The Fantasy of The Magic Flute

What caught my attention and began my journey of dabbling in as a casual opera-viewer a few years ago was the emotional intensity of the art form. It's exciting. It's pure emotion in the form of sound. And that's genuine escapism as a viewer/hearer sitting in the theatre. So when I came across the trailer for a film entitled The Magic Flute that appeared to be a fantasy storm about entering into the Mozart opera of the same name, I just had to see it.

While the theatrical run was so limited that it appears to already be over after a week, I am glad I got to see it in theatres because there you have the benefit of theatrical sound quality for all of that Mozart music. Going off of reviews, it seems that people knowledgeable in music and opera did not find this film notable for its singing talent--but it isn't an opera as a film. It's a fantasy story that happens to have an opera as its fantasy world. And I love that concept.

It's like Narnia, in the sense of the fantasy world. The lead character, Tim, is a teenager whose father has just died and who has just started at a prestigious music school. He wants to do well but finds that he is lacking something. And what he finds is a portal in the school into The Magic Flute, where he is the opera's protagonist. In his journey to escape into the fantasy of the opera, he finds the tug back to the real world--as the plot thickens in the fantasy, he finds that he is also missing out on more from the real world by trying to get back to the fantasy. So the way that he "wins" inside the fantasy is by pulling in from his experiences in the real world. It's a classic concept of finding out how much the real world matters by finding mirrors for it within fantasy. And also a return to that concept of art theory, of remembering that the sharing of emotional experience is part of the core of art--so if you lose the emotion, which is rooted in real world experience, then you are also losing the very point of cultivating art.

Perhaps the frame story of the real world was imperfect. We bounce from Tim's dying father to his new female friend/crush, to his school roommate who is dealing with the aftermath of his own loss--and the layer of their themes basically fits but could use some refining. Though the mirror of these elements with those of the opera isn't perfect, I don't necessarily mind. Though perhaps most theatergoers won't connect with the extended length of some of the opera sequences, I didn't mind. Maybe some of the pacing, the back-and-forthing between the two worlds, could have been tweaked a bit, but I still really enjoyed this movie.

I probably would have enjoyed it for the mere fact that you get to see the main character singing his dramatic song while a giant snake is attacking him. That was wonderful. It brought back echoes of Black Swan. I didn't like everything about that movie's content, but I really enjoyed the way that it emphasized the edgy emotional quality of the ballet music. The same type of thing went on in this movie--just through the filter of a YA fantasy school story instead of a psychological thriller. Mozart's music could make up the score and bring in its full emotional weight reinterpreted for a new era of CG monsters and castles. I loved that this movie just went for it and did something completely fresh, though still based on familiar tropes. I wish it had been marketed more; I barely had a chance to know that it existed and barely was able to catch it in the theatre, so it didn't have much chance to introduce new audiences to opera. I'd love to see more content like this, in the sense of reworking classics into new formats and playing around with them. 

The Newly Inspired Sound of Music

Arizona Opera often looks at ways to widen the audience or broaden the definition of opera. The latest example is their production of The Sound of Music, directed by Ian Silverman and starring Cadie J. Bryan as Maria and Jonathan Bryan as Captain Von Trapp. So how does a musical look as performed by an opera company?

Quite beautiful, it turns out. It's already a pleasure to hear live music and singing--and having this put together by an opera company means that the singers have different backgrounds than those you'll find at a typical musical. They add that extra, luxuriant quality to their singing. So the emphasis becomes even more on the singing than normal--or perhaps more on the technical delivery than just on the general tone of the songs.

Not that we lost the tone or the story. I've only watched The Sound of Music once, so it was a delight to delve back into the story. The themes around Maria's character center so perfectly around the idea that we each have a role in life, even if we don't always know what that role is. We see her trying to fit into a place that doesn't quite work--so the nuns offer her a different way to serve God and Man, as a teacher and then a wife and mother. Doing the right thing can take many shapes; it takes all of us, all of our shapes, to make the world turn. And Maria's very delight in the world and in life and in singing and joy that didn't make her fit in well at the convent are the very things that make her thrive in the Von Trapp household.

I have little to say on the technical sides of this production. The sets were beautiful, as usual; the way that the mountains were lit for day or darkened for evening was lovely. Having so many children on stage, all singing along, was impressive. But really it was just the way that everything expressed the story of this family coming together that made this opera's production of a musical just as elevated an experience as one of their operas. I wouldn't mind seeing more musicals show up in the season occasionally. 

The Riders Ride Once More

Riders of the Purple Sage is the first opera that I have seen a second time. I caught Arizona Opera's world premiere of it three years ago and was quite happy to see it coming back again this season. (Click here to read that original post.) Essentially it was the same production, with perhaps some adjustments to the sets. So I have already talked about the music, Ed Mell's artwork, and the themes.

The question is, how does this opera appear on a repeat viewing? Was it just exciting because it was different (a Western opera)? Was it just beautiful because of the moving-painting-screen backdrop? Sure, those are great, but no, there is something more to this piece that made it a pleasure to revisit.

My favorite part remains Jane's song at the beginning of Act II. That is this opera. It is the extension of the self over the landscape. It is the absorption of the beauty all around and the expression of the harshness--and the vocalized resolution to embrace that which is good. The Southwest makes for such a great fictional setting because it is a land rich with color, texture, and life, and yet it is also a land that is deadly if you take a wrong step. That delicate way of walking is essentially the way that Jane tries to walk, believing so strongly in her faith and yet realizing that the very churchmen who claim to uphold it in her community are not living out love and faith.

