DESIRE AND DIVINITY

Marisa Michelson

This past week has been one of stretching our boundaries and exposing ourself to different types of theatrical music.  It has gotten us thinking about the intention of the composer in opera.  If one focuses on the history of operatic performance, their composition seems designed to entertain an audience, whether that be an audience of aristocrats or an audience of the bourgeoisie.

Contemporary performance art, on the other hand, seems designed to express something deeply personal in the life of the artist--fears, desires, obsessions, and preoccupations. It is up to the audience to find something with which to relate, and the pleasure of being an audience member depends largely upon his/her willingness to find common ground.

Concerning The Desire/Divinity Project, seen Saturday night at Judson Memorial Church, what we related to the most was Marisa Michelson's original music and the performance of same by her Constellation Chor. Voices floated upward into the cavernous playing space, with overtones bouncing around the hall. There were some gorgeous harmonies and mystical dissonances that put us in a meditative state.

Coincidentally, our interest in theater was born in this space when the late Al Carmines regularly produced unusual pieces of music theater. We warmly recall Ira Siff's performance in The Journey of Snow White. (Memories upon request!)

With our dear Ethan Heard directing and Emma Jaster handling the movement and costuming, we knew the evening would be a worthwhile one. Moreover, the evocative lighting by Elizabeth Mak used hand held spotlights to create eerie shadows on the wall.

As far as the text is concerned, Part I made use of fragments of poetry written two and a half millennia ago by Ancient Greek poet Sappho. Scholars still do not agree about her profession as school mistress or leader of a choral society, nor can they agree about her sexual orientation.  

None of this matters because translating the fragments into English didn't provide much in the way of drama, character development, or storytelling. One might just as well have been listening to nonsense syllables. It all sounded just fine with Ms. Michelson's lovely voice and self-accompaniment on the lyre.  

Dressed in black and sitting on a stool, her  simplicity and commitment were striking. Members of her Constellation Chor spread around the playing area, weaving in and out among the sections of the seating area giving one the feeling of participating in an ancient ritual.

Part II utilized as text a section of the bible known as Song of Songs. This part of the bible is known for its eroticism but, once again, the text was less interesting than the music. (Perhaps it sounds better in Aramaic.) 

For this part of the program, Ms. Michelson exchanged her black garment for a white shift and wrote accompaniment for an interesting combination of instruments--percussion, cello, and various wind instruments including a Bansuri flute.

Ms. Michelson was able to exhibit another of her multiple talents, playing the piano. Her musical language goes beyond words and includes all manner of vocalizing with words and wails receiving equally weight.

We loved Mr. Heard's direction which held our attention throughout, and Ms. Jaster's astute control over the movement which had an archaic feel. 

We understand that there will be a Part III in the future. We wonder what the text will be.

(c) meche kroop

ALL THE WORLD'S A DRAG!

Miles Mykkanen, Lauren Worsham, Ato Blankson-Wood, Joshua Jeremiah, Sichel Claverie, John Taylor Ward, and Stephanie Hayes onstage at National Sawdust

An ABFAB night like last night can only happen when people of extraordinary talent and imagination pool their resources. Heartbeat Opera, enjoying (and they seem to enjoy themselves as much as the audience) their fourth season, put on a show like no other in celebration of Halloween. We love Halloween because we get to dress up and release our inner spirits.

Last night's festivities allowed those who love opera and those who love Shakespeare and those who love the performers (we can put ourself in all three categories) to gather under one roof and celebrate the arts. If only one aria from each and every opera based on a Shakespeare play had been on the program, we would have been there all night--and never complained. If there was one "flaw" in the evening it was that it was too short. We just couldn't get enough.

Just imagine the splendiferous voices delighting the ear whilst dazzling visuals filled the eye! Anyone who remembers Ira Siff's Gran Scena Opera Company will recall fondly how much fun it can be to send up opera. Last night's production fell into that niche of burlesque.

A script by Co-Artistic Director Ethan Heard, Peregrine Heard, and Sara Holdren was spoken by Ms. Heard and contained multiple plays on the words of The Bard. The Bard himself was portrayed by Stephanie Hayes who rocked a golden Elizabethan costume complete with gloves and pumps. 

