Saturday Matinee

Berkeley Rep’s Argonautika and ABT with Cal Performances

Berkeley Rep’s Argonautika

Two great shows are opening this week:

• Argonautika, with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is officially opening this Wednesday although it’s already opened for previews. It’s amazing that I just saw the set two weeks ago and it only looked half built, and now it’s already up and running. Casting info here, including Justin Blanchard who was amazing in Journey’s End. Really looking forward to this show.
  • While we’re in outline form, might as well insert a sidenote (I’m comfortable writing in outline form these days, since I’m working on my PhD thesis proposal, for which I’m procrastating right now). Mary Zimmerman, who directed Argonautika, was also bringing her production of Lucia di Lammermoor (which opened at the Met this year) this summer to the SF Opera, but now they’ve announced that they’re not going to bring Zimmerman’s production but going to replace it with another. I’m disappointed, but I’m sure it’ll be a good replacement. Good news is that its star, Natalie Dessay, is still scheduled to appear.
• American Ballet Theatre is opening its weekend stop at Cal Performances this Wednesday. I can’t wait, I haven’t seen this ballet company perform since I saw Vladimir Malakhov and Diana Vishneva dance Giselle at the Lincoln Center… was it last year? I think I held my breath the entire time. During this stop in Berkeley, I’m looking forward to seeing Herman Cornejo, and seeing David Hallberg for the first time. (I keep on having to remind myself that I have yet to see him dance!) I’m really really going to try to catch both programs, since my schedule is so off these days (my thesis proposal requires me to write til the wee hours of the morning, and then waking up and taking random naps in the afternoon in addition to a lot of panicking.)
  • Cal Performances is continuing its “Focus on Twyla Tharp” series that it has going this year. I’m very new to this type of multi-show themed programming, but it’s been very enlightening. I feel like I’m slowly being taught the multi-faceted talents of Ms. Tharp, being shown all her different works over a relatively short period of time. The last two performances I saw at the Zellerbach Hall included Tharp – Deuce Coupe with Joffrey, and Nine Sinatra Songs and In the Upper Room with Miami City Ballet, which have all been so different and yet with Tharp’s characteristic touches. I’ve really been able to appreciate inventive choreography from a choreographer who isn’t so intensely musical (such as Balanchine and Morris), my favorites that resonates so well with me. The only downside that I see to this “focus” is if the featured is on a choreographer that I didn’t like.
  • These gorgeous rehearsal photos from the multi-talented Matt Murphy has really gotten me jazzed about seeing these more contemporary works, including Elo’s “Close to Chuck” and Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen”. It’s such a privilege to be offered a backstage peek, and to view a bit of the creative process. It really adds to the appreciation of the hard work involved, and enjoyment of the final product.

White crushed velvet leggings? ABT’s Kristi Boone and Isaac Stappas in Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen”.

NOT the SF Opera, sorry. Bartlett Sher’s Barber of Seville at the Met

I have a complicated relationship with opera. I first started attending when I was in high school, where we used to nab student tickets to the L.A. Opera. Back then, the one I remember the most is when I completely fell head over heels in love with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and to this day, Mozart operas are still my favorite. After college, I returned to the L.A. Opera to watch Aida, where my relationship with opera started to hit a rocky patch. Aida, the character, was supposed to be a sexy young Ethiopian slave girl, but onstage was an overweight older white woman with dark paint on her face. Maybe I’m too particular, and I know that opera has been this way for a long time, but Aida to me stood for what needed to be a breath of fresh air in order for opera to compete with modern audiences.

And fortunately, the opera world is slowly changing. In my mind, it changed with Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme, a sexy modern remake of the traditional opera. I was lucky enough to catch a showing at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. When I heard a guy onstage in a leather jacket greeting his pals with, “Let’s hang out at my pad” on the projected subtitles at an opera, I knew that this was something different. Granted it wasn’t the best singing in the world, but it struck a chord with audiences and audiences were hungry for more of the same.

When Peter Gelb took over the Met in New York, opera conservatives voiced their concerns in compromising quality over the new changes that he immediately put into place – live broadcasts on satellite radio, slick posters and snazzy advertising, and implementing directors that were famous in movies and on Broadway (e.g. Anthony Minghella of The English Patient, Bartlett Sher of The Light in the Piazza). With the Met modernizing, it finalized that change was here to stay. As this article states, “Among veteran operagoers, there was a certain amount of head-shaking, but everyone knew why this was happening. Met attendance has been declining, the result of a post-9/11 slump, an aging audience, and deep-seated institutional complacency”.

I caught Bartlett Sher’s breezy remake of The Barber of Seville this past spring, where as this article states, satisfied both conservative opera aficionados and new audiences such as myself. For the first time, I sat at the edge of my seat in complete rapture, where opera singers were breathtaking singers as well as excellent comic actors (Peter Mattei, Joyce DiDonato). Juan Diego Florez’s singing made me feel like I had never heard a tenor sing before – it was vocal pyrotechnics. The staging was beautiful, and I was addicted.

Not being familiar with the opera scene in SF, it was only until now that the season has really caught my attention. This upcoming season looks very intriguing. Natalie Dessay is coming with Lucia di Lammermoor at the end of the season (a role she recently played at the Met, reviewed here). In the next few weeks, Philip Glass’s Appomattox will be opening (it takes place during the American Civil War) as well as The Magic Flute. Later this year, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress will be playing, directed by Robert Lepage, creator of Cirque du Soleil’s KÀ, as well as Madama Butterfly and The Little Prince near the end of the season.

Fun. The SRO rush line sounds just as fun, as illustrated hilariously here. My favorite part is the mad dash to the glass doors, no matter where you stood in line (“Once inside, the masses literally sprint….It is at this point that I have witnessed a grown man try to claw open a locked door with his stubby fingernails while ushers attempted to pull him away forcibly.”) Thanks to Sid, blogger of The Standing Room, for taking the time to give me detailed information on the SF Opera.

San Francisco Opera website

Edited to add: Thanks to Sid for the shoutout and advice on his blog. A bike helmet and hat hair will complement any opera outfit, I’m sure.

Opening Night at the Los Angeles opera! I didn’t get the chance to see Fidelio last year at the Met, so I was able to get tickets to see Fidelio this year at the Los Angeles opera. The true stars of the show were the sorta-out-of-place cool media graphics in Act 2 (a 3-D digital extravaganza that gave us the feeling that we were going into the depths of prison to reach the victim of our story, Florestan), Anja Kampe as Fidelio/Leonore, and Klaus Florian Vogt as Florestan. Kampe, very unconvincing as a “man”…sang brilliantly. Vogt’s voice was so strong, his plight as a starving, dying prisoner was a bit out of character. Their voices were so glorious, overcoming any character and plotline flaws…and these voices were as solid as many I had heard at the Met.

The opening scenery was a bit odd; it looked like a minimalist torture chamber with odd looking torture devices in the background. Don Pizarro the jailer, sang by Matti Salminen, seemed very passionate and protective of his prisoners, which made the torture chamber even stranger. The plot is even more illogical, what kind of wife would dress up as a man, get engaged to a woman, in order to get to her husband she loves? Come on! The speaking lines in between the singing was very jarring…I had never attended an opera with speaking lines. The singers were speaking their lines as if they were singing, in lilting tones. Very very odd. Like an opera-musical.

The LA Opera orchestra was amazing, as always. It was especially rare to see the orchestra members getting a bow at curtain call. You can see them filing on stage in the photo above, as the chorus members/singers all scooted off to give the orchestra their due.