So that is what makes Rider of the Purple Sage a lovely piece to revisit. Its embracing of the Southwest is enough to make it an anthem for Arizona Opera. But its way of capturing that duality of the desert makes it into the anthem for Arizona (or the Southwest) as a whole.

La Boheme & What Is Real

Given how much I'd enjoyed Arizona Opera's production of Madama Butterfly a couple years ago, I was excited to see more Puccini coming up with La Boheme this season. So yes, music was great, the symphony was great, the performers were great, the sets were great--but that really isn't my zone to talk about, is it? I'm here to talk about how it all felt.

How does it feel to be an artist trying to create something meaningful but really feeling like what would be meaningful would be food on the table and bills paid? How does it feel to find yourself on the edge of love but know that it will not last? How does it feel to feel? That is the main question that this story brought up.

In fact, this feeling of the great joy/pain and success/failure of life is so strong that it almost feels like a sort of precursor to postmodernism. It's a witty story. The opening scene is funny as the characters, desperately cold, burn the pages of Rodolfo's play to keep warm. But by the third act, when Mimi is singing about how she and Rodolfo can agree to stay together until spring because they won't be able to feel the loss so much during spring, well, that's the breaking point. Even though she's singing about pretty springtime things, her song is heartbreak in music form.

And that's life. Heartbreak can come in many forms. There is the loss of a relationship--but also any type of emotional loss. That's one of the guarantees in life: there will be heartbreak. These characters also experience fleeting pleasures and even fleeting sorrows--but they are most stirred by the deep happinesses and the deep losses. In a way, as artists they pursue the deep experiences. They make beauty out of them in their art. But they are also shattered and broken by them. In Mimi and Rodolfo's story, happiness and pain meet, which is expressive of life itself.

First they wanted to believe that they were in love because the idea of being in love seemed so wonderful. Then they wanted to believe that they could separate in order to avoid the pain of a hopeless situation. At the bitter end, they feel the love they have for each other and also the pain of their loss of each other, now made eternal. All through this the question in mind is, what is real in our minds? There is the conflict between what this group of artists are trying to do with their lives and what they are actually experiencing--and a conflict between what Rodolfo and Mimi want and what they actually experience. The curtain closes on her death because what happens next depends on what the characters decide is real. Is the heartbreak real enough to make Rodolfo never love again? Is it real enough that he will pursue an entirely different life, one where he finds a different career and a simpler love that is simply marriage rather than what he had with Mimi? Is it real enough to inspire him to write an amazing play, one that might even give him financial success? Or is it real enough that he will simply continue to live the life that he is now, because it is this life of poverty and fear and poetry that brought him all that he has experienced?

(This is what happens when you write about Puccini while listening to Breaking Benjamin.)

The Music Is the Same

I have concluded that I see music in my own unique way.

I have repeated again and again that I am not musical. So when I go see an opera, I can't comment on the musical side--only on what I get from the music. Sometimes when I tell people that I go to the opera, I also end up mentioning that I never listen to opera (never might be too strong a word--I have a couple of times and I might listen to a song from an opera by an artist I follow, but that's quite different). It's also difficult to try and describe what music I do listen to. And that music varies depending on the time and season.

Right now I have been getting into writing again. Writing music, well, often the more agitating it is, the better. I've been using Spotify a lot lately, letting it just play random things. So I was listening to some sort of rock or metal song or other (possibly "What I Am" by Crown the Empire) and I realized something (I might also add here that it's mainly the things without screaming that I'll listen to). I realized that I was getting the same thing from that song I'd been getting from the Countess's song in The Marriage of Figaro in March. Opera and a touch of metal? They're all the same to me sometimes.

I don't see music the way most people do, I think.

I see in the emotional tone of a thing. A song. A person, even. That's the word I use; I say that I don't remember what people look like, I remember their tone. What they feel like, the sense of them. So that's how I see music. And it's those intense things of emotion that I like best when it comes to art--so that's why I might go see an opera and then sit at my desk listening to Breaking Benjamin.

(Not, though, I might add, to say that I don't see the music aspect at all. There are definitely sounds that I don't like. I don't like soul or jazz or hip-hop or plenty of things--in general.)

What kind of music do you think John Keats would have listened to if he were alive today, if he had been born in, say, 1999? I doubt he would've been an operagoer. Though, then again, he did like Classical imagery, so maybe him enjoying opera today would have been similar to him hearkening back to Classical characters and images. But Keats himself was part of a newer movement of art and while there is modern opera, mostly the genre is associated with pieces that are already in existence. So who knows.

The Marriage of Figaro

Nice as it was to see The Barber of Seville last year and then its sequel, The Marriage of Figaro, this year, I quite honestly probably just wasn't in the mood for such a lighthearted story on that particular day.

The story is full of fun comedy--and a little bit of iffy comedy. Yet it was when the Countess (performed by Katie Van Kooten) was singing about wanting her love to come back to her that I was all bawling. It brought somewhat to mind Madama Butterfly. I do prefer the melodramatic, don't I? Give me three hours of lighthearted comedy and all I latch onto is the touch of pain.

That's how art is, though, isn't it? You can sit an audience in front of the exact same show and we're all going to come out with different experiences. That's why so often art will feel like it's speaking exactly to you: once it's unleashed on the world, it becomes a mix of what the artist gave it and what the viewer gives it.

On a Silent Night

Probably you have heard the story of how soldiers during WWI laid down all hostilities for one day, for Christmas Day, and intermingled and played games and acted as friends and comrades, and even though they went back to fighting the next day, for that one day, Christmas Day, they had put all of that aside.