Shakespeare's comedies involved much cross-dressing and the performances themselves involved young men playing the parts of women. So seeing Shakespeare portrayed by a beautiful young woman, complete with beard and moustache, seemed absolutely on target.

The band, comprising keyboard wizard Daniel Schlosberg and violinist Jacob Ashworth (Co-Music Directors) with clarinettist Gleb Kanasevich and bassist Sam Suggs, opened the program with some instrumental music. Mr. Schlosberg himself arranged the music for this interesting combination of musicians.

Every aria was delivered with excellent vocal technique but an off-kilter style. Soprano Lauren Worsham made a not-so-innocent Juliet, singing "Je veux vivre" from Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. And later, made a down-right slutty Maria from Bernstein's West Side Story, singing the duet "Tonight" with terrific tenor Miles Mykkanen as her Tony. Mr. Mykkanen was resplendent in fuschia, entering on point (yes he has a dance background but has yet to join Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo).

Baritone Joshua Jeremiah sang a chilling rendition of Iago's "Credo" from Verdi's Otello. Mezzo-soprano Sishel Claverie was just as chilling as Lady Macbeth in the "Sleepwalking Scene" from Verdi's Macbeth. 

Much of the humor derived from the onstage Shakespeare who knew nothing of Brooklyn or Broadway or opera. When he innocently and unwittingly uttered the name of his play Macbeth the stage was filled with menacing projections; it was a moment the audience loved. Another funny moment was the "Exit, pursued by bear" being given a literal manifestation.

From Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream, "Bottom's Dream" was sung by John Taylor Ward in stunning drag, lending new emphasis to "bottom".

Queen Elizabeth herself made a stunning entrance, resplendently gowned and ruffed, in the person of Ato Blankson-Wood. 

It's been a long time since we heard Galt MacDermot's Hair in which he set "What a Piece of Work is Man" from Hamlet.  We also heard something from Purcell's "Faerie Queen". And did we mention the serial lip-synching?

The evening closed with a group sing of Cole Porter's "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" and a very raunchy rendition it was with every double entendre made clear!

Let us give props to some of the other people who contributed so grandly to the success of the show. First there is Co-Artistic Director Louisa Proske who will direct Mozart's Don Giovanni for the Spring Festival next May at the Baruch Performing Arts Center.  This is sure to be revolutionary!

The gorgeous costumes for tonight were designed by Seth Bodie. Choreography was by Emma Jaster. Rachel Padula was responsible for the eye-catching hair and makeup design. Joey Moro lit the show effectively and projection design was by Nicholas Hussong. Great production values like these enhanced the onstage talent.

It was all in fun. A carousel of photos has been placed on our Facebook page--Voce di Meche, since our words cannot convey fully the many delights of the evening.

(c) meche kroop

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY; STING LIKE A BEE

Matthew Singer, Mackenzie Whitney, Banlingyu Ban, Jordan Weatherston Pitts, Siobahn Sung, and Noah Spagnola

Until last night, there were five extant versions of Madama Butterfly, an opera with which Giacomo Puccini couldn't stop tinkering. Our scholarship is insufficient to describe for readers the exact differences among them but we do believe that the original version of 1904 was the one in which librettists Illica and Giacosa did not shrink from portraying Lieutenant Pinkerton as an arrogant and exploitative chap, a depiction that was later softened.

Last night at Baruch Performing Arts Center, the adventuresome and uncommonly successful Heartbeat Opera presented an adaptation of this masterpiece that was radical and ultimately highly affecting. Two issues about Madama Butterfly have always struck us and the production team managed to hit both nails right on their heads. The first issue is that we have never perceived this opera as a love story; au contraire, we have interpreted the story as one of child abuse. A grown man makes a "temporary marriage" with a fifteen-year-old girl and abandons her.

The second issue is our wondering, every time we have seen the opera, what would happen to a racially mixed two-year-old, torn from his mother and taken away by a couple he never met to a foreign land with a completely different culture. This is still happening today with international adoption agencies providing babies for childless couples here in the good old USA. By making little Sorrow important to this performance, Heartbeat Opera has opened up the story and made it both contemporary and also larger than the little house occupied by Cio-Cio San and her maid Suzuki.

