Boheme Reflections

Opera McGill's production of La Boheme is now history. History is the right word for the four performances - as in all four of our performances were sold out!

It was a beautiful production - from the sets and costumes and lights to the wonderful performances by the both casts, the chorus and the orchestra. Julian Wachner gave beautifully crafted and moving musical direction and in all humility, I did a good job with this one from a staging perspective.

I loved the 2nd act - it was certainly a challenge to do it without a curtain to raise and have the entire chorus onstage ready to go for the first choral "AH!" It was also a joy to stage the 1st and 3rd acts back in November and December and then see them evolve a month later - what a GREAT idea!

I loved my bookends that ran throughout the show - Rodolfo starting the 1st and 4th acts with his feet on the table facing upstage; the parade down the center aisle at the top of the 2nd act which ended with a parade up the center aisle as the act ended; the first image of the show being a lit candle and then the last image being Colline blowing out the candle; Mimi's death taking place spatially on the spot where she and Rodolfo had first sat and expressed their private thoughts during their 1st act arias; plus there was the whole Vincent/Ginette set/costume color palette of Mimi in Pink and Musetta in Green being reflected on the walls of the garrett. The lighting cues were all timed beautifully and boy did the strings sound amazing!

I am very proud of this production and will hold it in my heart and memory for a long while! It's hard to let go. For some of the cast members, this was their last Opera McGill production. Some of these students started out with me during my first year here at McGill: singing in Albert Herring, some singing in the chorus of Cosi fan tutte or playing trees in Alcina and now there they were on the stage singing principal roles!

Boheme was the 14th opera I've produced, directed, or played in my 3 and 1/2 years here. That's a lot. I'm doing 12 operas in 2011 alone. I'm thinking that's too much and wonder how long I can keep going like this. It's worrisome to me, and to my family. Finding balance is now my focus - which leads me to Imeneo.

My production of Imeneo will try to answer a question that I think is at the heart of the piece:
What happens when people are thrown out of balance?
A hero becomes the villain, a rational woman becomes crazed, a poet loses his muse, a man loses his vision, and the unloved get desperate...

Imeneo opens March 25, 2011

La Boheme rehearsals

I'm just going to put a link in this blog to some terrific photos taken by Adam Scotti during our last room rehearsal of La Boheme in the Wirth Opera Studio for McGill Opera:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamscotti/sets/72157625838333722/

It's going to be a really, really good production. We've got two exceptional casts -- everyone should come twice!! The performances are January 26, 28, 29, and 30 (matinee) in Pollack Hall on Sherbrooke West in Montreal.

If you haven't found our Facebook page, it's here:

http://www.facebook.com/operamcgill

Check out some of our casts' auditions back in the fall of 2010 - interviews and snippets of their singing. We're following the process of creating opera here at Opera McGill during this entire year.

No philosophical musings on this blog -- just to say how lucky I am to be working with such talented students and SO lucky to have an amazing support team: Aria, Jocelyn, Matt, and Philippe!!

End of Year BEST/WORST of 2010 List

So this year's not been the best for my blog. I've feel I've not done a very good job of publishing updates - my apologies. We'll see if 2011 brings a change. My only excuse is that I've been rather busy - at Opera McGill, at Brevard, on outside directing gigs, and being a father and husband. Plus there were all of those letters of recommendation to write...

The following lists stem from my experiences with Opera during the past year, no other criteria was used. I've tried to be funny and honest. Hard to do, eh?!

PJH's BEST Opera Experiences of 2010:
10) "Hänsel und Gretel", Opera McGill: A very simple premise (children's own artwork) caused audience members to weep with joy. Garry and his dopplegänger caused critics to practically pee their pants!
9) The Dance of the Blessed Spirits from "Orpheus", Opera Memphis: Orchestra and Dancers were beautiful, as were the lights cues! Michael Ching and his vision (unique to opera) will be sorely missed down in the land of incredible BBQ.
8) "The Rake's Progress", Opera McGill: Amazing work from Mo Wachner, the chorus and terrific student performances, including Nick Shadow's demise -- Sly at his most sly and riveting.
7) Tinervia's Tarquinias' aria during Opera McGill's "Death by Aria": one of the most musical moments I've been a part of in a long while. Being musical used to be important, now it's a rare event.
6) Otto's Nemorino in "Elixir of Love", Wichita Grand Opera: His American debut in the middle of Kansas was sung impeccably well. He was also a joy to direct -- in my broken German and Italian and his English. I loved working with all of the cast members, young artists, and choristers.
5) Boheme rehearsals during the fall, Opera McGill: Such a joy to work with such amazing casts! The January 2011 performances are not to be missed.
4) Jill Gardner's Tosca, Boston Lyric Opera: Conducted by Bisantz, directed by Lefkowich, cast by Russell -- they kept the faith.
3) "The Pirates of Penzance", Janiec Opera Company at Brevard: Simply hysterical! Go cast, go orchestra, go Gately.
2) Ingrid's amazing, amazing memorized performance of our staged "Pierrot Lunaire" for MusiMars: She's fearless. The Ensemble was also FIERCE!
1) "TnT", Opera McGill: from my crazy idea to do the choreography in retrograde (skillfully done by Jana, Nico, and Garry) to the production design, to both casts' wonderful portrayals, to Mo JdS's abilities at the piano; it was such a joy to walk into rehearsal each day!