This is the story that Arizona Opera's latest production, Silent Night, was based on. That is, the opera, with music by Kevin Puts and libretto by Mark Campbell, was in turn based on the film Joyeux Noel. Perhaps that was why the piece flowed along much like a film would rather than an opera. Even though you could sense that the audience was moved, there weren't any gaps that allowed for the usual pauses of applause that are the norm for opera (opera audiences love to show their appreciation). In fact, that was just as well: pauses and applause would have removed the audience from being inside the story and this was one of those pieces that just pulled you in and kept you within the world.

Also seeing soldiers and bits of battles was different from usual at the opera. But still we had the main thing: music and singing that moved us emotionally. I've talked about maybe the shedding a tear thing at an aria, but the first act of Silent Night pretty much just had me weeping. This is where I start to wonder again if it's just me--except that this music won a Pulitzer Prize, so no, it isn't just me.

The story is war . . . and war stories are about people who are coming from all phases of life to a horrible existence. The mothers, the fathers, the children, the friends, the lovers, they all got their moment, each moment a chance for the audience to connect and weep at the idea of what that would be like--that is, for those of us who have been so fortunate as to not experience events quite like this. For those who have, well, that would be even another layer.

The performers in this sang the song of life . . . of heartbreak and pain and beauty. That's what made this opera so poignant. I will state that, while the first act just left me utterly stilled, the second act didn't have the same power. I would rate the piece as a whole higher if there hadn't been that difference between the two. Still, though, Silent Night remained a beautiful story of the deepest and most touching aspects of living.

La Traviata

What an interesting journey into the world of opera this has been. It began with Don Giovanni at Santa Fe Opera and then I started in on Arizona Opera two years ago with Madama Butterfly, which has remained one of my favorites. That piece broke my heart. So two years later, I found myself watching another story of love and tragedy, Verdi's La Traviata.

It's funny. The difference in story between the two was likely quite fitting a difference for me two years ago and today. So siting watching La Traviata this weekend was like swimming in a strange blur where everything in me was blending with everything in the opera. I thought it was just me until I read all of the material in the program that comments on Verdi's way of reaching the audience with relatable, real life themes. I felt it.

In my observations over the past two years, I have observed that I like Puccini much and Rossini not as much. So I've definitely started in on what style of music I prefer. Verdi was different from both, though I would say more like Puccini than like Rossini. I kept on noticing (again, with my unmusical perspective) how the singing would come to a climax that was then matched by the orchestra. It was very theatrical, the way that the two matched like that. Emotion plus, well, louder volume.

I always like to say that the sets and costumes were pretty--this time I couldn't even pay much attention to them. I was just reading the lyrics and listening to the music . . . and yet I can't even remember much of the music now. (Though I think I will maybe look up a recorded version to listen to again.) Yet still it caught me up in that strange blur of emotion. Sara Gartland as Violetta led it all; I feel like I was watching an ode to her life and her final discovery of love and her acceptance of that love at whatever cost, even the cost of pain and heartbreak. David Blalock as Alfredo did also bring in some sweet, sweet tones that helped to create that feeling of love.

I was expecting more tragedy to the story, I admit. Maybe because I was expecting more, this didn't feel "that bad," even though of course in real life it would be. I think this is because the main effect, for me, was Violetta's choice to take this love that she has with Alfredo at whatever cost. So everything else kind of fades away because their love was the point and even any tragedy that accompanied it somehow only made it sweeter. But I guess that perspective is the perspective of a literature student who finds beauty in the painful things, too.

So very lovely, definitely one of my favorites.

The Death of Charlie Parker

Given that normally I'm not much of a jazz fan, I did think I might skip Charlie Parker's Yardbird from Arizona Opera's RED series. When I won some tickets at Aria Jukebox, though, that seemed the perfect excuse to go ahead and see something a little different, something that didn't call to me as much. Oftentimes, after all, it's the risks that lead to exciting and new artistic experiences.

Musically, though, this piece felt more like opera than jazz than I'd been expecting. Maria de Buenos Aires in September, for instance, was the tango opera that had the definite tango feel to the music. I am, however, without any knowledge of music, so this is all I can say on this aspect. I only bring it up to mention that it wasn't the style of the music that ended up keeping me distant.

It was the story. The production takes place after Charlie Parker dies. The concept is that he is writing his last piece, a symphony, before he moves on. Instead of seeing him write a symphony, though, we hear him talk about writing and we see him reliving moments in his life/meeting again important people from his life. And while there are certainly inspirational aspects to his story, mainly his life just came across as incredibly depressing.

A musically brilliant man going up against segregation and discrimination. A boy from a small town who wants to make it big in the city. A man who falls from one relationship into another. A person who finally jumps into the arms of drugs to try and deal. I tend to be a sucker for depressing artist stories, but not of this variety. This plot wasn't really for me, so it was hard to come out of this production either moved or entertained in more than a casual way.

Not to say that there weren't aspects that even I, as I suppose the wrong target audience, didn't appreciate. The performers did well. Stephanie Sanchez as Baroness Nica brought me back to the feeling of Main Stage performances at Symphony Hall. Joshua Stewart as Parker himself had some moments of absolutely sweet and warm notes. Du'Bois A'Keen added a unique element as the dancer giving a visual interpretation of the music. He reminded me somewhat of Emma Shapplin's dancer on her Macadam Flower tour. And this production was a great example of the successful use of projection. They projected onto real bases in order to give the sense of different places while also making each of those places feel solid.

Hmm. I try and make a point of the fact that I don't write reviews; I write reactions. And when it comes to Arizona Opera, I write reactions as a casual yet regular attendee without any knowledge of music or opera. When it comes to Charlie Parker's Yardbird, that leaves me with very little to say. What this production offered to me was a contrast. By being part of the mix, it showed me how wonderful certain other productions are and helped me to see just why they can be so moving.

