I WANT MY COFFEE!

 Bernard Holcomb, Philip Cokorinos, and Christine Lyons

(photo by meche kroop)

No other company we know of does what On Site Opera does; they make a perfect match between an opera and a venue, taking us to many places we have not previously visited. Two of our favorite matchings were their production of Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera in a community garden on the Upper West Side and the production of Puccini's Il Tabarro on a vessel docked at the South Street Seaport.  Well, Dear Reader, we have added a third! Bach's Coffee Cantata taking place currently at The Lost Draft, a charming coffee shop on Broome Street. We regret to inform you that the run is sold out (as all of their productions are) so we will make an attempt to paint the picture for you.

After being welcomed into the premises, we were seated along the wall, the table in front of us set with coffee cups, cookies, and popcorn. Magically, the barista (Bernard Holcomb) became the narrator of the piece, a 45 minute comic opera written in the 1730's by J.S.Bach and (get this!), presented in a coffee house in Leipzig. And here we are three centuries later immersed in a family drama between an authoritarian father (Philip Cokorinos) who wants his rebellious daughter (Christine Lyons) to stop drinking coffee.

Papa uses all manner of manipulations and threats to convince her to give up her addiction. She only agrees if she is allowed to marry; she secretly plans to ensure that the marriage contract contains a clause that allows her to caffeinate herself to her heart's content. It is a simple story and we had no problem with its adaptation  to contemporary times.

Total immersion involved the artists going behind the counter, making and serving coffee, whilst the actual employees of the coffee shop became supernumeraries, although there was no chorus, LOL. Everything was happening in real time and three different coffees were served. We could readily imagine being in a Leipzig coffee house in the 1730's even though dress was contemporary (costuming by Beth Goldenberg) and the work was sung in English, with a very fine loose translation by Music Director Geoffrey McDonald.

We confess that Bach has never been one of our favorites. Aside from this winning piece of fluff, he never wrote an opera and we find oratorios and cantatas ponderous. However, the charming nature of this piece allowed us to recognize his compositional skills, particularly his intricate counterpoint, as it served the witty dialogue perfectly.

The singing was delightful and there were titles available by using one's cell phone but we preferred not to take our eyes off the action, directed by Sarah Meyers. The charming score was performed by a quartet of fine musicians, comprising the American Modern Ensemble-- Violinist Nikita Yermack, cellist Valeriya Sholokova, guitarist Dan Lippel, and flutist John Romero who also played the recorder. Maestro McDonald's orchestration was completely on point. 

We have only one quibble.  It was over too soon. We enjoyed the flirtation between the barista and young lady and all the hijinks of the stage direction. We wanted a second act! We wish Bach had written about the interaction after the young lady gets married!

We raise our coffee cup to toast On Site Opera and the lovely staff at The Lost Draft!  And now, we are going to make ourself a cup of coffee!

© meche kroop

MARTINU ON DREAMING

Sara Jakubiak, Maestro Leon Botstein, Aaron Blake, David Cangelosi, Alfred Walker, Kevin Burdette, Rebecca Jo Loeb, Philip Cokorinos, Tichina Vaughn, and Raehann Bryce-Davis

Diehard opera lovers, fans of the rare, and a sprinkling of Czech nationals gathered in force last night at Carnegie Hall for a concert production of Bohuslav Martinu's Julietta, a 1937 opera based on a French play Juliette, ou La clé des songes by Georges Neveux. There must have been something very appealing about the theme for the composer to get it translated into Czech by Alex Zucker.

We speculated about the historical forces extant in Europe at that time--the insecurity of living on the same continent as a megalomaniac madman (What's old is new again!) making a dream world more appealing than reality. We thought at length about the surreal aspects of the story which gave the composer free rein to utilize massive orchestral forces in strange and colorful ways, developing new and wonderful colors with surprising rhythmic twists. 

We loved these orchestral colors, the French Horn fanfares, the use of the English Horn and the Bass Clarinet. Liberal use was also made of an accordion and there were sounds we could not identify.

