Wolfie on Acid in the Warehouse

Mozart’s Così fan tutte

LoftOpera

101 Varick Ave, Bushwick

September 18, 2016

The sisters turn on, tune in and drop out.
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Lei: By now the schlep to Bushwick to get our indie opera fix is starting to feel routine: we embark on an L train to some abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere, to then turn a corner and find the bright “O P E R A” sign, familiar friendly faces, and an eager sense of anticipation for the night’s show. This time around we were particularly intrigued primarily because one of our favorite directors, Louisa Proske, was moonlighting at LoftOpera from her own indie company Heartbeat; but also because Mozart’s Così fan tutte is especially meaningful to us as it is the piece that brought this opera-obsessed couple together a few years ago.

X marks the spot of my heart
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Lui: We have come to know Louisa Proske’s work quite well over time as inventive, edgy, detail-oriented and thought-provoking and had high expectations for her maiden voyage with the company that defines itself as a cross between a loft party and an opera startup. The collaboration turned out to be everything we were hoping for and delivered possibly the subtlest and most bountiful direction we have seen at LoftOpera so far.

The '90s are back!
Photo credit: Robert Altman 

Lei: Proske set the show in the early ’90s: grunge rock and Dr. Martens are in. The two couples are high school-aged teenagers, in love and angsty and rightly so. The youthful take completely fits Da Ponte’s libretto, which is really all about the bitter lessons learned by youngsters living their first romance. But the innovative touches were not limited to costume. Proske elicited some extremely specific acting from all of the cast: Guglielmo and Ferrando are two dudes goofing around (they high five, do push ups, play air guitars in Una bella serenata, drink their beer straight from the can); Fiordiligi and Dorabella are pouty little teenage vixens (they drink bourbon out of a water gun, cross their hearts with lipstick and read Cosmo in a clutter-filled room populated by several stuffed animals); Despina is their sassy cleaning lady (sporting an all-denim outfit and a very flashy fanny pack); and Don Alfonso is the fellas’ extremely square yet cynical school teacher.

Arsenic is taken intravenously.
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Lui: In a very ’90s fashion, drugs played an important role in the production. First, in the fake poison scene (L’arsenico mi liberi / da tanta crudeltà), Guglielmo and Ferrando storm in, their belts tied around their biceps, their hands waving syringes loaded with coma-inducing substances. Far more credible and immediate than the usual little arsenic bottles most commonly used in traditional productions.

At first the girls are militant in their resistance
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Possibly the most important illicit substance use comes into play later. To explain away their sudden change of heart in the opening of Act II, Dorabella and Fiordiligi actually take a hit of acid, and the trippy fun begins. The girls become both more and less flighty at the same time. Everybody suddenly dons an animal mask as the girls literally trip out. The look on their faces as they took in the strangeness around them was priceless. The guy with a faux hawk sitting next to me was on the edge of his seat cracking up. He “got” it, and the hilarity was contagious.

Interestingly, as the sisters cave into the boys’ tricks and saunter away to consummate their lust, they do so wearing animal masks. And so, when pushed (through acid or otherwise), the inner beast that lurks inside each of us comes prancing out. On the level of the already slightly trippy symmetries of Da Ponte’s formulaic plot with its neat logical reversals, Louisa Proske took the story at its psychedelic face value. And I applaud her for that.

It brings the beast out of us all
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Lei: Good trip, bad trip. Dorabella has a euphoric trip that ends in the fulfillment of her “love.” Fiordiligi has a bad trip and ends up hallucinating a series of scary beasts when she gazes at her pursuer. Un’aspide, un idra, un basilisco: the list of euphemisms (traditionally used to refer to Ferrando’s membro virile) are now the horrors she sees under the influence and she flips out. Brilliant! The poor girl just isn’t comfortable either with herself or with the situation and the LSD only heightens that. A very clever twist on the libretto.