Maria de Buenos Aires

'Tis that time again, the time in which I wander around to the theatre and the ballet and the opera. The first of the season was also part of Arizona Opera's new McDougall RED series. With these, they're going for shows with a slightly different tone or style and putting them in the smaller Herberger Theatre rather than the grand Symphony Hall. 

Even that change means quite a big. While Symphony Hall is so big that you can buy last minute tickets for the opera no problem, Herberger is small enough that seats were getting filled up much sooner. As per usual, I took the very back balcony row, even though this was my first time at Herberger and I wasn't sure how a seat in that row would be. Turns out, though, that this seat was perfectly great. Though the balcony is greatly tiered, it wasn't to the point that you felt like you were going to fall over (like at a big arena), simply that it was tiered so that you could be closer to the stage and with a clearer view than if there were little or no tiering. The small size of the theatre was more comparable to watching a play at the Mesa Arts Center than to watching an elaborate opera or ballet at Symphony Hall.

Indeed, the show itself, Maria de Buenos Aires, was almost more like watching a play than an opera. Celeste Lanuza as El Duende made me think of something like spoken word in the way that she wasn't quite singing but not quite just speaking, either. And while opera tends to be about big shapes and movements that you can see far away (with the main emphasis on sound rather than sight), this show made a little more of movement. It's a tango opera, so of course there was dancing, but also other types of movement that went along to help tell the story. 

And the story? A story of sorrow, the story of a woman who is born from the toying meddling of El Duende to a life of pain. Yet also the story of a woman who feels deeply and, led by a song in her soul, pictures great things. Is it a story of triumph over darkness? No, not really. Triumph hardly seems to describe what the ending felt like: it felt more like taking a breath after struggling to hold it beneath water for a very long time. 

I don't know. I think this opera was more about the feeling of each moment than a particular theme. As you'd expect from a tango opera, it is often deeply moving and sensual and striking and bold and did I mention moving? 

The audience knew going in to expect something different. You could get the vibe in the first few scenes that everyone was kind of trying to get their bearings and figure out what type of a show this was, but by the time Maria (portrayed by Catalina Cuervo) sang "Yo Soy Maria," we were all enthralled in this weird web of red darkness. I don't have the words to describe Catalina Cuervo singing as Maria. She has been in this role over 50 times, and so it would seem that she has entirely embodied the passion and sorrow of this character. She took hold of the whole audience. And when Luis Alejandro Orozco joined her as the Payador, it was . . . like this beautiful passion of love that they were singing. 

While an opera is usually close to three hours, this was only an hour and a half (which is kind of nice for a modern audience because you can just focus in on enjoying rather than getting either antsy or sleepy before the end). Yet it felt like it covered so much that it couldn't have been so short as that. Fascinating and striking. That is what Maria de Buenos Aires was. 

Candide: A Depressing Comedy?

Well, well, one year after moving back into the greater Phoenix area, I've turned into quite the Arizona Opera regular, haven't I? That is, hopefully I'll be able to finish with Das Rheingold in April and maybe The Barber of Seville in March. This month it was Candide, which I had read was more like a musical than a usual opera. So definitely a little different.

They also used this opportunity to try out something different with the stage. Instead of having the usual physical sets, there were projections on the backdrop, the side walls (sorry, what are they called?), the floor, and sometimes also around the middle of the stage. For most other shows, I would feel like something was missing with not actually having physical sets. But this was the perfect show to try out this method. Candide is a kooky, weird, random, comedic bundle--and the kaleidoscope of projections fit it perfectly. Cityscapes gave the view the look almost of a live-action/animated film, the forest made for a beautiful backdrop to Candide's somber songs of solitude, and the scenes with the ships and the hot air balloon (that would have just looked silly if the tone were serious) looked hilarious and cool in a positive sense.

The music? I don't really know. Because the instrumental portions sounded much like a film score, it was once again great to hear the Phoenix Symphony playing all of this music live. The songs were different from opera, yes, but also sometimes similar. As I somewhat alluded to, Candide's lonesome songs were quite pretty, breaks from all the, ah, stuff that goes on throughout this show. And Katrina Galka, I've said positive things about her in the past (actually I think it was partly because I knew she would be in Candide that I decided I did want to go see this one). She really stole the show with "Glitter and Be Gay," when Cunegonde is showering herself in jewels to try and cheer herself up. That piece alone made the whole show worth it. She has power, both to sing and to express. You could tell, too, that the entire audience was captivated by her performance there (you've gotta love an opera audience: they are entirely honest and will clap loudly when they're pleased and only quietly and politely when they're neutral--oh, and another side note, you know how with any other show if one person does a standing ovation at the end then the rest of the audience stands up, too, even the person sitting next to you who couldn't stop yawning just because they're all sheep? opera audiences don't do that; each person only stands if they feel led to stand to express their honest appreciation. I like that).

The plot? Now I have no idea what I think. I got the idea that this show was going to have a couple racy moments, and it did, though honestly not much (then again, not much seems that racy to me even years after that one Greek plays class I took in college). I just share this because there was a big group of students that attended this production, and as we were all walking out I heard a couple of them talking about all of this. You know, the awkwardness of sitting next to someone else's parent during those scenes and hearing their teacher express apology about not realizing that that content would be in there (that's the surprising part: didn't he/she look up the show at all before planning to take the class?). It was just kind of funny, not the type of conversation you usually hear while walking out of the opera.

