Of "Rigoletto" and Facebook

I hate to have to do anything. Even stuff that I like to do. I hate to have to go to opera; I hate to have to go to choir; I even hate to have to do a performance of either. Then there's the more common "hate tos." I hate to pay bills, I hate to do my taxes, I hate do the dishes, vacuum, etc.

And all that carries over into other stuff, too. For example, this blog. Oh, sure, it's all well and fun when you start. Blah-blah this, blah-blah that. Then all of a sudden, you get busy with something else and then remember it's been ages since you wrote in your blog. Then it's like, "Oh crap! I need to be writing a blog entry, but I don't know what to say." So you start in on some gripe that's been bothering you, but you're now going, "Ehhhh, do I really want to be doing this?" And it's off to the next thing.

I guess it all comes down to discipline. Unfortunately, I hate to have to self discipline myself, too. Whadyagonnado?

So, last night during opera rehearsal, I remembered it had been ages since I'd written anything. I'd promised myself that I would blog productions, and here I was, a lousy two productions in and that had gone out the window.

So, here goes: I'll get everybody caught up and then I won't blog for another month, until after "Rigoletto."

First of all, a gripe. Not necessarily a key one. Just an, uh... inconsistency, let's call it. Isn't "Rigoletto" a bit of an odd opera to do for Valentine's Day? I mean, the only love in it, other than the Duke and his cronies' physical orgies, is the love between a father and a daughter. Well, I suppose one might argue that Gilda has the hots for the Duke (or who she thought that the Duke was when he was disguised as Gaultier Malde). And at the end, she dies for him, despite the fact that a mere 20 minutes earlier (performance time) she'd been raped and left by him. Perhaps we should be performing this during National Battered Women Awareness week or something. Gilda certainly ends up with a classic case of battered-wife syndrome when she throws herself into the malevolent clutches of Sparafucile in lieu of her beau. "Maybe if I die for him, he'll love me the way I want to be loved," might be her inner dialogue.

But, as we all know, Gilda's a pretty odd character anyway. I mean, she's been sequestered away by her father all these years. She's fallen for some guy she knows nothing about just because she saw him way up in the front row at church. I would say her fantasy life is pretty active since her real life pretty much sucks. Take vulnerable teenager, throw in a lifetime of overprotectiveness by her father, and voilà! Instant psycho!

I have to admit, though, Verdi has really turned traditional opera on its ear. What? The tenor's the bad guy in this one? What the...? And there's no really pure romance, you say? Instead, everybody's pretty much a baddie or whacked.

Oh, but there is a big curse. That's a big opera thing, right? Curses? And you just know that whoever ends up cursed is going to be dead or imprisoned or executed by the end of the opera just as surely as Bobby Brady ended up being cursed by the tiki god effigy.

And so we have Verdi's masterpiece where there are shades of gray all around. One could argue that Gilda is the only pure character, but even, in the end, she ends up tainted... in both senses of the word. Well, there's plenty of dirt to go 'round. Even Giovanna could be seen as a nasty character. I've seen some productions where she is in the pay of the conspirators, that she lets them in the gate, even. Nice. I guess Rigoletto failed to check her record with the National Association of Nursemaids and Nannies.

And so it goes. In turning back to the real world, I must admit that I've come home from opera pretty much every night exhausted. I don't know if it's because we didn't do a fall production to "get in shape" or whether I just was way too inert over the holidays or if Carroll's staging is a bit too frenetic for my tastes. But it's not like I didn't go into this not knowing that we were going to be running around the stage and dancing and partying, etc. It certainly wouldn't be a Carroll Freeman production if it wasn't busy.

Of course, now that Koehler's introduced me to Facebook, I'm obsessed with it, which isn't helping me get any additional rest I might need for opera. I've had a basic name-rank-serial-number MySpace page for a couple of years, but I never like MySpace. It was too hard to find people you knew unless you knew their online monikers. What's really cool about Facebook is that it does most of that legwork for you. It looks at a friend you've made and says, "Aha! Joe's from Knoxville. I'll bet Eric will know Joe." or "Eric and Sara both are in the opera fan group and live near each other, so they might know each other." MySpace didn't do any of that. Plus, with MySpace, you had all that junk that people put on their pages to have to wade through--you know, flying heart wallpaper or bizarre animated GIFs. Bleh.