The odd story concerns a Parisian bookseller (performed by terrific tenor Aaron Blake) who revisits a small coastal town where three years earlier he had become enchanted by a woman singing a love song, heard through an open window. There are some pretty strange things going on in this town; the citizens have no memories and live in the present. The railway station disappears. Michel gets elected to high office because he has memories--of a rubber duckie from childhood. 

The chief of police (astutely enacted by David Cangelosi) later becomes a postman and denies his earlier occupation. Everything is off-kilter, the way it is in dreams. So, we realize that Michel is dreaming. But was his earlier visit also a dream? One can only speculate; but credence is lent this theory by our own experience of returning occasionally to a certain place in our dream life that doesn't really exist.

Dreams are utilized in the theater quite often.  Think of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La Vida es Sueño. Although Eastern religions claim that what we call reality is really maya or illusion. Nonetheless, we are Westerners and see things differently.

In this libretto, an innkeeper tells stories to an elderly couple, which makes them happy. Is that not true today when many rely on film and other media to make life more interesting?

Act I sets the stage for the action which follows; Act II is surely more compelling as Julietta appears and seems to know and remember Michel. The music given to Julietta, so beautifully sung by soprano Sara Jakubiak, is the most lyrical of the evening. After a romantic reunion there is a spat and the frustrated Michel fires his pistol at the fleeing Julietta. But no one else hears the shot and there is no body. Visiting her home yields no further information. The resident denies her existence. Does this absurdity not resemble dreams of anxiety and frustration you may have had?

Act III brings things together. Michel is in the Central Office of Dreams and there are episodes of humor--a bellhop who wants to dream about the Wild West, a convict who wants dreams of a huge cell, a beggar who wants a dream seaside holiday. At the end Michel refuses to leave and becomes one of the "people in grey", madmen all, deniers of reality. How suitable for Hitlerian Europe!

The singers did yeoman's work in learning this extremely difficult language and managed to capture the rhythmic thrust of the sound as matched to the music. The vocal lines were not at all melodic, as is common in opera of the mid 20th c. The lines were often parlando and there were some lines spoken in English. Although there were no titles, libretti were distributed with the programs and house lights were left on. Most members of the audience elected to read along with the performance.

Aside from the outstanding performances of Ms. Jakubiak, Mr. Blake, and Mr. Cangelosi, we particularly enjoyed mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb whose versatility animated a number of roles; equivalent versatility can be claimed by bass Kevin Burdette and bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos. The resonant bass-baritone Alfred Walker also fulfilled a number of roles to perfection.

Two mezzo-sopranos added significantly to the performance--Tichina Vaughn and Raehann Bryce-Davis who each assumed a number of different roles. The Bard Festival Chorale, directed by James Bagwell made significant contributions as well.

But the main event was the orchestra which played magnificently under the baton of Leon Botstein, who loves discovering neglected works. Julietta has not been heard in the United States before. Martinu was a prolific composer who left Czechoslovakia in 1923 for France where his music certainly acquired a degree of Gallic influence. This work premiered in Prague in 1938 but was also translated into French. Shortly afterward Martinu came to the United States, bringing the score with him. Strange that it had to wait nearly 80 years to be brought to the stage of Carnegie Hall. Thank you Maestro Botstein!

(c) meche kroop

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

Elizabeth Caballero, Kevin Thompson, Lisa Chavez, Luis Ledesma, and Sarah Beckham-Turner on board The Eldorado (Photo by Sarah Shatz)

In 1985, the famous Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez published his novel Love in the Time of Cholera, a brilliant work of magic realism, the themes of which seem to have influenced Daniel Catán's striking opera Florencia en el Amazonas. The opera, with libretto by Catán's student Marcela Fuentes-Berain, was the first Spanish language opera to be commissioned by a major United States opera company; indeed it was a co-commission by the Houston Grand Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Seattle Opera; it premiered in 1996 and it took twenty years to get to New York!