Guglielmo is worldly wise after seducing his best friend's girl
Photo credit: Robert Altman

Lui: Baritone Alex DeSocio played Guglielmo as a solid “dude.” In Non siate ritrosi / occhietti vezzosi he humorously showed off the many virtues of the “Albanians” with excellent Italian diction. His singing was particularly moving when he wandered into the woods of disappointment and defeat. His Il core vi dono was round and romantic. It’s one of the central seduction moments in the opera and it sounded sufficiently compelling in his mouth and his acting was exceptional. In Donne mie, la fate a tanti, he rode the fast-paced aria with expressivity and clarity in a drunken rage. At the same time, he played a goofy jock of a jerk to perfection with all the quirky high fives such a show of brute masculinity requires. Tenor Spencer Viator as Ferrando delivered a solid Un’aura amorosa and had tremendous stage presence throughout, particularly when teaming up in various shenanigans with DeSocio. Many times Viator had me laughing hard, his acting always specific and super in character.

Fiordiligi pleads for forgiveness
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

Soprano Megan Pachecano as Fiordiligi was also very commanding. Her voice projected out beautifully in front of Don Alfonso and Dorabella’s in Soave sia il vento. Her longing was palpable. She is the one who most wants the boys to stay and so her voice trails after them like a sail in front of the wind hoping to catch up with them. Her Come scoglio was a showstopper both vocally and acting-wise. And she carried much of Act II through her reluctant acceptance of Despina’s lessons in the art of carpe diem. Her Per pietà, ben mio, perdona was a moment of meditative reflection on her desire to be reunited with the one she really loves, not this sorry excuse for a vaguely Borat-looking Eastern European gangster. Mezzo Sarah Nelson Craft as Dorabella was another excellent acting singer. Her Smanie implacabili was delivered with force and pathos and her many duets with Pachecano were a pleasure to hear. Her chesty mezzo so beautifully grounded their Soave sia il vento, that I would have loved to have heard her school us on È amore un ladroncello. But alas, putting these young voices through three consecutive nights of singing amounts to too much strain and something has to go!

Despina holds forth as the notary
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

Lei: The singer that truly stole the show for me was soprano Michelle Trovato as Despina. Her clean, lyric and agile soprano delivered sensational renditions of In uomini, in soldati / sperare fedeltà and Una donna a quindici anni, all while flirting with male members of the audience as if to prove her point. Life’s too short to play it safe. Sassy, saucy and charming, Trovato is an infectious actress, who is equally convincing (and utterly hilarious) as the savvy jaded maid, the quack doctor and the nerdy notary. She savored the sound of much of the Italian every time she opened her mouth and whenever she was on stage she captivated everybody with her serious attitude as well as her humor – a true delight.

Lui: Baritone Gary Ramsey’s Don Alfonso underwent much more of a transformation than most productions allow for. Early in the opera he played the character as something of an effete substitute teacher who is jaded by his past failures in love and is still a bit sfigato. By Act II we see him for what he really is (I guess): a diabolical fellow, almost Mephistophelian, who all too eagerly leads these youngsters on a quest toward wisdom and the loss of innocence such a journey often entails. In Act I he dons a circa 1990s beige and baggy Men’s Warehouse suit. His rebirth in Act II finds him done up with demonic clown-like rouge on his cheeks, slick black trousers and a white blouse emblazoned with flaming satanic-looking verses. His Italian has much improved though it is neither as perfect nor as musical as it needs to be. But his delivery suited this take on the character.

