New York City Opera: Business As Usual, Despite Challenges

By George Steel,
General Manager and Artistic Director,
New York City Opera
Guest Columnist

As you may know, last weekend I announced that, if New York City Opera couldn’t raise $7 million by the end of this month, we’d have to cancel three out of four operas this season; if we can’t raise $20 million by the end of the year, we’ll have to cancel the 2014–15 season altogether.

Almost immediately, people began to ask, “What happens to NYCO if there are no more operas produced after September 2013?”

Such questions are of course self-defeating and frankly ridiculous. NYCO has a proud tradition, under such distinguished general managers as what’s her name and the irritating old guy with the accent, of bouncing back from the brink of disaster time and again. Under my dynamic leadership, there’s no reason to believe that’s going to change. Besides, we have a Kickstarter campaign! What could possibly go wrong?

The people who ask, “What happens if you fail?” are probably the exact same people who were asking, “Isn’t there some way to stay at Lincoln Center, where people at least know where to find you?” and “Are you sure you want to alienate the very artists who once made this company great and who might have helped you now?”

Well, you can see for yourself how foolish those questions were. Look how great everything turned out!

The NYCO logo: A resounding rebuttal to those
who say that City Opera has become a black hole,
endlessly sucking money out of the universe.

We’re doing a better job than ever of fulfilling our mission: bringing opera to the people of New York City. We’re not confined to one theater, or any theater at all!

There are no limits! Just yesterday in Times Square, I listened to one of our esteemed orchestra members playing the Habanera from Carmen for passersby who may never have heard opera before!

Of course, that violinist was panhandling for tourists, because we can no longer afford to hire musicians full-time. But still! Mission accomplished!

And I’d say she made about four dollars before the cops chased her away.

Even if, in the near future, NYCO has no home, no productions, no artists, and no cash, we will continue to pursue our goals, exactly as we did for how ever many decades we have been in existence.

For instance, I am currently planning to launch “Opera on Wheels,” one of the most innovative programs since the bookmobile and the Nyco® Felafel Cart. We’ll send out a van with a boombox and a loudspeaker, bringing recorded opera, and possibly ice cream or tacos, and reaching every neighborhood in the city. If you’ve got a valid New York drivers license and some old CDs, why not volunteer to help out?

Also, let us know if you’ve got a van to lend us. Have you checked the prices on rentals lately?

I’m not making this up, you know:
One of the “gorgeous” rewards for Kickstarter pledges.

Come Hell or high water, NYCO will continue our educational programs, which now feature special classes in papier mâché in New York’s public schools, using our own supply of wet paper left over from the archive that flooded during Hurricane Sandy. Kids love to play with wet paper!

And while the kids are making masks and ashtrays and Christmas ornaments (all of which we’ll be offering as premiums for Kickstarter pledges), we can introduce a new generation of New Yorkers to the wonderful world of Johann Christian Bach.

We’ll also be staging “flash mobs,” with impromptu performances of scenes and arias in exciting venues such as the Fairway Market and South Street Seaport. Such productions are a great way to reach new audiences, and they’re incredibly inexpensive, because we don’t pay for them.

In addition, I’m currently actively seeking out compromising photographs or video of wealthy people and political figures. This is difficult work, but I know it will pay off for NYCO. Let me know if you hear of any leads.

Meanwhile, let’s emphasize the positives, shall we? We’re no longer reliant on that minuscule portion of our audience that used to show up at our performances because the Met was sold out and hey, we were right across the Plaza. No, we now have a dedicated audience of people who really work to find out what we’re doing and where we are.

Not your grandfather’s NYCO:
What a flash mob opera might look like.

Our board stands firmly behind me and my innovative management ideas. These are the same people who thought it was a good idea to go dark for a season, the same people who hired one general director whose experience was in state-funded European companies and another whose experience was in a university concert series. It’s their vision and their support that make NYCO what it is today, and I thank them, as I’m sure you do, too.

Finally, there’s one more question that’s come up a lot lately: “Why should I throw good money after bad?” I object to the question on principle, as you might expect, but let me try to address the concerns behind it.

Imagine New York with only one major opera company. Imagine New York without a showcase for rising American artists. Imagine New York with nothing more than memories of historic productions, legendary singers, and repertoire that ranged from crowd-pleasing classics to thrilling new discoveries. Above all, imagine New York without the sense of community — yes, of family — that opera can bring, year after year.

Well, you don’t have to imagine, because I’ve already tackled those problems. My point is, if you don’t give us the money, things can only get worse. Thank you.

Illustration courtesy of our friends at Parterre Box.