The story opens with little Sorrow (Noah Spagnola) flung on his bed and googling on his laptop. He wants to know where he came from and what happened to his mother.  We don't know what his father and adoptive mother have already told him. He observes the unfolding story from the sidelines and at times he enters the scene, to join his mother and Suzuki as they look out at the harbor for his father's ship, and later to wipe the white paint from his mother's face--or perhaps her tears. At the end he tries to hold onto her.  When he returns to his bed he holds a pillow over his face. We feel his grief.

Our tears welled up too at several points in this emotionally devastating production. We thought the production team had eliminated Act I but it would show up after Act II as a dream or memory of Cio-Cio San in her long night of waiting. The performance began with Act II.  Butterfly believes that Pinkerton will return and tries to convince the skeptical Suzuki. Sharpless, the Consul, also tries to burst her bubble but she resists, believing only that he is coming back. Sharpless is dismayed when she brings out the baby, now 2 years old. Goro the matchmaker/pimp fails to interest her in Prince Yamadori, who was eliminated from the production, along with the Bonze and the Sisters, Cousins, and Aunts.

Then the events of 3 years earlier are replayed.  There is the unmitigated arrogance of Pinkerton, the typical Ugly American. He is enchanted and filled with lust.  Under her wedding kimono, we see Butterfly as a schoolgirl, dressed much in the fashion that is popular now in Japan. Pinkerton does not pin her to a board as a lepidopterist would but binds her in place with red ropes.

In Act III, Butterfly is not just sad but angry. She wields her dagger violently slashing out at the air.  She realizes she has been deceived. We imagine she is lashing out at Pinkerton. We see her give up her child but we are not sure if she kills herself.

This revolutionary reimagining of a classic was directed by Ethan Heard who is Co-Artistic Director of Heartbeat Opera. For the adaptation of the libretto, he was joined by Jacob Ashworth. who also accomplished the excellent translation with dramaturg Peregrine Heard. Movement was directed by Emma Crane Jaster with Momo Suzuki coaching the Japanese movement. Jacob Ashworth was Music Director and Conductor of a chamber orchestra comprising a string quartet plus an extra cello and a harp which contribute enormously to the texture. Daniel Schlosberg was responsible for the arrangement.

Now that you have a mental picture of what this team accomplished, let us add that the singing lived up to the production. We have not yet arrived at a position of appreciating color-blind casting so the fact that Butterfly and Suzuki were Asian was a big plus.  It would not have been so if their voices were not so first-rate.

Banlingyu Ban made a superb Butterfly with a soaring soprano and dramatic skills that conveyed the many shades of feeling that her character underwent, from childish excitement to the depths of despair. Siobahn Sung's pleasing mezzo and self-effacing acting made her the perfect supportive Suzuki. Their relationship made sense and was totally believable.

Mackenzie Whitney's performance as Pinkerton, the entitled and arrogant Lieutenant, may have been a bit over the top, but that just fed into our prior belief as noted above. He sang "Addio fiorito asil" quite well, convincing us that he was just a self-centered lout with his mostly phony remorse. We would love to hear his tenor in a sympathetic role. We were feeling so negative about the character, it was difficult to focus on the voice!

Matthew Singer's mature baritone was just right for the rather more sympathetic role of Sharpless, who has to clean up Pinkerton's messes. His scene with Butterfly was particularly fine.

Jordan Weatherston Pitts' tenor was pressed into service as the whiny slimy Goro--an excellent performance.

The final trio was overwhelmingly gorgeous. Actually, there was not a single musical moment that was any less.

Reid Thompson's set looked like a cage and was highly effective, as was Oliver Wason's lighting.

Valerie Therese Bart's costumes were perfect--the schoolgirl under the kimono showed us just what a 15-year-old girl would look like behind the "Orientalist" fantasy provided by geishas.

There were two choices of props with which we disagreed. When Sharpless comes to break the news to Butterfly, she brings out a doll that should have been much larger to signify a 2-year-old child.  And the new Mrs. Pinkerton was wheeled onstage as a life-size mannequin. She might have better been left to the imagination.

Those two tiny quibbles aside, we recommend this outstanding revisionist Butterfly without reservations. Those new to opera can get a good feel for the musical magic that helps to tell a story in a brief 90 minutes. Experienced opera goers will get a fresh take on an old warhorse. Do go!