PJH's WORST Opera Experiences of 2010
10) Losing 1 of only 4 soldiers in Wichita's "Elixir" after I'd staged the four into the show: It wasn't a soldier's chorus, it was a trio...
9) Sitting through a horrid "Prendi" during Brevard auditions this December: We knew at "PREEEEEEEE-" (sung fortissimo) that she'd be a "no".
8) Renee's "Dark Hope". Aptly named.
7) Some of the tempi I've had to listen to this year: Why ignore the human beings actually doing the singing onstage?! I've found it sometimes helps to actually listen and respond. Just sayin'...
6) Mabel's Dolly Parton wig in "Pirates of Penzance": I simply couldn't see Mary's face to find her lips to see her words because all I could see was hair - EVERYWHERE!
5) My terrible upbeat at the encore of "Modern Major General"; luckily the orchestra remembered what we had rehearsed!
4) Me losing my place in the midst of Armine's Komponist in "Death by Aria"; I had to resort to playing it by ear; memo for 2011 - must get new glasses!
3) Aperghis' "Sextuor" -- the score, not the performance (go McGill ladies!) in MusiMars; total pile of terribleness...
2) Speaking of the remarkable MusiMars 2010: the Stockhausen "Inori" -- the score and the mimes. Mimes and modern music -- such a bad idea. I didn't get it, and don't want to get it, frankly. Emperor's New Clothes if you ask me!
1) Missing "A Quiet Place" at NYCO this fall: I didn't get myself to a performance and really regret missing it. Perhaps City Opera will reprise it next season?!

That's the best/worst I can do. Happy New Year Everyone!

Girls in Black Dresses, Cowboy Boots, and Monica’s Waltz

First off, it's been a TERRIFIC audition tour so far! There are some really, really talented singers out there. It's been so exciting to sit in on these auditions! The summer of 2011 is going to be just incredible!

Secondly, please excuse the overuse of exclamation marks...

I thought I might post a list of audition "thoughts" from the road as David Gately and I travel around the U.S. hearing young singers on our annual December tour for Janiec Opera Company. These are simply my own, and are being expressed mostly to try to bring a bit of humor to this process.

1) A rare commodity: pianists who know the repertoire.

2) There are too many sopranos pursuing opera. They are like salmon swimming upstream to spawn or like stars in the evening sky (take your pick on the metaphor…)

3) The more Dr. So-And-So’s listed on a singer’s resume under voice teacher, director or conductor the less impressed I seemed to be with the audition.

4) I know who wrote “Come scoglio”, you don’t have to tell me it’s by Mozart.

5) There are so few men auditioning anymore that each seems like he could be the next Nathan Gunn.

6) New look to try: Cowboy boots with a suit and tie. Each one of the guys with this look got put onto the Yes list.

7) Monica’s Waltz is a terrible aria - to sing and to listen to.

8) So far almost 75% of our ladies wore black dresses, more than half of those in black dresses also chose a pearl necklace of some sort.

9) Mediocrity is the new illusion: Don’t do anything special or out of the ordinary. Generic is the way to go. That way, nothing is communicated that engages anyone on any aesthetic level. It’s safe and incredibly boring and won’t get you noticed at all.

10) It is actually easy to standout from the others: Sing anything fantastically well and know what you’re singing about. Extra points for JOY!

Opera Lives!

After the last few operas I've seen, and I'm speaking as a ticket-buying audience member not as a producer, I'd become increasingly worried that opera was falling into a void. A void of mediocre singing/yelling, terrible language skills and acting without textual connotations (let alone, subtextual!), horrid lighting cues that verged on community theatre, incompetent conducting and pedestrian direction.