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Man Waking from Surgery Stunned to Learn He Is a Joyce DiDonato Fan

A man coming out of surgery and still under the influence of anesthesia was talking to a lady next to his bed when he realized he was listening to a Joyce DiDonato album.

“Man, is that a great voice,” he says, CD in hand. “Whoa! That may be the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard. Who is that?”

“That’s Joyce DiDonato,” a friend says off-camera. “You’re a fan of hers.”

“I’m her fan?” the man says, his voice cracking. “Holy s***. Dang. You mean I’ve heard her sing live?”

“Several times.”

“Do I own her record albums and DVDs?”

“Yes.”

The man eats a cracker while thinking about this. “How long have I been her fan?”

“Almost from the beginning, ever since you saw her in Mark Adamo’s Little Women. You’ve even met her.”

“I have?”

“Several times. And she has a new album coming out.”

“Oh, my God, I hit the jackpot!”

While the video was not available for republication here, experts believe it is authentic. Some skeptics, however, insist that the man is not waking from surgery, but has merely lost his mind due to intense deadline pressure as he completes the authorized biography of Madeline Kahn. “The scruffy beard is a dead giveaway,” said one analyst, Dr. Kevin Daly of the American Institutes for Amnesia and Something Else I Can’t Quite Remember.

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Progress Report 20: From Beyond the Deadline

Madeline was telling me the news. She was so pleased and so flattered, she said, to discover that Julie Harris would be playing the lead in the upcoming film The Madeline Kahn Story.

Harris died a few days ago. I didn’t have the heart to tell Madeline this. I did make some protest: “But Julie Harris isn’t a singer!”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Madeline replied, and suddenly I wasn’t sure whether I’d misunderstood and gotten it backwards, and somehow Madeline might be playing the lead in The Julie Harris Story. A dream role, really, when you think about it.

But if Madeline was making another movie, this of course would mean that I’d have to do more research, possibly more interviews — and I awoke with a start.

Madeline worked in Santa Fe, too:
As Esperanza in Lucky Luke.

Yes, we’ve come to that point. The manuscript for the authorized biography is due in the hands of my editor in a very, very, very few days. For a few weeks, apart from the trip to Santa Fe earlier this month, I have barely left my desk. Dreaming is actually something of an achievement, because I haven’t been getting much sleep. I haven’t seen a barber since the beginning of the year, and since I can’t be bothered to shave more than once or twice a week, much of the time I look like late-stage Howard Hughes.

And yet it’s coming together, even as new information and new interviews have continued to come my way. Even in Santa Fe, I was working on the book whenever I wasn’t at the opera, and I landed long-awaited conversations with Jane Alexander, Madeline’s co-star in City Heat and The Sisters Rosensweig; and with Richard Fredericks, the Met and City Opera baritone who played Ravenal to Madeline’s Magnolia in a production of Show Boat in Sacramento, exactly 44 years ago.

Leads lead to more leads. For example, I had a terrific conversation with Maddie Corman, who played Madeline’s niece in the TV sitcom Mr. President. At one point, she said, “My mother-in-law worked with Madeline — do you want to talk to her?” And that’s how I reached Jane Alexander after all these years.

Talking to Jane Alexander really made my day.
Alexander with Clint Eastwood in City Heat.

Working down to the wire, I’ve also interviewed a few more members of Madeline’s family and Kevin Kline, her co-star in On the Twentieth Century; scored an urgently needed follow-up interview with Mel Brooks; and spoken with several people who worked behind the scenes with Madeline on any number of projects.

I’ve tracked down more newspaper and magazine articles, playbills and plays. Dorothy Danner, who directed the wonderful production of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment in Fort Worth this spring, co-starred with Madeline in New Faces of 1968. She just happens to own a copy of the script from the show, and shared it with me. You’ll be amazed to learn what was and what wasn’t originally included in the running order.

And I’ve reviewed several of Madeline’s films, and seen for the first time the recently released Blu-Ray edition of At Long Last Love — no easy task when you don’t own a Blu-Ray player. And all of this while I’m wrestling with the actual writing of the book.

So I’m a little crazed right now. Hearing Madeline sing “You Don’t Love As I Do” in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother the other night, I got a little teary, in fact, and who knows what shape I’ll be in by the time I type the final period.

But Madeline Kahn in The Julie Harris Story! What a test of her talents to reenact scenes from everything from A Member of the Wedding and I Am a Camera to The Belle of Amherst and The Gin Game! Why, really, only one actress has ever managed to display such range.

No wonder Madeline couldn’t wait to tell me about it.