Anyways, back to the plot. Even with reading the synopsis before each act, I had a hard time keeping up. There are so many characters and places and everyone brutally dies and then randomly shows up again in some other setting that I eventually just gave up on trying to keep up and settled on watching each moment instead. The gist of it is that this group of young people have a teacher who tells them his philosophy in life, which is that everything in the world is for the best. Basically everything has a reason and nothing is bad. But then everything that happens to everyone in the story is worse than bad. War and natural disasters and rape (another side note: there would not be so much about rape, including jokes about it, if this show were written today; that part really started to get annoying by the end) and hangings and shipwrecks. It's all terrible--but it's all treated in that same kooky, comedic tone so that it's all comedic rather than tragic. When the crowd is all excited to hang Pangloss, for instance, (and I really have no idea who the crowd was or why they wanted to hang him) you want to step back because, well, hanging someone just because you want to is horrible, and yet they were acting out the scene so silly that it was funny. The board chair, John Johnson, said it himself in his message in the program: Candide is entertainment. Whatever else it is or isn't, it's entertaining.

The theme did feel a bit depressing towards the end there, when all of the characters are broken and feel like nothing was worth what it cost them and nothing in the world occurred as promised. There was definitely a moment of despondency there after all of the comedy. And yet everything did wrap up with a final message of, in a sense, saying that yes, you do need to simplify your view. Nothing in this world will be perfect and therefore you need to ground yourself in something real and solid and simple. No palace of jewels, Cunegonde, just a little farm. No gold and status. Candide, just a little farm. No perfect people, just Cunegonde and Candide.

So while I can't say that this was my favorite show that I've ever seen, it did give me an evening's entertainment and also more to think about afterwards. And I'm fine with that: when a company has a whole season of shows, they have the opportunity to do different thing with each show. You don't necessarily want them all to be Madama Butterfly and Tosca.

Aria Jukebox: Holiday Edition

Back in October, I wrote about Arizona Opera's first Aria Jukebox event (click here to read that post), in which the audience voted with tokens for which songs they wanted the singers to perform. This past Friday they held the same type of event, except that this time the songs were all themed to the holiday season.

The singers were a different group, so we had a chance to see some different styles of singing from before--as well as, of course, different styles of songs. They had the Opera Center all decked out for Christmas with a tree and lights, making for a festive First Friday. The format was quicker this time without the longer pauses in between sets and with no Q&A mixed in. Given that I can't replicate the singing here for you, what I'd like to talk about is in fact what followed the songs.

This time they gave us the option to stay afterward for a tour of the building, and a good handful of us took the opportunity to see behind the scenes. We saw some areas where they keep costumes and sets and we walked past the library and the office areas; we also got to see the rehearsal space. Along the way, we heard a little bit about how the company goes about planning and putting together productions. Especially for just a quick "if you'd like to stay for a tour at the end" type of thing, I was excited about how much we got to see and how much we learned.

Perhaps other people know more about how opera productions are put together; I knew very little. And as I'm constantly repeating on here in different contexts, I love seeing behind the scenes. Whether it's watching or viewing or hearing, getting that extra glimpse has always made things even more alive for me. So while perhaps overall I enjoyed the singing more at the first Aria Jukebox, this event still was wonderful to attend.

Puccini's Tosca

For more of a classic opera, this month Arizona Opera turned to Puccini's Tosca, directed by Tara Faircloth. Given how much I enjoyed Madama Butterfly last season, more Puccini sounded very welcome.

Indeed it was. His music has long and sweeping sounds, where emotions soar up into the notes that the performers sing. And the score, performed by the Phoenix Symphony, had such resonance that it reminded me of early film scores--for some reason, I kept on thinking of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Maybe it's that dramatic quality. This was a very dramatic opera, and it felt like I was simply watching theatre, not specifically "opera." When the characters sang, everything felt a thousand times more natural than the singing in most musicals (most musicals, by nature of their form and genre, have a "false" feeling about them).

That is, the story and the lines are all, as I mentioned, extremely dramatic. Over the edge dramatic, but in a good way. In a way that made everything feel completely immersive. And the way that it is all put together pulls you, the audience, into this heightened level in which you experience art as a fluid and tangible substance.

Hmm. This is why I consider posts on shows and books and movies reactions rather than reviews. I don't feel led to comment on the sets or the costumes or the particular talents of each performer or any of that. To my eye/ear, all of that was wonderful, so I have little to say in terms of regular review content. Instead, I just wanted to share what I came away with. I have nothing to say except that this production was one of the unmissable ones.

Arizona Opera, First Friday, & Aria Jukebox

We had Ballet Arizona's Ballet Under the Stars a couple of weeks ago, and this past weekend was Arizona Opera's Aria Jukebox--it's a wonderful time to be living in the city.

This was their first time putting on this event, which they did as part of the First Friday collection of things that go on every month in Phoenix. The concept was this: as you walked in, you received tokens that you could then use to vote for a selection of songs for the evening. There were five singers there, along with a pianist to accompany them. The setting, then, was completely different from usual. Instead of a large audience at the grand Symphony Hall, we were a small audience gathered in a fairly regular-sized room at the Arizona Opera Center. This meant that it was more casual and that we were all much, much closer to the singers.

They mixed in some short Q&A with the songs, so this event was also a chance to get a glimpse about what it's like to work in this field. This was, then, one of those times when you were able to see the performer as opposed to the character (when they're singing in an opera up on stage). That is, they still became characters when they sang. I might have expected that since we were just going to hear an assortment of songs (from operas and musicals and even a couple from Elvis and Elton John), all we were going to hear were songs sung. But in fact these people aren't just singers--they are performers, and they brought that entrance into character even into free-standing songs. This style of acting as well as singing was also something that someone asked about during the Q&A, and hearing their discussion on the topic (mentioning that American audiences now expect this style) particularly interested me given that the amount of acting in operas is one of the things that has really drawn me in and amazed me in these my early days as an opera attendee.