A sad state! I'd been seeing this sort of "throw-it-together" opera for awhile now... Everywhere: close at home, far from home, at opera companies with big budgets and at companies with small budgets. It was getting kinda depressing.

And then I took a flight from Plattsburgh, NY, to Boston, MA to see the Boston Lyric Opera production of Puccini's "Tosca'. The reason for my trip was to see old friends who were all involved in the production. The leading lady Jill Gardner, the director David Lefkowich, and the conductor Andrew Bisantz, were all assembled by the artistic administrator of BLO Nicholas Russell for this production. All of us had met at Glimmerglass during our summers there, and now here they were in Boston.

Honestly, I was more interested in seeing everyone than sitting through another opera - particularly when I heard the tenor had become sick and they were bringing in a sub. I also did not know the rest of the cast, and so was getting set for that "same-old" opera I had been seeing at other places around North America.

Well --- OPERA LIVES AGAIN! In spades! The BLO production just blew me away. Starting with Jill's amazing, gutsy, and wonderfully sung portrayal of the title role. I have not seen a singer give such a complete performance -- vocal, musical, and dramatic -- in years. Jill WAS Tosca. I believed every moment and she created such special ones: praying to the Madonna, flirting with her Mario, singing "Vissi d'arte" on Scarpia's temporary cot, stabbing him to death with the scissors (go David Lefkowich!), and her amazingly shocking "leap". You just had to be there to believe it. It was all done with a beautiful connection to the text, attention to Puccini's score, and gorgeous tone. BRAVA!

Supporting her in all of this was the conductor, Andrew Bisantz. I've heard him conduct lots of opera - from Little Women to Manon Lescaut, and was not surprised at how adept he was with this score. I think Puccini might be his forte, as it all seemed to flow effortlessly; sculpting a beautiful performance from orchestra and singers alike, he allowed his leading singers ample freedom to express this tricky score. It's too bad that the Met seems to be hiring young, inexperienced Maestri with big names and big money behind them -- instead of hiring actual conductors who know the scores because they've spent their 10,000 hours actually LEARNING how the buggers go. Note to Gelb...

Not to be missed were all of David Lefkowich's touches. This was not an original production -- rented all the way from Scottish National Opera and arriving via boat. I've only seen David work in original productions, and he flourishes in those. However, the confines presented to him really came to fruition in the 2nd act. It was simply riveting. From Scarpia getting in some good ol' fashioned gut punches on the tenor, to the vivid almost-rape of Tosca, to Scarpia's murder by scissors, I was impressed. No one moves men around onstage in Fedoras better than David Lefkowich!

The rest of the cast was also QUITE good: from Bradley Garvin's channeling of a young Milnes mixed with Hollywood good looks, to the substitute tenor of the day Richard Crawley (who threw himself into the role as if he'd been in rehearsals for weeks), to the supporting roles (T. Stephen Smith's perfect Sacristan to Anton Belov's Angelotti); that sort of deep casting comes from an artistic administrator who knows his business!

So yes, I judged an Aria Contest for Teens - with Miss Boston and her tiara - and there were numerous bottles of champagne and red wine at a dinner filled with old friends from Florida Grand Opera (a surprise). I also had an afternoon with the glorious Ruth Golden, in town to hear the opening night, and was able to see Brevard alumni Nicole Rodin sing in an outreach BLO performance plus have a Starbucks with Margot Rood. Margot's now flourishing in Boston, which is such a great place for singers with small voices...

Just kidding Margot! I'm hoping Boston will figure out what I figured out three years ago -- Margot is one of the most talented singing actors out there. BLO should hire her next...

Next up: Catherine Malfitano's McGill masterclass on November 20; Boheme starts staging at McGill on November 23; Gately and I head off for the Brevard auditions Dec. 4 - 15 (Chicago, Ft.Worth, NYC, Boston). I promise to blog from those auditions!

Hansel and Gretel in the Schools

Sorry it's been awhile since my last post. We've been busy... The "we" in that is not meant to be a royal we, it's meant to mean a team of six singers, a coordinator, and myself who've been going into various elementary schools - both French and English - in the Montreal area with a presentation about Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel.

It's because I had an idea about this fall's Opera McGill production of said opera. The idea: project illustrations, by kids, for the sets of the opera. Allow the kids to imagine the story of H & G, and with little guidance, let them create forests, angels, gingerbread children, maison de bonbons, etc. with crayons and markers. Then, the illustrations picked would become part of the actual set design, be projected onto the back screen during the show, and the illustrators (and their families) would be invited to a special presentation in November - complete with a cupcake reception hosted by THE WITCH!

