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"I'm not doing anything with the mechanical sheep," says tenor Randy Locke. 40 years of opera
By Ruth Bingham
Special to the Star-Bulletin"Dear, is there something you need to tell me?" his wife, Carol Sparrow, asks with raised eyebrows.
"Not a darn thing!" he answers emphatically.
Singers and mechanical sheep: it must be opera season. For 40 years, Hawaii Opera Theatre has mixed fantasy and reality and redefined the boundary between them.
"HOT started with a production of 'Madama Butterfly' at McKinley High School, and that production is remembered by many ... as the beginning of a stewardship of a tradition that actually goes back about 140 years, to the reign of Kamehameha IV and his consort, Queen Emma," says executive director Henry Akina.
The company marks the start of its 40th anniversary season Friday with "The Tales of Hoffman," about a man, his Muse and remembrances of lost loves.
ON STAGE
What: Hawaii Opera Theatre presents "Tales of Hoffman."
Akina said he sees "Hoffmann" as one of the great tragicomedies. "It uses a very ambient dramaturgy, which we've tried to realize as a theater, within a theater, within a theater."
The rest of the season:
" 'The Marriage of Figaro' is more an opera of intrigue," Akina said. "It involves a very small, intimate group of people whom we see a few years later than when we last saw them, last season in 'The Barber of Seville.' We invited the director Matthew Lata to come back and give us the sequel, if you will."
" 'Cavalleria' and 'Pagliacci' are, of course, two one-acts," Akina said. "These operas are old friends, and they're back again, and it's really great because we have a chance then to look at them in a fresh way."
"The Tales of Hoffmann" almost has to be looked at in a new way each time: Its composer, Jacques Offenbach, died before completing it, leaving his plans under speculation. Ever since its premiere in 1881, the opera has been reinterpreted, with competing editions published as recently as 1998.
"A lot of productions mix up all of these versions: They'll cut and paste, cut and paste," Akina said. "That was a little much for us. We were trying to find a way to tell the story with some through line that was effective."
Locke has sung the title role four times. "I've never done this opera the same way twice."As for the sheep: "Now that's definitely new: I've never seen (the character) Olympia make an entrance with sheep. I don't think I've ever seen any character make an entrance with sheep, quite frankly."
The sheep are but a small part of building an opera. Every detail that helps make the fantasy feel "real" must be created from scratch out of everyday objects.
Those details fall to technical director Gordon Svec ("I'm the gentleman who makes the picture stand up"), and props master Leslie Craig. Svec and his crew spend hours solving problems such as how to weld 2,300 pounds of aluminum into a raised portal; how to create a wind-up key that turns and is comfortable enough for a singer to wear; how to create mechanical sheep ...
Solving the sheep problem was a bit of luck, Svec recalled. "One day I was in Costco, and I was walking through the Christmas department and I saw those little lawn reindeer out of white wire, that their heads move from side to side and I went, 'Sheep!' I sent (Leslie) up there and she bought five of them, and we shortened their necks and cut them apart and put them back together, 'cause sheep are kind of squat ... God knows what's going to happen in the scene."
The people who build the opera, whether volunteers or hired, take pride in their work, even though they remain largely anonymous. The sleek black gondola that will glide across a foggy stage, for example, is the model "AMB," which stands for "Atsa My Boat!" by Mike Pierceall.
No electrified remote control for this gondola, either. "It's very low-tech, because my theory is, 'Nothing succeeds like simplicity,' " Svec explained. A length of black rope runs to the so-called "remote control," i.e., Pierceall himself, who sits on the floor, braced against a beam, and pulls on cue.
HOT usually builds one new opera each year. "We build what we can afford to build; we'd love to build them all," Svec said.
Of all the problems in building operas, creating the characters is possibly the most complex-- more so when the main character intertwines fantasy and reality, as in "Hoffmann."
"Hoffmann was a real person," Akina said. "He was a multi-talent: He was educated as a lawyer, he spent a lot of time in theaters, he knew the business end of theater very well, he wrote plays, he wrote operas, he composed, he played music. ... In fact, I'm always very fond of telling people that Hoffmann in his current state is my neighbor in Berlin, because I live right around the corner there from his grave."
Locke, who portrays Hoffmann, added, "His novels dealt with that shady area between fantasy and reality, which is exactly what this opera is about."
Akina and Locke have adopted an unusual interpretation. "Very often," Akina said, "This opera is done as the manifest of an alcoholic. I think his problems are different: I think they're aesthetic problems, problems of fantasy."
Partly because of the complexities, Locke enjoys portraying Hoffmann. "It's a real stamina role. Musically and dramatically, you get to use every bit of your arsenal. I mean, whatever you've got, you'd better bring it, because there's room for it all. There aren't that many roles like that."
For this production, Akina has added the Iona Pear Dancers, last seen with HOT in Verdi's "Macbeth." "It's an attempt to bring the Germanic side of Hoffmann to fruition. The stories that the opera is based on are all very, very unsettling when you read them as literature. The dancers become, if you will, that coldness, that atmosphere coming in. We've associated them with the Muse, with the devils ... almost like theater ghosts that come through the action.
"They come from that more grotesque side, whereas the chorus and some of the singers tend to come more from the boulevard side. These two worlds meet on the stage and become something that's happening concurrently."
Opera would not be opera without its symbols, metaphors and larger-than-life endings. It is fantasy, but it speaks to reality, and those who work in opera often wax philosophical as they grapple with both.
"Within the characters on this stage," Locke said, "I would hope that everyone in that audience finds a piece of themselves to reflect back on and to grow from.
"Life can deal us some pretty heavy blows when you least expect it. This happens to Hoffmann and every one of his love affairs over and over and over. And how do we recover from these tragedies? Do you fall off and go to the bottle, or do you go to a deeper guide within yourself and rise above it?"
Akina said the opera makes the point that life includes many mystical qualities. "I think one of the things the Muse is trying to explain to Hoffmann is that life ... is a balance: It's not only the fantasy you have about other people, but the fantasy that you may bring from within, that creates its own reality in the end."
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