Summer Opera Travels part 1

It has been a moderately busy travel season to see opera.   On the list this summer was: Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (mid/late June); a quick audition trip to Central City Opera (last day of June); Santa Fe Opera (late July/early August); and, now, Seattle Opera for their production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle which the company presents every fourth season.

In some ways, a summer opera festival in Saint Louis seems incongruous…it is, after all, the home of Anheuser Busch, producer of Budweiser beer, the Cardinals baseball team, the launching point for history buffs interested in following the Lewis and Clark trail, and notorious for its heat and humidity in the summer months.  You wouldn’t – at first blush – think that it could also be home to a long-standing, successful opera company through which several of this country’s well-known opera artists have come.  However, this is exactly the case and remains a stopping point for most in the industry as they “Festival-hop” throughout the summer.  More importantly, there is a fiercely loyal following in the community which attend every production regardless of familiarity.

First opera I saw of the four I would attend over a period of three days was a rarely performed one by Mozart written when he was 19 entitled, Il Re Pastore.  The cast was wonderful – including Heidi Stober and Maureen McKay – the concept of the production didn’t work for me.  The idea was to update the setting (the story comes from Roman antiquity) to a 19^th C. English country manor with the inhabitants choosing to re-enact the fable.  Unfortunately, nothing in the score supports this idea making it a difficult argument.  Still the cast fearlessly committed themselves to the challenge and I applauded their efforts.  The singing was very good and the orchestra played this rare piece very well making an enjoyable evening.  I will confess, there is a reason that this opera is rarely produced and it pales in comparison to the better known masterpieces of Mozart’s.

The next opera attended was another rarely produced one, Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles.  This one is another light-hearted story where Mozart’s characters come back to life and interact with the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  It’s mostly a comic romp, and the music sometimes imitates Mozart and other composers.  John’s music is always colorful as was this.  He’s re-worked the orchestration and some of the vocal writing from its debut at the Met and it will be interesting to see if his efforts give the piece more life.  The production was wonderful with lots of levels, action and dramatic lighting…James Robinson, the company’s artistic director, was the stage director and did his usual interesting work.

Next up was a wonderful new production of Salome starring a regional opera favorite, Kelly Kaduce.  Kelly has made a wonderful career of portraying roles one wouldn’t necessarily think she was suited for but succeeding with her musicality and dramatic abilities.  She brought the femme fatal to life with her acting and excellent delivery of the text (OTSL performs everything in English, by the way).  The Jochanaan was good but the other standouts for me were the Herod and Herodias; usually these roles are about 60 per cent sung with the balance being a form of declamatory/approximated pitch speaking.  In this case, I believe I heard all the notes and rhythms for the first time.  Kudos to Myers and Zifchak in doing this.

That same day, I attended the perennial favorite, La Boheme.  The audience loved it, of course.  The production was straight on traditional and the cast was appropriately youthful to make a wonderful stage picture.  Puccini’s music was well-served by Ari Pelto who is to conduct our Carmen in January.

So there it was…four operas in three days.  The next morning was another three hours of auditions (OTSL also operates a fine young artist training program, the participants making up chorus and several of the smaller roles) with colleagues from other opera companies from around the country (this is one of what I call the “unofficial conferences” of the summer where we convene at the same time to see shows and connect with each other) and then off to the airport to head home.  Definitely a full weekend of opera.

Christopher