We took a team of Hansels and Gretels, had them sing the first act "let's not work, let's dance instead" duet and also the 2nd act prayer. We also asked the kids lots of questions: What's an opera? What do we need to make an opera? What language were they singing in? What was going on while they sang? etc., etc.

Interesting to see how much the students knew about opera, their ideas and preconceived stereotypes (it's LOUD), their reactions to the live performances, and of course to see their illustrations! Some were really, truly amazing!

I'm looking forward to staging the show - starting this Monday - and getting into the mind of a child again. It's a much better place to be!

Other goings on in the Opera McGill world: performances at the Homecoming "Spotlight on Schulich" where we presented quatre extraits from La Boheme. People were stunned by the level of the casts... Two weeks ago we also performed the first annual "Death By Aria" patterned after the DMMO evening of the same name. Each of the singers cast in Opera McGill productions stood up and sang an aria. I played. Brilliantly, I might add, for the sheer number of arias on the program: 30! I felt more connected to Robert Larsen that afternoon than ever before. It's a fun thing to do, and it allowed the students to experience performing an aria in front of a -- standing room only -- audience without being judged by an audition panel or a faculty grading an exam or critics listening with their 20th century ears. This sort of experience is rare and schools should provide more of these types of performance experiences! Plans are underway for another one in the 2nd semester. Plus the party afterwards at our house, hosted by my wife and kids, was a ton of fun.

I've tried to finish watching the second season of ROME, but am only 2/3rds of the way through. I really, really want to do a Poppea and really, really go for it ala ROME. It's the perfect opera for digging into Roman sex scenes, religious rites, bloody murders, stoic suicides, intrigue everywhere, and reclining meals (want to do that some day -- the meal part, not some of the others).

Yes, I wrote "some" on purpose.

Must run, have to write a thousand letters of recommendation that no one will read and are a total waste of time. When in the world will this NONSENSE END?!?!?!

Keep singing loud, fast and high!

Cough Cough Sneeze Sneeze Whine and Moan

And I thought fall allergy season was bad!

As terrible as my hay fever is (and only a few seasons ago I was boasting that I had "cured" my hay fever by diligently eating yogurt every morning the three months leading up to September...) this cold I've caught from my hacking wife and coughing children is MUCH worse. I don't know if it's because I'm trying to maintain a working, coaching, teaching schedule, or if it's because my mother in law and father in law are visiting from Iowa and that puts me on a blow-up bed in the dining room, or if it's because there's a bit more stress than usual around the world, but I feel TERRIBLE!

Yes, that's a whine. A big man WHINE. Nobody really whines like a married man who's sick. I do it really well -- big sighs, whining the "where's the Advil?" or the "where's the decaf tea?" or the "can you make me some toast while you're at it?" are all part of my repertoire. So is the ability to ignore the dog at 2am when he wakes suddenly and has to pee. Somehow, I can sleep through that, but not through the dripping faucet in the kitchen. Hmmmm...

Singers can whine a lot, too. When I worked at Glimmerglass I called it the B&M - Bitch and Moan. It usually came from singers whose self-esteem was not as big as their egos, or who had a screwed up passagio, or someone who was not getting any "bites" from the managers who came through auditioning singers, or frankly just a bitchy singer who felt the need to strike out at other humans simply because they felt like it. It didn't happen all that often, but I saw it there, and have seen it elsewhere throughout my 25+ years working in the biz. It's becoming rarer in the opera world, but I do find it still - particularly among the very young just starting out.

This need to make others feel bad is an interesting thing. Why does it happen among artists who get to work on such AMAZING music and text? Shouldn't the act of making music be an antidote to negativity? Where is the joy in singing - literally?

A more important question for someone pursuing a career as a singer might be: Why would other collaborators work with difficult singers who B&M? The answer is that they don't - not any more! This sort of behavior spells immediate failure in a career. There simply is no room for it and it leads to not getting cast, not having a career, and wasting a lot of money on lessons and coachings.

Today on FB, Marc a singer here in Montreal, posted a quote from Gandhi that I had forgotten:
"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny."

It's so true.

And your thoughts become sounds when you sing... Some of us can hear those thoughts in your voice...

Too bad none of you can hear my whiny tone as I ask my wife for "some more honey, Honey?!"