But Facebook keeps everything relatively clean (though the interface, to me, seems a little confusing). Plus, it automatically notifies you about what all your friends are up to, who they've met (and if you might know who they've met). It's like being at a great big party of a well-connected friend and running into all your pals from various areas (and eras) of you life. I've "refriended" people I haven't seen in over twenty years on Facebook, all since last Friday! Pretty wild. What's even cooler is when you see that people have reconnected with others because of you. That's really neat to see.

BTW, thanks to Koehler for forming the Knoxville Opera "alumni" group on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, check it out. If you're not on Facebook, give it a look. And, btw, it's not just for high school and college kids any more. I've got friends on there that are in their 60s!

Met's "Ghost" has been exorcised

The AP has released a news item detailing new cost-cutting measures taken at the Met. One unfortunate consequence of the economic measures is that the Met will not revive John Corigliano's 1991 smash hit, "Ghosts of Versailles." Instead, the Met will cast Angela Gheorghiu and Thomas Hampson in a staid production of "La Traviata."

I was just starting back on my Masters when "Ghosts" was released. I remember watching the broadcast debut on PBS and being stunned, not only with Corigliano's command of the 20th century orchestral and operatic oeuvres but with the vastness of the production... not to mention wanting to be the first to sing "The Worm" for solo class at UT. (Never did, btw.) I also was working in the UT Music Library, where we had just received a video recording--it may have even been on laser disc--of "Ghosts," which I quickly purloined to rewatch in the back room of the library when I wasn't working or in class. "Ghosts" was the talk of the opera studio back then.

I can understand the Met's reticence to mount such a vast production, probably rivaling that of their recent "Flute" in opulence and grandeur. How many opera productions call for a giant mechanically operated robotic sultanate to serve as a major character? Then there's the period French dress, not to mention carloads of choristers and supers, and probably an equally huge number of IATSE crew. Of course, Corigliano throws a mighty 20th-century style orchestra in the pit. (Contrabassoonists and all ilk of bass clarinet players rejoice!)

But, still, it would have been great to see "Ghosts" mounted in a production equal to its original intentions. It definitely blurred the line between opera and musical theater, not that that hadn't been done a thousand times already. But unlike so many operas and operettas since the dawn of the 20th c., which were basically theater pieces aspiring to opera, Corigliano started from a position of grand opera and then added musical theater features to make it more accessible while keeping artistic the original artistic integrity.

I'm sure "Traviata" will be well-received and well-performed, though.

However, one must ponder: If the premiere opera companies of the world are having to make major cutbacks such as this one, what does that bode for the coming seasons of struggling regional companies like the KO?

The Met goes tech again

Caught this New York Times article about the production of Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust," touted to be the Met's first "interactive opera." Interactive how? Well, imagine singers on stage controlling lighting, sets, and all kinds of special effects merely by their movement and/or voice.

A stage director's nightmare? Maybe... Consider how theater is staged today: Actors (I use "actors" as a generic term to include singers) act on stage; a stage manager in the wings observes the action and dialog and calls light cues, set movements and/or changes, cues for sound Foley (e.g., thunder), warns actors and chorus of their entrances, and a hundred other things. But there's an often perceptible delay between when she calls a cue and when the actual operation happens. Ideally, she tries to call the cues far enough in advance to account for the delay, but anytime you're dealing with human processes, there is variability.

Imagine, however, the stage of the future: An infrared sensor picks up an actor's movement--say, an arm in the air--and sends a signal to a central computer system with specialized software that interprets that signal to cue lighting (e.g., lightning), sound (thunder), or a set piece (a wind machine). Because the computer can "talk" to all the systems faster than any human every could, the actions are, for all intents and purposes, to our "slow" eyes and ears, simultaneous. Better yet, the sensors can interpret how the actor's arm is moving. Perhaps he lowers it, signaling the lightning and thunder to abate slightly so he can deliver a line, and then throws it back into the air, signaling another crescendo in the storm.

Don't get the idea that this technology will ever supplant the stage manager. There are still stupid actors who don't know their cues to push out on stage, choruses to call to the wings, and ten thousand other things that humans, so far, do better than computers. However, this kind of technology can do what technology is usually invented to do: take some of the drudgery out of a task. For predictable processes, the machine can handle them. This leaves the stage manager free to deal with things that are more problematic (e.g., wigs caught on epaulets). Of course, she also must ensure that the technology works as it should and be prepared to take over should anything go wrong.