Don Alfonso gets all Mephisto
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

Lei: No detail was small enough for this production, including a great use of lighting, designed by Oliver Wason, to suggest interior states in a few key moments, like Fiordiligi’s showcase aria, Come scoglio. The lighting changes and we enter Fiordiligi’s head space. In the eye of her mind she has super powers that enable her to put these sleeze bag suitors in their place, Darth Vader-style. She throws them around using the “force” of her gestures. Or something like that. A cute and clever take on the prude who is firmest in her convictions. The same occurred in the nuptial brindisi quartet when Ferrando and Fiordiligi are head over heels in love now and Guglielmo is feeling left out and embittered. He wishes they were drinking poison (Ah, bevessero del tossico / queste volpi senza onor). Again with the help of the lighting, we step out of narrative time and simultaneously into the lover’s locking eyes and into the sinister disillusionment of Guglielmo’s perspective on the scene. What the score communicates through the multitrack quartet, Wason literalizes with his lighting choices.

Ready to tie the knot
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

Lui: Così’s ending always leaves me debating the possible takes on the cynical story and its pat (or not so pat) finale. In Proske’s take, while the original couples are reconstituted, the sexual tension between between Ferrando and Fiordiligi remains. They continue to check each other out, making eyes at each other, over the shoulders of their initial mate. Guglielmo is not as bummed as he had been during the wedding toast, but the overall tone is that they are no longer as innocent as they once were. Especially the girls as they exchange knowing glances, while holding the scissors they just used to cut off heart-shaped helium balloons tied to their wrists. I got the feeling that they weren’t done yet and their men should brace themselves for some further test of their fidelity in the not too distant future. And that is a rare takeaway.

Image credit: LoftOpera

Lei: The orchestra under the baton of Dean Buck was super tight, fast paced yet they let the score breathe. Mozart is not easy and the LoftOpera orchestra did it justice. There’s nothing like hearing the greatest classical music played by a full orchestra in such a cavernous yet intimate space. This was the third of three performances in a row for this poor cast. But I can’t say they showed many signs of fatigue. The public, though, was the quietest and most elderly I’ve ever seen out at LoftOpera. Maybe because it was a Sunday. Still, I prefer the usual twenty-something crowd that brings a whole different energy to the experience. On the upside, the performance felt more intimate than usual, as everybody could sit comfortably close to the stage and the music. The singers sounded great, echoing beautifully into the enormous post-industrial space, with the Manhattan skyline visible through the open garage door beyond the stage. A radical yet faithful take on Wolfie, the skyline, free beers and chocolate – what else can one want on a Sunday night (or any night)?

– Lui & Lei

Dorabella & Fiordiligi having teenage fun
Photo credit: Jamie Lynn Santamour

Opera Cabaret: A Caribbean Così

Così fan tutte

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Opera Coopertive 

February 28, 2015 - Park Avenue United Methodist Church

Opera Collective takes Wolfie to the Caribbean

Our second independent opera of the weekend, Opera Cooperative’s Così fan tutte provided an enlightening counterpoint to our experience with New York Opera Exchange’s musically thrilling but theatrically insipid production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Opera Cooperative is the latest addition to New York’s already thriving independent opera scene and this was their maiden production. Director Annie Shikany and music director George Stelluto gave us a production of this Mozart-Da Ponte comic masterpiece that was fresh and had vision. And it’s not that they needed massive funding or elaborate sets or even a stage to do so, which just goes to show that vision can articulate itself in many ways. At every step there were striking little touches that helped to flesh out the characters, further the plot and enliven each scene.

A little imagination can go a long way

The production notes tell us that the opera is set in a Caribbean resort, present day. The sets were simple yet effective in suggesting a hotel suite on one end of the “stage” and a bar on the other, the costumes were summer vacation chic, and the two couples were definitely modern day youngsters glued to their iPhones and taking selfies. The English supertitles also got a present day facelift, peppered with lines like “OMG!,” “Baby, promise to text me twice a day,” and “Despina, you arrogant slut.” Purists may cringe but I have to say that these free translations really conveyed the carefree spirit of adolescents discovering the pains of love, which at the end of the day is the very core of this opera. Taking the characters out of powdered wigs and corsets and making the supertitles funkier made the opera more approachable to non-Italian speakers unfamiliar with Così, all while displaying the utmost respect for the original score, the fierce beauty of its arias and duets, the theatrical narrative and the pronunciation of the original Italian (both sung and recitatif). All it took were some modern clothes, a couple of iPhones and a vision. 