Maybe we could get James Franco to play James Dean
opposite Madeline in The Julie Harris Story.

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Parisians Now ‘Much Too Polite,’ Tourists Say

Foreign visitors at a Parisian café.

PARIS -- Just a few weeks after another campaign by Paris’ board of tourism designed to sensitize service-industry workers to the needs and preferences of visitors, Paris has become “much too polite” for many tourists.

“We could have been in Muncie,” complained Margaret Velveetinson, of Indianapolis, after a recent trip to the French capital. “Nobody sneered at my accent or the fact that I wanted to eat breakfast at 10 in the morning. Nobody snubbed me. Where’s my authentic Parisian experience?”

Her husband, George Velveetinson, agreed. “I had only one year of French in high school, and that was 40 years ago,” he said. “I thought for sure somebody would make fun of me. But nobody did! Even when I asked them to speak English, they weren’t rude. I want my money back.”

This sudden wave of considerate behavior on the part of Paris’ waiters and hotel clerks is due in large part to the phenomenal response to “Do You Speak Touriste?,” a guide distributed by the board of tourism. It describes the goals and concerns of foreign visitors, and suggests ways that French workers can make a visit more enjoyable for everyone.

These include such helpful hints as serving water with meals when asked to do so, using first names when addressing strangers, keeping wait times to a minimum, and not muttering obscenities in French as soon as one turns one’s back on a tourist.

The cover of the popular guide.

“Before reading this essential brochure, I never understood what a Big Mac or a Coca-Cola can represent to a person who is far from home and seeks the comfort of the familiar,” admitted Jacques Froideur, a waiter at the Café Impertinence, off the Champs-Elysées. “While I understand that, in a café that serves only French cuisine at outrageous prices, I cannot give a tourist precisely what he wants, I now feel a need to be as cheerful and helpful as the counter staff at any fast-food restaurant in the American heartland.

“After all,” Froideur added, “the Americans saved our — how do you say? Asses? Two world wars! And have we ever thanked them properly? It is my duty as a man of honor to make things right in any way I can.”

Previous efforts by the tourism board and other entities have met with limited success. No one expected Parisians to take “Do You Speak Touriste?” to heart — least of all the tourists. An informal survey of visitors from eleven countries found bewilderment and even resentment: Paris is not living up to its reputation. That a city renowned for its art, food, and monuments also be friendly strikes many visitors as unfair.

“What am I supposed to tell the neighbors?” said Jolene Rollerboard, of Little Rock. “That I went to Paris and had a nice time?”

“Next year, we’re going to New York,” said her friend, Mae Belle Samsonite. “I hear they’re really rude there.”

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Further Proof of Shakespeare’s Hand in a Disputed 1957 Musical

A scene from Shakespeare’s West Side Story:
Carol Lawrence with my beloved Larry Kert.

For nearly six decades, scholars have debated whether some part of the 1957 Broadway musical West Side Story was, in fact, written by Shakespeare.

Last year, the British scholar Brian Fforbes-Garstley used computer analysis to argue that the so-called Source Material was by Shakespeare, a claim hailed by some as the latest triumph of high-tech Elizabethan text mining.

“While it’s very difficult to find entire passages that are written by Shakespeare, individual words and phrases are very clearly his,” Fforbes-Garstley said. “For example, I note the repeated use of ‘hand,’ ‘heart,’ and ‘tonight,’ all words that arise with great statistical frequency in Shakespeare’s vocabulary in the canonical works.”

But now, a professor at the University of Ronkonkoma says he has found something closer to definitive proof using a more old-fashioned method: blind speculation, not computer analysis.

In a terse four-page paper, to be published in the September issue of the journal Notes and Queries, Kenneth Oberon argues that various idiosyncratic features of the Source Material — including such characters as Officer Krupke and Anybody’s that have struck some doubters as distinctly sub-Shakespearean — may be explained as misreadings of unfinished manuscripts delivered in error to the print shop.

“The character of Maria clearly is an early model for Olivia’s spunky confidante in Twelfth Night,” Oberon said. “A rough draft, if you will.”

Only later would Shakespeare shift the primary emphasis of his play away from Maria and toward other characters, notably Viola, Oberon said. Also, in the early stages of Shakespeare’s work, he preferred a different pronunciation of the character’s name: “Ma-REE-ah,” rather than his later preference, “Ma-RYE-ah.”

The character also makes an appearance in another disputed musical, which some scholars believe to have been written by Shakespeare, Paint Your Wagon.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
According to some scholars, this scene shows
definite traces of Shakespearean authorship.