Technology we take for granted geeks call "ubiquitous." We don't have to think about how much gas to put into the carburetor of our cars to faster, we just push on the gas pedal and electromechanical systems do the rest. We don't have to stand by the coffeemaker to switch it off at the end of a brew cycle, it knows when there's no water left in the reservoir. We don't have to tell the television to tune to 79.25 megahertz to get channel 6, it knows that already. Just as we don't think about these technologies working, we may someday take it for granted that an automated spotlight will follow an actor around the stage or that the gels will all turn red when the devil appears or that the curtain will fall at the end of an act. We won't have to think about it, it will just happen.

Obama and Opera

So, on the dawn of the day that the great diaspora known as the Bush Administration ("Administration," Ha! At least Nero fiddled while Rome burned!) is seeing its final days, I got to thinking:

Obama... opera.

Could there be a connection there, somewhere? Does our new prez-elect like opera? What does he think about it? What's his policy going to be on the Fine Arts?

So, like most i-idiots today, I googled "Obama opera."

What did I find? Well, what I found made me hope that Obama makes education a priority in our country.

The top link said "MySpace Videos: Obama and Opera by AAM." I should've red-flagged anything prefixed with "MySpace" as being spurious, but since this was an entirely unscientific experiment, merely relying on serendipity to yield its results, I went ahead and clicked.

Obviously, the video was of a rally, apparently in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There were several people standing on a dais surrounded by a rowdy crowd of Obamanites. "Okay," I was thinking to myself, "some opera singer sang the National Anthem or something." Then Obama himself came up to the dais and began speaking. After a minute or two, I skimmed further through the video to find the part where the opera singer came in.

No such luck. No singing on that video. It was then that I noticed a rather portly African American woman on the dais with Obama. "Leontyne Price?" I thought. No. Though the video was a bit grainy, I could still see it wasn't Ms. Price. Kiri, maybe? No.

Finally I did recognize the person: It was Oprah!

Alright, so MySpace people aren't the brightest bulbs on the tree. Apparently, some folks were equally confused over on Yahoo, too. I suppose that I should forgive these (I'm assuming) kids or, perhaps, non-native speakers. After all, Oprah wasn't even supposed to be named Oprah. Oprah's given name was supposed to be the Biblical name "Orpah" (Ruth 1:4), but everybody apparently had a hard time pronouncing and spelling that in her native Mississippi.

So, no direct links between Obama/Biden and opera. But, I'm sure there's some greedy little composer in his parents' basement right now writing "Obama: The Opera." Don't be surprised when it comes out. Look for it at the Met in 2012.

FYI, a pdf of Obama/Biden's platform on the arts can be found here.

"Who's the new guy?"

No doubt, anyone paying attention during rehearsals for the recent Glitterville Gala noticed that there was a new face in the crowd in the orchestra. That new face is none other than associate concertmaster, Edward Pulgar. The Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story on him in this morning's edition under the rather uninspired title, "Government put music in his soul." Although, from the title, you might think that maestro Pulgars's violin prowess might have come about as the result of a DARPA experiment gone horribly wrong, the article is referring to the government of his home country, Venezuela.

Starting in the 1970s, a time when America's government had begun cutting Fine Arts programs to save money, the Venezuelan government saw fit to fund an ambitious program of classical music instruction for all of its children, especially those in the impoverished inner city, through the establishment of neighborhood music schools and the formation of local youth orchestras. The idea behind the program is that music can be both an escape and a way out of poverty for some of these kids.

Perhaps what is even more startling is that the Venezuelan government has kept funding "El Sistema" (The System) to this day. Along the way, it has produced crop after crop of talented and highly trained orchestral musicians and conductors which the world's orchestras have adoringly lapped up. A recent 60 Minutes video article (videarticle?) chronicled the rise of one of these young stars, conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

Knoxville has been the lucky recipient of El Sistema in the form of Edward Pulgar. He will be performing with other members of the KSO Principal Quartet (Sean Claire, Kathryn Gawne and Andy Bryenton) next Sunday at 2:30 pm at the Bijou Theater.