As our readers may have noticed, we love the sound of the Spanish language which "sings" as well as Italian. We can scarcely believe that we were enthralled by a contemporary work but indeed we were. The music is lush and the orchestration lavish, not very far removed from Puccini.  Under the baton of Maestro Dean Williamson, the dense orchestration was given clarity and definition. New York City Opera presented it at the Rose Theater last weekend.

There was not a weak leak in the vocal department nor was there a single dramatic lapse. As the eponymous Florencia, soprano Elizabeth Caballero sang her heart out and was totally believable as a diva traveling incognito to the opera house in Manaus, where she hoped to reconnect with the lost love of her youth, not knowing whether he was dead or alive.

Also on board, for further romantic interest (we eschew modern opera when it is political--we want our operas to be about love) were two couples. Soprano Sarah Beckham-Turner was completely convincing as the young woman who has been taking notes for two years for a book she hopes to write about Florencia. Her focused instrument sailed over the orchestration.

Her potential love interest, the young nephew of the captain, is named Arcadio. He is vaguely unhappy with the tedium of shipboard life and longs to be free to explore the world. Terrific tenor Won Whi Choi inhabited this character perfectly and sympathetically.

In contrast with this young couple who are facing their fears of falling in love and relinquishing their independence, there is a second middle-aged couple suffering from the curdling of their love.  Paula (marvelous mezzo Lisa Chavez) and Alvaro (the gifted Mexican baritone Luis Ledesma) are painfully embattled, bickering over everything. It is only when he is washed overboard during a storm that she realizes that pride has overwhelmed her love for him.

Unlike the dissatisfied Arcadio, the captain of the Eldorado, strongly sung and played by bass Kevin Thompson, is thoroughly content with his lot in life, plying the waters of the Amazon. He represents stability and the world of reality.

The mystical world is represented by bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, in the role of Riolobo (river wolf). His singing was superb but he was visually more believable as the sturdy first mate than as a spiritual being. His appearance as a butterfly was, well, kinda strange.

The last character of the opera was not sung.  It was the Amazon itself and well represented by the orchestra.  It gives life and it takes life.  The orchestra did a fine job of creating a wilderness of birdsong and waters that can be peaceful or churning. The latter was abetted by the agile dancers of Ballet Hispanico's BHdos who tumbled artistically in front of and below the stage proper.

This production originated from Nashville Opera, conceived by John Hoomes, who directed, with Barry Steele (Video and Lighting Designer) and Cara Schneider (Set Designer); it was bursting with creativity. Contributing enormously to its success were the effective rear projections; it made us feel as if we too were traveling on the riverboat with scenery passing by.  The shallow stage of the Rose Theater served well as the deck of the boat with ropes strung across and a captain's wheel.

When Florencia is alone in her cabin during the storm, we experienced the claustrophobia as well. Although magic realism lends itself more to the medium of the novel, the projections provided sufficient visual metaphors to realize the intentions of the story.  At the end, Florencia is transformed into a butterfly joining her beloved Cristóbal, a butterfly collector.

Ildikó Debreczeni's costumes were appropriate to the early 20th c. and quite lovely.

Some vocal highlights included not only Ms. Caballero's moving arias but the duets between Ms. Beckham-Turner and Mr. Choi. The point of the story seems to be that Florencia sacrificed her love for the sake of fame but came to realize that this love was the wellspring of her success. Hopefully, Rosalba and Arcadio will allow their love to blossom and find sustenance therefrom.

If you have read this far, we would like to share with you a linguistic point that you might have missed if you are not Spanish speaking.  Just as the boat approaches Manaus, the passengers cannot disembark for Florencia's recital because the city has been stricken by the fatal cholera.  The word "cólera" represents not just a disease but also means "passion, ire, anger". We believe that the librettist, as well as García Márquez, was making a point about love that endures for decades.  Please let us know what you think.

(c) meche kroop