(c) meche kroop

GETTIN' HI WITH WILD HEARTBEAT

Joshua Jeremiah, Kristin Gornstein, Jamilyn Manning-White, Emma Jaster, Louisa Proske and Ethan Heard

Nothing Heartbeat Opera does is commonplace. The work of Co-Directors Louisa Proske and Ethan Heard is marked by daring originality and intense creative effort. The results continue to win new friends for opera.

Last night, in partnership with Friends of the High Line, a fabulous free event right on The High Line introduced a vast crowd of New Yorkers to an art form with which many were unacquainted. If some were not opera fans when they arrived, they were surely opera fans when they left.

Heartbeat Opera originated when Yale graduates Ms. Proske and Mr. Heard undertook to take a fresh look at opera--not the way regietheater folk contort an opera to fit their own wacky ideas but rather by bringing out the wackiness of the art form itself.

They have freed opera from the strictures of traditional performance in traditional venues and can be considered a shining light among the new and nimble small companies making opera compelling to young people.  They have established quite a following.

We personally had a blast and, since there were folks sitting on both sides of the thrust stage, we got a good look at other folks having an equally marvelous time.  The cast managed somehow to keep moving so that each side got equal time.  During "The Flower Duet" from Delibes' Lakmé, the "groundlings", seated on mats in front of the chair section, waved flowers back and forth in time with the music. Later, the flashlights on cell phones were similarly waved back and forth. Up close and personal, we all felt like part of the show.

The three singers were well chosen to cover all the bases (except bass and tenor) and each artist was able to choose his/her own material, guaranteeing that heart(beat) and soul would go into each and every performance.  

Wisely, familiar pieces were chosen from the well-known operas of Mozart, Handel, Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, Rossini, and....Rogers and Hammerstein, thus lending authenticity to our dearly held belief that Broadway music represents the counterpart of "opera" in the 20th c.

The composers of Broadway musicals wrote music for the people of their time that was accessible in the way that Verdi was to Italians in the 19th c. Their works appealed to the masses with rip-roaring drama and characters with which the audience could identify, singing memorable tunes.

The three singers were infallibly on point and incredibly entertaining. Although we have favorably reviewed all three before in better acoustics, we somehow didn't mind the amplification made necessary by the outdoor venue.

Soprano Jamilyn White opened the program with "Quando m'en vo" from Puccini's La Bohème and was followed by Kristen Gornstein performing the "Habanera" from Bizet's Carmen.  The two women harmonized beautifully in the aforementioned flower song--"Sous le dôme eépais".

Baritone Joshua Jeremiah wooed the audience with "Some Enchanted Evening" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific; he sang it with all the respect given to any operatic aria.  He made a fine Don Giovanni to Ms. Gornstein's overly enthusiastic Zerlina who jumped onto his back in "La ci darem la mano".  We enjoyed his "Largo al factotum" from Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia;  His voice melded beautifully with the women's in "Soave sia il vento" from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

Ms. White drew great applause for her dazzling Queen of the Night from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

There was no printed program but Emma Jaster, a tiny pixie of a dancer, wearing a flesh-colored leotard and a rainbow wig, bore placards announcing the composer on one side and the opera on the other--giving each side equal time.  Happily, she was granted solo time and her corporeal expression of the ethereal "Meditation" from Massenet's Thaïs was heartfelt and beautiful to behold.

Since we have arrived at a discussion of costuming, let it be noted that the baroque (in one sense of the word) and motley designs of Jon Carter added greatly to the fun of the evening.  There were lots of spangles and spandex, vests and vestments. Wigs were baroque (in the historical sense of the word). MAC Cosmetics provided the materials for the wild make-up. We refer readers to our Facebook page "Voce di Meche" on which we will post an array of photos showing what words can only approximate.

The musical arrangement by Co-Music Directors Jacob Ashworth and Daniel Schlosberg was just as original as the rest of the evening.  A three piece band comprised a keyboard played by Mr. Schlosberg, a violin bowed by Mr. Ashworth, and an array of saxophones blown badly by an unknown musician. A couple sour notes failed to impair our delight.

Producing director for the event was Jennifer Newman. Effective lighting was by Oliver Wason and equally effective sound design was by Harrison Keithline who gets props for not assaulting our ears with excessive amplification.

Balloons were tossed and popped, flowers were waved, cell phones were waved, photos were snapped. We didn't see a single unhappy face.  Yes, Virginia, opera can be FUN!

(c) meche kroop