What was such a pleasure was to see so much talent and devotion encapsulated in one song at a time and directly in front of you. Arizona Opera puts on a wonderful production at Symphony Hall with all of the sets and costumes, but it was an entirely different experience just getting to see these performers singing up close. They are truly devoted to their craft, and with that kind of delivery they have complete control over their audience's emotions. I love it when performers bring me into that magical bubble of art.

And as a First Friday event, Aria Jukebox was free. What a gift to the community. So it does pay to stay in the know about what events are coming up where you live; when there are so many wonderful things going on and you start to get a taste for attending them, you hate to miss out on things. In fact, I thought I would skip Arizona Opera's first production of the season (coming up this month), but after Friday night I'm craving more from them, so I might just make it to that show, after all.

Rossini's Cinderella

I had come to expect a certain style or a certain effect from the opera. But Arizona Opera's production of Cinderella (conducted by Dean Williamson and directed by Crystal Manich) this past weekend offered something a little different from what I had experienced before.

The music was noticeably different to the three other operas I have seen. The board chair, Robert S. Tancer, in his message for the program helpfully points out the musical term of coloratura, which I suppose must be the difference I noted. (Here is the oddity of a non-musical person trying to describe a musical experience.) In this opera, at least, it was what I would call "the sheep effect" (I don't mean to use this description rudely) of quickly changing notes layered together versus long sweeping notes--and this effect is probably what most people think of when they think of opera. But, to me, it feels less natural. Tancer also helpfully describes how coloratura went out of style before coming back in in the 1960's. 

Now, I have given the reason why I connected less with the music of this opera and why it didn't quite captivate me in the same way as the others. So let me move on to the rest of my commentary.

While I may not always have liked the style of the music, there was no doubt that the performers were all stellar. They not only brought the execution of the music but they also performed wholeheartedly. I once may have thought that opera was just singing; I have, of course, quickly found that it is also acting in the same sense that is any stage production (a play or a musical, for instance). These performers sing with emotion and also compose themselves and move around the stage fully as their characters. Interestingly, the page in the program that gives further info and analysis of Rossini's music explains that he "wrote abstract music"  that "carries beauty, but not emotion" and whose "meaning is not found in the notes on the page" but rather in the experience and through "performers endowing the melody with pathos." I wasn't musical enough to realize on my own that this is what was happening and this is what was intentional, but I did feel that difference between the music and the emotion of a scene and I did look with amazement on the performers. 

To continue with my earlier thought, the physical aspect of performance came in particular into Cinderella, since this is a comedy. Katrina Galka and Mariya Kaganskaya as Clorinda and Tisbe, Angelina's (Cinderella's) stepsisters, as well as Stefano de Peppo as their father, Don Magnifico, dove wholeheartedly into the comedy of their characters. This opera had many, many laughs.

And yet, for all the comedy and for the happy ending, this opera has a quite serious theme to it. It is slightly different a retelling of the Cinderella story, though of course it keeps the main elements. Most notably, of course, is the lack of magic, which serves to emphasize the real effects of acting based on Good thoughts. Angelina (Daniela Mack) is still the beautiful and long-suffering young woman who has been downtrodden by her stepparent (father instead of mother in this case). But here there is more made of class, and of the fact that both Angelina and her prince, Don Ramiro (Alek Shrader), must accept each other while believing that he/she is lower class. They both must pass a test, that is, a test where only goodness and virtue can win. There is nothing about the innate "royalness" that disguised upper class people display, which is so often the case in stories; rather, the emphasis remains on the acceptance of an individual for who an individual is through his/her actions.

That's quite a theme, and perhaps, in storytelling, one of the better versions of Cinderella that I have seen. I said that I didn't connect to this opera's music that much--but I did connect to the opera on a literary level.

Here I do have to add in that I'm not sure what was going on with the subtitles. They didn't seem to not be working. But they didn't translate enough. Granted, a couple of times it seemed that new translations stopped going up for the sake of simplicity when the lines were basically repeating the same concept. But there were whole sections with no translation at all, sections where it couldn't be a case of just avoiding repetition. Sometimes, yes, multiple characters are singing different lines at the same time, which is impossible to translate well on a thin screen. But there were also multiple characters singing or quick dialogue at Santa Fe Opera's Don Giovanni last year, and they did their best to keep the translations going; after all, sometimes you don't need to have the time to read every word, you just have to be able to glance at the translation to get the gist of it. After what I said about loving the story of Cinderella, you'll understand why it irked me to not have translations. I need to know what characters are saying. So if this was a stylistic choice, I did not like it.

Let me finish with one more positive comment. As usual, this production was visually beautiful. Costumes and sets always gave somewhere for my eyes to dwell. Since I mentioned Santa Fe Opera, I might as well throw in here that while I absolutely loved going there and they do have a beautiful outdoor stage and I would definitely go there again given the opportunity, I probably would miss the elaborate visual elements of Arizona Opera. It's quite something to have the curtain peel back and to peer into the window, to peer through at the stage and see a complete world right there before your eyes, all details in place and all action unfolding. 

Riders of the Purple Sage: Arizona's Opera

I don't know if any of us knew what to expect from Arizona Opera's first world premiere, Riders of the Purple Sage. But it is a safe statement to say that we all enjoyed what we found.

