, courtesy of the San Diego Opera.]

My ultimate Verdi goal is Filippo in “Don Carlo”. Because, there are five superstar roles, it is rarely done these days. Once I was the Filippo to Jerome Hines’ Inquisitor. He won by the way.

Wm: You are scheduled to sing in Hunding in Francesca Zambello’s production of “Die Walkuere” in San Francisco. In that production, Hunding seems to be a particularly lively part, not the “stand with a spear and sing” stage direction still sometimes seen. In a production such as Zambello’s do you begin to prepare for it in any particular way prior to your arrival in San Francisco for rehearsals?

RA: My preparation for every role is pretty much the same. I am meticulous in preparing the text and music. However, I want to be open to what the conductor and the stage director want from me. Also, I find that I am also influenced by the scenery and costume.

I try not to come in with too preconceived an interpretation. For Scarpia in Houston, I listened to no other singer in that role, wanting to find my own approach to it.

Wm: You have worked with a number of stage directors over your career. Which ones are particularly noteworthy?

RA: I think every opera singer should have the opportunity to work with David McVicar. I have done two myself. David is intense, but highly intelligent and creative. Those who work with him have a tight feel of support and camaraderie. He will get directly into your face one second, then he puts his arm around you the next moment.

[Below: The Comte des Grieux (Raymond Aceto) expresses his concerns to Manon (Natalie Dessay) in David McVicar's production of Massenet's "Manon"; edited image, based on a Dan Rest photograph, courtesy of the Lyric Opera of Chicago]

I was the assassin Sparafucile in McVicar’s production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, and his interpretation emphasizes the considerable debauchery of the characters. I also was in his production of Massenet’s “Manon” at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. (For the performance review, see: Kaufmann Astonishes, Dessay Enraptures, in McVicar “Manon”: Lyric Opera of Chicago – October 15, 2008.)

The production of Puccini’s “Tosca” that I just completed with Director John Caird was wonderful. Caird, who comes to opera from theater and film had a completely fresh perspective on staging the opera. He was so wonderful, so intelligent, so into the whole process. As it turned out all the principals, myself as Scarpia, Patricia Racette as Tosca and Alexei Dolgov as Cavaradossi were each performing the role for the first time. We all took great pains to be as good actors as we could be.

Besides McVicar and Caird, I was impressed working with Franco Zefferelli, and also enjoyed Christopher Alden staging Verdi’s “Aida”. It is always a great experience to work with a great director personally. Unfortunately, many of the productions are revivals or remounts and one ends up with assistants without the ability to approach the production as creatively as the person who conceptualized the production.

However, an opera singer has to stay focussed  when they move from opera house to opera house into a variety of productions.

Wm: And which conductors do you look forward to working with?

RA: There are so many I like working with. I have worked a lot with Patrick Summers, and appreciate his sensibility, his accuracy and support. I like to work a lot with Nicola Luisotti. (We call each the bass brothers, because both of us have low-pitched speaking voices.) I have found both Emmanuel Villaume and  Stephen Lord to be very close supporters of mine. Another conductor who is sensitive to the needs of singers is Marco Armiliato.

Wm: I understand that the first “Tosca” of your career was an especially memorable experience.

RA: Yes, as a 23 year old, I played the Jailer in “Tosca’s” third act. Luciano Pavarotti was the Cavaradossi. In my whole life., he is the best voice I have ever heard. One day, as I was standing in the wings, Pavarotti said to me “beautiful voice, have a good time”. Then, after I sang the Jailer’s words, I had to cross the stage in front of him to exit, and Luciano said “bravo”. It was amazing.

Wm: Besides Pavarotti, what artists do you admire?

RA: I have worked with Bryn Terfel, Susan Graham, Placido Domingo, Paul Groves and Renee Fleming. In May, I will celebrate my 20th year performing opera. It has been wonderful working with my friends in the community of bassos. Sam Ramey and I have become very good friends, and so it is also with James Morris. Ramey and Morris have established their presence in the generation before me, and there are younger guys than me who will do their thing. I have nothing but respect for all of them and their careers.