Robert Balonek

The singers were all game and mostly did a great job in acting with great comic timing and a good dose of slapstick, especially baritone Robert Balonek, in the role of Guglielmo, whom he played as the consummate dude and rightly so. Balonek has all the comic control of his body language and facial expressions of a good comic actor. His low, virile voice provided a deeper, more visceral counterpoint to tenor Chad Cygan, in the role of Ferrando, than you usually find in this duo. Cygan has an instrument that is strongest in the middle of his range and was at his best in the ensemble bits, blending nicely with the rest of the cast’s voices. I laughed out loud several times but also found myself perched at the edge of my seat during the most tender and passionate arias. George Bernard Shaw once said that the greatness of Mozart is found in conveying the most profound things while remaining flippant and lively. This unique duality definitely came across in Opera Cooperative’s production.

Chad Cygan

Their presentation of this beloved opera was full of observant details. The way Shikany handled the breakdown during the rather touchy Act II finale was honest and real: the lovers neither reconcile, nor form new couples, but rather seem very skeptical of the whole affair and freeze mid-air each one by him or herself. How can there be anything but hard feelings and resentment after everything the cynical old fogey has put them through in testing the loyalty of their lovers along with their own resilience. Guglielmo’s utter disappointment is felt as is Ferrando’s acceptance of the folly of the whole situation, who is last seen clinking beer bottles with Fiordiligi. Shikany takes her characters from the adolescent phase of text message jargon and all the frivolity of youth to the more jaded phase of what it is to love like an adult, and she doesn’t spare them any of the concomitant growth pains along the way. Così seems frivolous and light at first blush but beneath the surface is a whole world of hurt and disillusionment. It demands deeper treatment than it often gets when your average production tries to reconstitute the original couples with no questions asked. Thank you, Annie Shikany.

Mustacchi, trionfi, pennacchi d'amor

Allyson Herman

In terms of the singers, the female leads really stole the show tonight. Allyson Herman and Eva Parr sang off each other beautifully as Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Herman’s Fiordiligi was the airy breeze (il vento) to the cresting waves (le onde) of Parr’s Dorabella in their rendition of Soave sia il vento in Act I. It sent tingles through my body with its melancholic, yet phony farewell to their two true loves. Rarely do you get such a pronounced difference between the two roles. Parr’s chesty mezzo voice beautifully served to ground Herman’s soaring soprano that was always intrepid and sure. Herman effortlessly floated her higher registers out in front of the pack seizing a leadership role in her contribution to all of the many ensemble pieces. Her Fiordiligi carried the cast without a doubt from start to finish. I usually like my Come scoglio to show a bit more sass, stronger conviction, more teeth, more bite, but Herman nevertheless managed to own it, if not with her sass, then with the forcefulness of her technical ability and winning stage presence. 

Eva Parr

The duets between the tormented sisters are one of the strongest focal points of this opera and Herman and Parr inhabited them beautifully. They sang like a unit whether across the stage from each other or holding hands like life support to one another in their futile quest to remain constant and true. I couldn’t take my eyes off them, they were so much fun to watch and listen to as they flitted around snapping selfies and flipping through photos of their respected beloveds on their smart phones.

I was very fond of Robert Mellon's incarnation of the scheming Don Alfonso, though at times it seemed like he was straining his voice a bit. The brutality of his bass-baritone that reverberated forcefully in this little space on the third floor of the church on East 86th Street lent his Don Alfonso an air of the embittered older man who has a bone to pick not only with the opposite sex but also with the young and naive. He’s out to teach everybody a lesson, if not to simply bring everybody around him down into his level. He has suffered heartbreak, potentially, and so others should too. Mellon’s performance did not necessarily imbue his character with much of a backstory per se, but rather he embodied Don Alfonso’s foibles with a masculine wrath and rage, almost like an Old Testament God pulling the strings of his latest human subjects. Mellon's Don Alfonso was the charismatic glue of the evening. Anytime he was on stage, he keep the pace of the story humming right along, never compromising the fun even of the recitatives even once, with his fully articulated Italian pronunciation. He was like an old pro up there.