Riders of the Purple Sage is in fact a Zane Grey novel; he's the author of all the Westerns that you see covering shelves and shelves of antique stores and other relevant locations. The idea, then, of using a Zane Grey story was to embrace the Southwest with this production, a production made in Arizona and taking place around Arizona (technically, it took place in Utah) and celebrating the cultural heritage of Arizonans. And all of you know that I love that aspect alone.

Was I, though, somewhat hesitant about an opera being a Western? Yes, I was. The two operas that I've seen were classics sung in Italian; this is both a new piece and an opera in English. And yet composer Craig Bohmler and librettist Steven Mark Kohn made something that felt cohesive and natural. (Here I will remind you that I am not a musical person, nor do I know all the musical terms with which to talk about an opera. Which is fine because I'm sure other people have already offered their learned, musical analyses of this opera.) The performers are singing music that is written for these words, so it never felt odd for them to be singing these lines just because they're lines in a Western. And there is something very grand about Westerns that in fact lent itself to opera style, if that's what I can call it.

There were two standout moments for me, musically. The first was Jane's (Karin Wolverton) song in Act 2, in which she speaks about God's love and thinks about her father. Karin has a wonderful voice, kind and feminine and strong and powerful. The second moment was the duet between Bern Venters (Joshua Dennis) and Bess (Amanda Opuszynski) in the same act; it's basically a falling in love and seeing that all is right in the world through that love type of song. Their duo and their place in the story reminded me a bit of Cosette and Marius in Les Miserables.

Now I come to one of my favorite aspects to talk about, the stage. At the end of the production, when everyone was clapping for the performers, they started to bring out the crew, as well--and when scenic designer Ed Mell came on, everyone started cheering. Many Arizonans probably know Ed Mell's name, and even most of those who don't would at least recognize the style of his work. He does paintings the Southwest that, through simplicity of shape and exact use of color, really capture the feel of the land. So in this opera, there were the sort of traditional cutouts (in this case, of orange cliffs) that were sometimes on the edges of the stage. But there was also a huge screen that covered the entire back of the stage; because his paintings were on that screen, it was like having a painted backdrop there. My eye couldn't tell that it was a screen. And sometimes there were mountains with clouds above them, and the colors of the mountains would change as with the changing light of evening and the clouds above would shift as in a real sky. Painted clouds shifting while the mountains stay still. It was a flawless use of technology and truly beautiful. It was like being inside an Ed Mell painting, and as I said, his paintings capture the feel of the land--therefore as you were watching the stage, you felt as though you were watching the land. Oh, and there was lightning, too, stunningly real lightning. I don't think I'll ever see a stage like this one was again.

I'll finish with a couple of notes on story and theme. Jane is the main character of this piece because she is the one reacting, she is the one trying to choose the path, and she is the one that holds it all together. She's a Mormon woman whose father left her his ranch. Tull wants her to marry him, and the townspeople want her to marry him so that he can have her ranch. But she doesn't believe that she's supposed to marry him. There is also conflict because one of her workers, Venters, is not Mormon; the others resent the fact that Jane is kind to him. And of course along comes Lassiter seeking vengeance against someone in the town (he doesn't yet know who); Jane has to try and reconcile her liking of Lassiter with her need to protect her people. So there is a wonderful theme in there of Jane's faith, which remains steadfast even when other people try and pressure her to do things contrary to what she believes. Any person of any religion can relate to that situation, and that pressure can come from both inside and outside the faith--it just goes to show that people are always people and people always find things to disagree about and we just have to hold true. And there were a couple of pretty lines in there about knowing that God is there because of this beautiful land, something like that; I enjoyed those.

And going back to the themes, there were messages about treating everyone with kindness. Jane, who is very devout in her Mormon faith, is kind to both Venters and Lassiter even though they're outside of her faith and the rest of the town sees that as reason enough to keep them away. And because of that hatred (promoted mainly by Tull and the Bishop), the town that's supposed to be upholding a positive faith is trying to use it not just against Venters and Lassiter but also against their own, against Jane. So there is a relevant message in there about how destructive we can be when we forget how to relate to other people with kindness.

So all around, going through all of the aspects that make up an opera, this was a quality, memorable, and significant production. I didn't know what to expect, and therefore I walked away mesmerized by all of the artistry of this opera to represent the Southwest. It was a big endeavor, so it was a pleasure to be able to watch it and to see that all of that work came together so successfully.

Madama Butterfly & the Beauty of Tragedy

Can I officially say now that I love the opera? Don Giovanni at the Santa Fe Opera last summer was my first opera and I enjoyed that immensely, and now I've also seen Madama Butterfly here by the Arizona Opera and it was absolutely amazing.

(Yes, yes, I've possibly been having too much fun going to see all the shows lately, but let me assure you that I stick to the cheap seats, I've been waiting to be able to do this for a while, and shows kind of have on and off seasons and this just happens to be the time of year when there's a lot going on that I want to see.)

Let me start with one superficial note. Arizona Opera's website explains that the opera is the place you can get all dressed up for, and I love that this is true. I like the concept of dressing up. I grew up watching things like I Love Lucy where everyone puts on their best clothing and takes all of this time to get ready to go out somewhere, be it dinner and the movie theatre or a show. Nobody really does that anymore, at least not here. Movie theatre? Casual. Nice restaurant? Slightly dressed up. A play? Almost casual. But Symphony Hall? Expect people to dress up, especially for the opera. The men who weren't wearing suits were at least wearing collars. Many women had full length gowns, and dresses ranged from classic black to a bit of glitz. (I went with classic black.) A little more glitz than in Santa Fe, where everyone paired elegant yet comfortable shoes with their black dresses rather than the more expected high heels. Either way, I love the dressing up.

