Farewell to the NEA Opera Onsite Program

For the past several years, the opera program of the National Endowment for the Arts has had an evaluation program in which qualified reporters would go see an opera production, find out how a company works, and write up a report about it. These reports would be used by panels in Washington when making decisions on grant applications. Alas, this program is not being continued due to a lack of funds.

I probably have done over twenty of these reports over the years--everything from small companies to some of our largest. It has been a great education for me and I will miss the program.

Another section from Midsummer Night's Dream

This important speech by Egeus, Hermia's father is what really makes the whole show happen.




Some of Egeus' speech has been left out, which is one of the choices you have to make--singing takes awhile and setting a whole play, verbatim, would create six or seven hours of music.

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:
With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,
Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she; will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.

Midsummer Night's Dream, opera a cappella

This is a new section of the a cappella "Dream," from Act I, for Hermia and Lysander. Opera Memphis' Artistic Administrator Sarah Squire sings Hermia on the demo.




LYSANDER

I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

HERMIA

My good Lysander!
I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus' doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the false Troyan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke,
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

LYSANDER
Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.

A visitor to Clark Opera Memphis Center

Opera in News of the Weird

Alas, Opera made Chuck Shepard's News of the Weird this summer. If you want to see the depths that this sunk to go to google images and type "Kreskin Maskenball."

Ashlawn Opera

Made a quick stop at the Ashlawn Highland Opera Festival for some auditions and to hear a scenes concert. Near Charlottesville, the opera performs on the James Monroe estate, up the hill from the more celebrated Monticello. An outdoor festival, the singers sometimes compete with the buzz of cicadas and the cries peacock for attention.

Opera New Jersey

On the way back to Memphis, I stopped off at Opera New Jersey in Princeton. They were kind enough to lend me their young artists and their chorus master Keith Chambers to do a reading of about fifteen minutes of my a capella setting of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. While there I also got the chance to see Elizabeth Caballero and Michael Fabiano sing TRAVIATA and Jennifer Aylmer sing Hanna Glawari in THE MERRY WIDOW.

And no opera lover should ever go anywhere near Princeton without stopping at the Princeton Record Exchange to look over the vast selection of used opera CDs.

More about the reading later.

Not to be a Bore/Boor

While driving from Glimmerglass to Opera New Jersey, I heard Nicholas Carr talking about his essay in the July/August issue of THE ATLANTIC. Carr worries that google and the internet are changing the way we read--that we are becoming a nation of skimmers. He cites a colleague who says he has "almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print." He says we may be losing the ability to read "deep."

It is a worry for us who work in music's longest form. Is the audience losing the ability to "listen deep?" I know that I have one of the shorter attention spans in the opera business--a long opera can put me to sleep in the theatre, even if I am excited about it. It makes me into an artistic director always on the look out for musical cuts, in order not to test the audience's patience.

On the other hand, some long operas were written for another era. When it took a long time to get to the theatre, the length of the entertainment needed to be worth the trip. Plus it is clear that often audiences weren't really paying full attention to the recitatives--they were waiting for a pretty aria to pull their attention back from their box seat to the stage. Honestly, that's the way we watch sports and no one has any issue with that.

I tend to be an optimist and feel that shorter attention spans simply mean that artists need to do a better job at entertaining and intriguing and that often, being longwinded is just being a bore/boor. Opera is a special opportunity for deep listening.

Ryan MacPherson, tenor

On a quick visit over to Glimmerglass, I got a chance to catch up with tenor Ryan MacPherson. He has sung four engagements with Opera Memphis and is singing Luzio in the Glimmerglass production of Wagner's early opera DAS LIEBESVERBOT. Here is Ryan on the streets of Cooperstown with his bike.

RIP Uncle Buoso

An enthusiastically received second performance and it's time for Uncle Buoso to rest in peace for a bit. This performance has given me a chance to check both the piano vocal and orchestral materials for errors, so its now time for a bit of homework so a final version can be made.

This picture is of our very talented dead Uncle B. Patrick Hussey, who in real life is the Shihan of Tenkara Karate in Saratoga Springs.