[ SUNDAY TRAVEL ]
Hawaii hands Tasting New York's operatic fare this spring -- or more like "pigging out" on it -- I kept wondering where I'd seen that face before.
share credits in
Big Apple operas
The New York stage boasts
several singers familiar to
local fansBy Jim Becker
Special to the Star-BulletinTurned out to be in Hawaii. The New York scene featured many singers who have graced the Hawaii Opera Theatre stage.
This traveling devotee also found in Manhattan:
>> A 20th-century opera with tunes, "The Ballad of Baby Doe," by the late American composer Douglas Moore. In fact, Hawaii baritone Quinn Kelsey sang an aria from it at a recent Hawaii Theatre concert.
>> The world's most popular opera, Puccini's "La Boheme," staged in World War I Paris, complete with anti-war protesters. Alas, the four Bohemians wound up in French Army uniform anyway. Drafted, I presume. (In 1997, "La Boheme" passed Verdi's "Aida" as the most performed opera. Thus the A-B-C of opera, "Aida," "Boheme," "Carmen," has become the B-A-C, to the mild dismay of lovers of alphabetical order.)
>> The first encore in more than 50 years at the Metropolitan Opera, when conductor James Levine responded to a lengthy ovation by repeating the moving chorus of freedom from Verdi's opera "Nabucco."
>> An absolutely perfect performance -- almost as rare as a perfect game in baseball -- of Wagner's "Parsifal," an opinion also held by Met insiders. Levine conducted the matchless Met orchestra. Placido Domingo, now 60, was fresh and vibrant in the title role. Bass-baritone John Tomlinson and the Lithuanian mezzo Violeta Urmana were memorable. She is opera's newest superstar.
>> And I lost my heart to New York's "other" opera company, the New York City Opera, which performs at the State Theatre catty-cornered from the Met in Lincoln Center. The company is dedicated -- much like HOT -- to staging the best-loved operas in ways that help audiences see them through freshened eyes, without resorting to Euro-trash.
"Euro-trash" is opera-speak for the custom, begun in Europe, at staging, say, the very Egyptian "Aida" in a shopping mall in Burbank for no particular reason except to outrage paying patrons. Outrage is big in Europe, and the plague has made its way to San Francisco (a recent "Parsifal") and New York (a production of "Lucia" that was so ghastly the sets were relegated to the real trash at the near unanimous request of the audience).
NYCO staged "La Boheme" in a time when proponents of the war to end all wars and anti-war demonstrators were marching through Paris. The third act takes place on the outskirts of the capital, and designer Allen Moyer includes a huge steam locomotive, a hit with viewers. The artwork in the attic studio in Montmartre in the opening act is also proper to the period.
NYCO's "Don Giovanni" is offered in more traditional dress but highly innovative action. There is a saying in opera that those who think Mozart's masterpiece is the greatest opera ever written -- and many do -- never had to try to stage it.
NYCO's solution is to bring in the celebrated Broadway director Hal Prince ("Phantom of the Opera," "Evita," "Follies," "Cabaret," etc.; 20 Tony awards in all). The result is a near miracle of lively movement.
As 'tis the season to do Verdi (this is the 100th anniversary of the great Italian composer's death), there was a chance to see the sparkling young soprano Jami Rogers in "Rigoletto," fresh from her triumph in Honolulu as Susanna in Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" in February. She also was Juliette in Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette" three years ago -- and married her Romeo, tenor Kevin Anderson, shortly after.
Coincidentally, the director of HOT's "Figaro," Matthew Lata, previously had directed "Carmen" in Honolulu -- and married his Carmen.
There must be something in the water.
Another singer who went straight from the Blaisdell to Manhattan was baritone Dean Elzinga, the Count in "Figaro," a grotesque monster, complete with swim fins probably picked up at a Waikiki surf shop, in Handel's 18th-century opera "Acis and Galatea."
Both Dean and Jami included their Honolulu appearances in their program biographies, which was nice to see. Not all singers who appear in Hawaii do so.
Another familiar face was that of Lauren Flanigan, one of the stalwarts of NYCO, who sang one of her first major roles in Hawaii in Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" several years ago. She had the lead in a seldom-performed 1920 opera, "Die Tote Stadt," by Erich Korngold, who escaped Hitler and spent many years in Hollywood as an Oscar-winning film composer.
Midway through the opera, baritone Robert McFarland appeared, fresh from singing the four villains in the 2001 HOT production of Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann." A Honolulu regular, he is best known for his stirring portrayal of the doomed Scottish king in Verdi's "Macbeth" in the 1998 Honolulu season.
Also getting program credit in New York is local girl Sylvia Nolan, a University of Hawaii dance major who had a career in ballet and then turned to costume design, her minor. She is now resident costume designer for the Metropolitan Opera.
Sylvia attends at least 50 performances a year at the Met, including all opening nights, to check how the costumes look and feel in action. In fact, she had to break a lunch date with my wife and me because a tenor named Luciano Pavarotti called in and needed an emergency costume fitting. Apparently, he had put on a little weight since the last one.
Jim Becker was a columnist for the Star-Bulletin in the '60s and '70s, and has been writing and broadcasting on operafor more than 40 years.