In many ways, Madama Butterfly was an entirely different production from Don Giovanni. That set was very sparse, while this one was filled in more with the Japanese house, a bit of garden, and a background showing the sea. The lighting, as well. I don't have such a photographic or cinematic eye that I notice lighting in any particular way--but I had never seen lighting done so artistically in the theatre before. The light produced the effects of night and day and different tones, as well as drawing attention to particular spaces. It was very beautiful.

Whereas the subtitles in Santa Fe are attached to the seat in front of you, these are on a screen above the stage--which I thought wouldn't be as nice but in fact worked just as well. And you really do need the translation. Don Giovanni had more conversations and so you needed to know what the characters were saying to follow each scene, but Madama Butterfly is more about long songs that are poetic and flowery in their depiction of emotion. As you're listening, you're also reading these pretty words and so you're experiencing two art forms at once.

The music of the two operas is also quite different. Madama Butterfly is by Puccini, with whom I thought I was entirely unfamiliar (except for "O Mio Babbino Caro," which Downton Abbey informed me was by Puccini). I can't explain his style in musical terms, but to me it sounds fluid and soft and elegant and piercing at the same time, like pink dye running over fresh silk. You might say that the music together with the lyrics are a little sappy in their emotional intensity--but I like that. In fact, a couple of lines that the audience found funny I thought were very sad and did not laugh at.

While all of the singers were excellent, Sandra Lopez stole my heart (or my ear?) as Cio-Cio-San, or Madame Butterfly herself. Oh, the way she sang. Her delivery brought not only amazing musical sounds but also amazing emotion. I didn't know that the song "One Fine Day" was from this opera until its music began--and when Butterfly started singing the familiar lines I felt like I had never heard it before, because I had never heard it like this before and I had never known the context for the words. She broke my heart and I literally cried. Her innocent vision of hope when all the audience knows that her hope will not come true is unbearable. This opera made me want to weep. It was tragedy indeed.

When the music stopped and the performers finished and everything came to an end, I had a genuine shock. I was so caught up with what I was watching unfold on stage that it was jarring to see an end and then to see the performers come out as themselves and to see that they're not these characters. It was so much like I was watching something real--because they did create something real and tangible.

If you've never gone, go see an opera when you get the chance. It's an experience like no other, immensely powerful.

Discoveries in Santa Fe: Opera

While I do enjoy culture, I don't know if I can say that I am particularly cultured. And yet perhaps that is the reason why I appreciate culture the way that I do. When certain things are new to me, I can either discover them on my own or have my own personal experience with them when I do finally get to experience them. My favorite example: I read Jane Eyre and started connecting with it well before I heard anyone talk about the book or its author or even knew that "Victorian novels" were their own group.

I went to a few plays as a child--probably mostly smaller productions designed for families. But the big one that made me love the idea of plays was Pygmalion by the Southwest Shakespeare Company when I was in high school. Ever since then, I've just really enjoyed the few opportunities I've had to see live productions. I always wish I could see more.

Now, I've been to Santa Fe a few times, but a recent trip I made there was the first time I was able to visit the Santa Fe Opera. We watched Don Giovanni, which I chose because the music is by Mozart and I tend to enjoy Mozart's music (and also because the language is Italian, which feels fairly familiar, which I thought would help make it easier to connect with the music and the story). And oh, my goodness, I had never experienced anything like this before.

I was a little worried going into the first act: though I've always been used to classical music, opera singing is something different. Another level, if you will. I was worried I wouldn't be able to connect with it or that my attention would just wander. Sure, it can take a second to get used to, but it felt surprisingly natural, considering I've never really listened to much opera ("O Mio Babbino Caro" and songs like that don't count the way most classical artists sing them).

The Santa Fe Opera is a half outdoor venue. That is, you enter from the outside, going up steps or through doorways to your section. The two levels of seats and the stage are covered by a ceiling and there are walls to the stage and to a little bit of the seating area but otherwise the sides are open--as is what would be the back wall or background to the stage. As the evening went on, there was some lighting off to the right in the distance, which rather added to the experience. Most people bring a wrap or a sweater because it usually cools off (the show starts at 8:30 and ends close to midnight), but we happened to go on a warm night so it never cooled off (I overheard people saying they had been going there for years and had never seem it so warm).

Attire is varied and there is no dress code but most people dress up. I wore a plain black dress (just below the knee, A-line skirt), a frilly cameo necklace, and tan leather wedges. That outfit fit in perfectly. Comfortable shoes and clothing somewhere between business casual and evening wear. Not a single stiletto in sight but plenty of class. Since I live in an area where people don't really dress up, it was a delight to see everyone so nicely put together.

And the opera itself. The lyrics are, of course, translated on tiny screens on the back of the chair in front of you. This helps immensely and I can't imagine watching without this. The lyrics being in Italian, I did catch a few words here and there--but not much. One thing I had wondered about an opera is how much of it looks like acting and how much just plays like singing. What kind of performance is it? Well, a little bit of both, I guess. There was no talking and yet it wasn't as if the actors were simply singing dialogue: they were performing one song after another (to live music, no less, which is a treat in itself). And they don't just stand there and sing; they move as the characters would move and they interact with one another and walk around the stage and all of that. So you are watching a plot unfold, but it's (in the case of this one, at least) a plot engrained in emotion.

It's like the performers are brewing emotion on the stage and it's pouring out into the audience, a tangible tone that envelops you and holds your senses captive. They were a wonderful set of performers and of course Mozart's music was wonderful, as well. I'll say it again: I had never experienced anything like that. Pure emotion, pure art, pure performance--the opera.