Congratulations Louise!

This wasn’t the first time she’d asked if I’d volunteer to do this. I was close to being in The Marriage of Figaro last March, but it was in the middle of our season subscription renewals (not to mention my birthday) and just bad timing. I wanted to do Don Pasquale in May (the cowboy costumes were pretty cool), but the director ended up just using the chorus and not needing many supers. When Michelle asked if I’d be in Carmen, it seemed like a great opera for me to make my debut on the Capitol Theatre stage. Not only is it the first opera I ever saw (my parents sat me down in front of the TV when I was seven or eight and had me watch the film version with Julia Migenes), but it is also one of the few operas out there where I already recognize the music and story. Because of that, being in it would be an opportunity to experience an opera I was already somewhat familiar with in a completely different way.

Never having done any real acting or stage work (unless you count Alki Middle School’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), I was amazed at how quickly the opera came together once the cast arrived. Everyone seemed to show up all ready to go. Just before Christmas, Michelle emailed out the rehearsal schedule. I wasn’t expecting much of a time commitment (there’s a reason why supers are often simply referred to as “spear carriers”), but I’ve ended up spending a good 15 to 20 hours at rehearsals for my 2 minutes of stage time. The 20 hours is nothing though compared with what some of the supers have to do. Since I decided only to be in the parade (I’m one of the matadors), I only had to be at rehearsals for Act 4. The supers who are soldiers also had to be had a lot more rehearsals than me.

One of the most interesting parts of being a super is getting a costume. The costumes made by our costume shop are beautiful. I went to a costume fitting a week or so before the dress rehearsal and was given my first lesson on how to put on tights (apparently, matadors wear pink tights!). I also got a blue bull fighter costume. After the first dress rehearsal, the costume shop decided that my costume wasn’t flashy enough, so I came back and was refitted into a new costume that is really cool. Not only am I the only bullfighter with tassels on my pants (my wife’s favorite part of the costume), but the detail on the cape and jacket is amazing. I think it looks pretty cool, even if it isn’t something I’d wear out every day.

Working with the cast and directors has also been great. Many of the supers in this particular opera are fathers of the kids in the chorus. A lot of others are sons, husbands, boyfriends, brothers, and friends of USUO employees or Utah Opera chorus members. Most of us are in an opera for the first time - some others have been being supers in operas for decades. It’s an entertaining group – which is good because we spend a lot of time in the basement waiting for our turn on the stage.

I was worried that I’d be nervous when we finally went out on opening night, but rather than having anxiety, I’ve been having a lot of fun on the stage. Luckily, I don’t have to do much more than walk down the stairs and wave to the mayor. But still, it’s fun to be part of this talented group of people. Everyone seems to love what they’re doing, and I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for an art form that I wasn’t extremely familiar with before I started working for the company. Being a super is a lot of work for very little glory, but it’s definitely an experience I’m glad I’ve had.

Here are some photos of how supers were used in Carmen:

Most of the soldiers in Carmen were supers. These are the guys who put in the really long hours at rehearsals.

The Mayor and his wife were volunteer supers.

The Act 4 parade in Carmen used a lot of supers.

Some of the supers were Banderilleros.

And others were Picadors.

And here are the Matadors. I'm the one in the maroon costume.

1. Follow Utah Symphony | Utah Opera on Twitter – http://twitter.com/usuo.

2. Watch our Twitter page. When we’re giving away tickets to a performance, you’ll see a Tweet from us that includes the phrase ”RT & follow to enter.” We’ll also do another Tweet with the deadline for the contest.

3. Retweet our entire Tweet to enter a drawing for the free tickets. You only need to Tweet the phrase once to enter the contest. You can Tweet it as often as you’d like, but one Tweet per Follower per day will be entered into the contest.

4. When the contest is over, we’ll announce a winner. Watch our page on Twitter closely to see if you’ve won. You’ll need to send a message to us through Twitter before the performance is passed with your contact information. We’ll contact you to arrange your tickets.

The winner will receive two tickets to the performance specified in the original Tweet. No purchase is necessary to enter the contest, and buying tickets won’t increase your chances of winning tickets. Seating is at the discretion of the ticket office.

For our first contest, we’re giving away a pair of tickets to the Monday or Wednesday performance of Carmen at Capitol Theatre. The winner will be announced on Saturday.

Last season we spent quite a bit of our time seeking out and listening to feedback from patrons to understand why they subscribe to our performances and support USUO. We surveyed subscribers and single ticket buyers on everything from parking to their music preferences and ended up making some changes, both small and substantial, to our season subscriptions based on their feedback.

For example, the Classical, Pops, and Discovery Series were renamed the Masterworks, Entertainment, and Family Series (the traditional names of these Utah Symphony series). We decreased the number of concerts in our Entertainment Series from seven to five, which allowed us to bring in bigger acts and avoided the problem of overlapping the concerts with our Utah Opera productions (frustrating for those who wanted to subscribe to both). Some of the changes were great. Some of them (such as general admission tickets for the Family & Lollipops performances), we might need to give a little more thought for next season.

While we were making these changes, the economy was tanking and we weren’t sure how things would end up going into this season. We knew that the community supported us and wanted us to succeed, but with everyone’s shrinking budgets, there were a lot of unknowns.

The good news is that things went mostly as planned and you might notice seating at Abravanel Hall and Capitol Theatre is a bit tighter this season than it has been in recent seasons. One of the matrixes that orchestras and operas look at to measure their base of support is the number of households that are subscribing to their performances. Going into next season, we’ve seen a 20% increase in the number of subscriber households compared with this time last season, and we’ve already surpassed the number of households that we ended with last season. This is great news! For our Entertainment Series in particular, the response has been tremendous. For this series alone, we’ve had a 37% increase in the number of subscriptions. Our other series are also performing well, and we’re close to selling out of subscriptions for our Vivace Series (this will probably happen later this week or next with less than 20 seats left as of now).

So, with that being said, I want to say thanks! With the rough economy that we’ve been experiencing, your support for our performances, musicians, and organization speaks volumes about the commitment that Utahns have to their community and the arts in particular. There are still challenges ahead (ticket sales account for less than 25% of the revenue we need to operate USUO), but I’m convinced that we have the support in the community that we need to succeed.

Thank you! I can’t wait to see everyone at our performances.

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

Click here for the recipe

Don Pasquale is the perfect little dolce (It. for dessert) to end a full and rewarding season of opera. So treat yourself, you won’t regret it.

Also, both the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune had articles on the U.’s production of The Little Women and the collaboration between the school and Utah Opera.

Finally, there were also a few reviews of last weekend’s concert out there, including one of the most impressive “blog reviews” I’ve ever read (I’ll post the link once I find it again). Examiner.com and the Salt Lake Tribune both had reviews online.