Thank goodness there's at least one government that cherishes classical music, eh? The United States continues to head down the path of eradication of all Fine Arts programs in all its schools under the auspices that our kids need more math and science. There are currently just two orchestral programs in Knox County schools, and those are poorly funded. The minimization of general music classes keeps kids from experiencing classical music, which, in turn, keeps the vast majority of them from continuing their studies. Thus, choral, orchestral, and band programs begin to wither away for lack of students.

"But just look at the Japanese and the Chinese," proponents of the art diaspora say, "our kids can't compete with them unless we bolster our math and science programs." Really? Have you checked out the ethnicity of many of the orchestras around the world. Seems there's a definite Asian faction there. So, somehow, the Chinese and Japanese manage to teach their kids math and science and music... oh, and don't forget, most of them have taken English their whole lives and can speak the language better than most native Anglophiles. Anata wa Nihon o hanashi masuka, America Iie? No?

Well, maybe your kids will do better in Venezuela. Most American high schools still teach Spanish, I think.

Post-Production: Glitterville Gala/Concert

* Tons of people - had a good time; lots of costumes; but ran out of food;
* Concert - well enough

A couple of impressions about last night's KO Glitterville Gala/Concert at the Tennessee Theater:

• There was a ton of people there
• Everybody had a great time
• More hors d'oeuvres next time
• I actually have a voice left with which to sing at church this morning

Seemed like the party/concert idea was a great success. There were probably a hundred or so people waiting when the doors opened at about 6 p.m. And, boy, did most folks dress out! A few "resourceful" folks grabbed Obama portraits off the web to masquerade in. (Rather ironic, since it's usually the politicians themselves that we find that are wearing a mask this time of year.) But the beau, uh... belle of the ball had to be none other than Hillary Clinton, as played by a certain countertenor at UT. Everyone said he looked just like her.

And how about Stephen Brown's decorations! You know, Halloween is really a kind of low-brow holiday. Other than Christmas, it's probably the easiest holiday to make tacky if you're not careful. Wel, duh! Of course, Stephen Brown's going to be careful! Everything just reeked of classiness. (I have to admit, though, that I didn't get to get too close a look at what all was put out.) Amazing that a kid from Rockwood, which, I'm sure Stephen would admit, isn't exactly a cultural mecca, world go on to be fawned over by companies and well-to-dos world-wide for his taste and style in decorating for special occasions. As I'm sure they would say in Rockwood, "Ya done good thar, boy!"

The concert, likewise, seemed to go okay. As is usually the case with these kinds of things, the chorus kind of forgot their dynamics and fell back on the the old habit of loud-louder-loudest. It's always harder to sing very softly when you, as a performer in front of an audience, let the adrenaline run haywire. It does make for a lively performance, though. I think the "Sweeney Todd" scenes had a lot more energy than any rehearsal we had. Kudos to everyone for not letting that energy get out of hand on the fugal sections. Really easy to do that, too, when you're pumped for a performance.

Oh, well. We put that one to bed. But, ever vigilant, we start "Rigoletto" rehearsals next week. See ya then.

P.S. Like a total spaz, I never could remember my camera; however, Martin brought his and filled up an entire 2 Gb card with photos which he's posting on Flikr. When he gets them up on the web, I'll ask him for a link to them.

"Phantom" facts (or why you'll never see it at the Tennessee)

My apologies for not writing sooner. The world has been "too much with [me]" lately, and not just in learning the "Mefistofele." Had a couple of great articles in my head but couldn't get them down on paper.

Caught this article on the St. Petersburg Times' website about the touring show of "Phantom of the Opera." The author offers some interesting facts about the original phantom and tech specs about the current production.

It's always interesting to see what it takes to put on a real touring show, how they do what they do the same way every city, every show. Of particular note: the amount of time it takes to set up production: a full 10 days! And 20 truckloads of trappings! I remember when I was a teenager my high school band would sell fruit for the fall. (And, yes, Farragut High School Band is still selling fruit to this day.) Most of the band (~130 people) along with parents, siblings, friends, etc., was required to unload two tractor trailers full of boxed citrus fruit. By the time evening fell, we were all pretty much exhausted. I can't imagine unloading 20 truckloads of stuff--stuff that isn't nice square rectangles, like fruit boxes.