Robert Mellon

Though I like to see even Despina give a couple of her aria-lectures to the girls with an even more developed sense of the fact that she (a bit like Don Alfonso) is speaking from a position of experience, experience that may not always have been positive, Kathryn Papa’s interpretation of the girls’ mischievous maid was playful, flippant and knowing all at the same time. Papa’s singing equally embodied all of these qualities with an effortless panache and her Italian was always clear and correct. Aside from knowing this opera almost by heart, I virtually never found myself needing to even glance at the supertitles while Despina sang. She was that immediate and engaging.

Kathryn Papa

The set up of the audience had a more relaxed vibe, with a mix of traditional rows of seats and “cabaret-like” tables at the edge of the stage area, equipped with bottles of wine and flower vases. Next time Opera Cooperative may want to consider transforming more of the seating into cabaret tables, judging by the evening we attended, the “cabaret” tickets were far more popular than the traditional seats, so much so that we did not get our reserved table (but we could sip our wine from the front of the house anyway so no complaints there). The whole affair would turn into a modern day chamber musical salon, in a very good way.

A promising debut for this opera company founded in September 2014 that showed it has the right ideas to prove wrong the haters who say opera is dying and stuffy – we greatly anticipate their next outing with Elisir d’Amore this summer.

– Lui & Lei

In soldati, sperare fedeltà?!?!

NYC Indie Opera Wintry Mix

Baby, it’s cold out there – thankfully these brave NYC indie opera companies offer plenty of shows to keep us warm and entertained over the next month:

One can never go wrong with Wolfie and the newly formed Opera Cooperative (“opera by the artists”) opens its first season with a Così Fan Tutte. In case one needed extra incentive, “cabaret table” tickets are available, with a bottle of wine included in the admission…February 17-28 at Park Avenue United Methodist Church, 106 East 86^th Street. 

Photo Credit: Opera Cooperative

We were impressed by NY Opera Exchange’s Die Fledermaus earlier this year and look forward to seeing how they tackle Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Seriously, who does not want to get some bel canto and a murderous bride delivering one of the most famous crazy scenes in opera? February 27-28 and March 1 at Church of the Covenant, 310 East 42 Street.

Photo Credit: NY Opera Exchange

Image Credit: Pastore Vito

For a lighter hearted Donizetti, Opera Company of Brooklyn offers a BYOB Don Pasquale, performed in a private apartment in Inwood (“exact address is given after tickets are purchased”). The whole affair feels very much like a secret musical salon, we’re intrigued. March 7 somewhere in Inwood.

Image Credit: Regina Opera

We are fans of the work of Regina Opera since discovering them with an indie Rigoletto last summer, be sure to check out their Barbiere di Siviglia. Trust us, this company’s work is worth the trip to Sunset Park. March 7-8 and 14-15 at the OLPH Catholic Academy of Brooklyn, 902 Sixth Avenue (between 59th and 60th Streets).

Image Credit: Heartbeat Opera

Heartbeat Opera (co-founded by the super talented director Louisa Proske) is offering an interesting double bill festival. First goes Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments, a 1985-6 opus where a mezzo soprano and a violin explore forty “fleeting moments” based on Kafka’s letters to Milena Jesenska, ranging from ironic observations to philosophical musings, to fantastical visions. Followed by the New York premiere of Offenbach’s operetta Daphnis & Chloé, a raunchy story of two innocent country youths who are initiated into the art of love by the lecherous God Pan and a horde of rowdy Bacchantes. March 18-22 at Sheen Center Blackbox, 18 Bleecker Street.

- Lui & Lei