Something else occurred to me while reading the article. You know, most of us take our guests artists at KO for granted, but they really are special people. Sure, being an opera star is glamorous and rewarding, but it's also a real pain! We see the glamorous side of things--schmoozing with the swells, partying with your costars, invitation-only dinners. What we don't see is them living out of a suitcase for up to 50 weeks a year. We also don't see them having to accustomize themselves to a new bed every six weeks or so. Nor do we see them craving the facilities to make mom's special chili instead of existing off of frou-frou party food. "Touring" means just that; you don't get home much.

Well, tomorrow night's the big gig. Hope everybody's not blowing their chords on these rehearsals. All well and fine to practice hard, but if you've got laryngitis during the performance, it amounts to nil.

Reunion '08

I've been trying since Tuesday to write a blurb about how I think most people in the KO chorus are there for the social aspect of things, but the article kept getting blown up by my ADD, so I thought I'd start afresh today.

So, yes, KO choristers do get paid (a little) to do the opera chorus thing and, yes, we are all interested in creating the best possible artistic product we can and, yes, we all get a kick out of being on stage. But the thing that keeps most choristers coming back time and again is the people in the chorus and in the KO organization, in general. They're just a terrific bunch of people! Even though the heart and soul of the chorus changes yearly, or even during each production, it still is made up of a bunch of swells that you won't find anywhere else in town. Large construction equipment salesperson? Got him. Teachers? Aplenty. Doctors? Them, too. A sub-phylum of geeks; administrators of various ilk; Protestants, Jews, Catholics, an atheist and agnostic or two, I'm pretty sure; singles, marrieds, married with spouses in the chorus, too; young, old, older than dirt, old but young at heart, young but old at heart; collegians, high school drop-outs, doctors (PhDs), masters (and mistresses). Alright. You probably get the point.

So how do we all work together without killing each other? Oh, occasionally, we'll throw a snobby soprano or two into the pit to be devoured by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra players--which, incidentally, are people, too... even the bassoonists, who are granted special passes from the asylum on days when we have dress rehearsals or performances, are a part of our family. And we have our differences. A late, difficult rehearsal combined with a bad day at work can cloud the emotional control of anyone. We all have lives outside opera, and while we endeavor to leave them under the canopy on Depot before we enter the KO building, it's impossible not to track in a little anger or frustration from the outside world occasionally. Rest assured, though, that a smile from Big Jim or a hug from Linda is a far more potent cure for what ails you than anything in your psychiatrist's little black bag.

And, yes, while going over an entrance for the fifteenth time singing high Cs double forte can be a lot more work even than a "real" job, we do have fun. Certainly, if we had a little less fun at times our final product would improve, but you could pretty much say that about any company, right? Don, Brian, and whomever is directing give us a rather long leash in that regard, but don't hesitate to rein us in when they need to. And we know it. We know we go too far a lot... a lot!

Thanks to everybody in the company, a bad day rehearsing opera in a warehouse in a seedy part of town is better than a good day at work. Here's to keeping it that way.

Disney Releases Costa's "Sleeping Beauty" on hi-def

During production for Oktoberfest last week, I noted that Disney is releasing a new anniversary DVD & Blu-Ray (i.e., hi def) set of its classic cartoon "Sleeping Beauty" which stars Knoxville's (and Knoxville Opera's) own Mary Costa. I wondered how much hoopla they would make of it (other than the constant marketing, that is). Turns out they are. I spotted this bio of Costa (far superior to the one on Wikipedia) that was publicly released by Disney. I knew that Costa had done the voiceover and singing for Aurora, but I didn't realize that Disney had actually patterned Costa's likeness for her character.

Aurora

Costa

"Sleeping Beauty" was one of my all-time favorite Disney movies when I was a kid, partly because I had fallen hopelessly in love with Aurora on the screen. (The evil Queen, and the dragon she turns into at the end of the movie, however, to this day is probably still capable of giving me nightmares.) I haven't seen the movie in over 30 years, though, largely because, as a single, childless guy, I would die of embarrassment renting a Disney cartoon at Blockbuster. (Yeah, I know: The dweebs at the Blockbuster store don't know I'm single and childless. Doesn't matter. I do! Oddly enough, though, I only have the slightest twinge of guilt renting animé. This dichotomy could be several therapy sessions, right there.)

Pity the KO didn't simultaneously schedule a production of Tschaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty" to try to ride the wave of hype, though.

New Template

In looking around on the web, I noticed that this particular blog template is quite popular, so I decided to change mine to match. The old black template I was using looked cool and all, but in terms of readability, this template is much better