Claiming Shakespeare authorship can be a perilous endeavor. In 1996, Norman Voles, a pioneer in computer-driven textual analysis, drew front-page headlines with his assertion that Shakespeare was the author of Kiss Me, Kate, only to retract his argument six years later after analyses by Fforbes-Garstley and others linked it to a different author, Marcel Proust.

This time, editors of some prestigious scholarly editions are betting that Mr. Oberon’s cautiously methodical arguments, piled on top of previous work by Mr. Fforbes-Garstley and others, will make the attribution stick.

“We don’t have any absolute proof, but this is as close as you can get,” said Bruce Mittelschmerz, a professor at the University of Wainscoting and an editor, with Teresa Rinteria, of the British Dental Assocation’s edition of the complete Shakespeare.

“I think we can now say with some authority that, yes, this is Shakespeare,” Mr. Mittelschmerz said. “It has his fingerprints all over it. Oh, sorry. Those are mine.”

Acceptance is by no means assured. Three years ago, some scholars were skeptical when the Arlen Shakespeare published A Little Night Music, a play from roughly the same period whose connection with a lost Shakespeare drama had long been debated, in its prestigious Shakespeare series.

“There is simply not enough dancing in that show to prove categorically that it is the work of William Shakespeare,” said Titania Stern, a professor of early modern drama at Oxblood University and an editor for the Arlen Shakespeare, although she conceded that some of the language in A Little Night Music closely resembles that of other disputed Shakespeare texts, including West Side Story and Gypsy.

However, Ms. Stern said, some new attributions were driven less by solid evidence than by publishers’ desire to offer “more Shakespeare” than their rivals.

“The arguments for West Side Story are better than most” putatitve Shakespeare collaborations, Ms. Stern said. “But I think we’re going a bit Shakespeare-attribution crazy and shoving a lot of stuff in that maybe shouldn’t be there.”

NOTE: For more on the attribution of Shakespeare’s authorship to disputed works, click here. For my part, I’m not at all surprised that Shakespeare, a glover’s son, might have a hand in Kyd.

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Santa Fe Opera 2013: Morrison’s ‘Oscar,’ or the Importance of Not Being Too Earnest

Not guilty: David Daniels as Wilde in Gaol.
This and all photos by Ken Howard, courtesy of Santa Fe Opera.

Theodore Morrison’s Oscar comes to the stage of the Santa Fe Opera Festival with such good intentions, such an interesting back story, such timely subject matter, and such an opera-worthy central figure (you can’t have Strauss’ Salome without Oscar Wilde, after all) that one really wants to like the piece. Indeed, there’s much to admire in this world premiere production, particularly in the score and in the orchestrations.

But with a badly structured, often tedious libretto and an overwhelming excess of earnestness, Oscar left me quibbling. Surely Wilde was not that great a genius, I found myself thinking, though I’m enough of a fan that in college I took on the challenge of staging Salome (quite badly, I admit). And while he was unquestionably a martyr, Wilde has always struck me as a poor role model for proud gays — though that’s very much the way that Morrison and his co-librettist, John Cox, present him.

By the time we reach the opera’s finale, patience evaporates. Wilde is portrayed as increasingly saintly over the course of two acts: the concluding scene is nothing less than his apotheosis. He’s welcomed into Immortality by a chorus of white-gowned, golden-haired worthies. I had to hold my nose to keep from laughing.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the over-earnestness of Oscar and the degree to which this undermines the opera as a whole. For all its merits, Morrison’s score isn’t sufficiently compelling to overcome the flaws in the libretto, and even a smart, good-looking production, staged by Kevin Newbury and featuring stellar performances from William Burden, Heidi Stober, Dwayne Croft, Kevin Burdette, and in the title role, David Daniels, can’t salvage the evening.

The tragic hero’s choice: Ada Leverson (Heidi Stober)
and Frank Harris (William Burden) try to save Wilde.

Morrison is in his mid-seventies, and Oscar is his first opera, a certifiable labor of love brought to fruition in one of the most prestigious venues on earth. He waited a long time for this, and again, one wants to root for him and his work. Always tonal, always appropriate to the emotional tenor of the scenes, his music bears the influence of Stravinsky and Weill (that I noticed) — but he seems to have a short attention span, moving on to new ideas before he’s fully developed the theme at hand. In Act II, where we shift from biography to hagiography, he proved unable to sustain my interest: I confess I nodded off a few times.

Oscar seems at all times to be uncertain what it is and what it wants to do — beyond elevating Wilde to heights where he can’t breathe. Thus in Act I we get an almost Odets-like, realistic scene in the children’s nursery of Ada Leverson (Stober), complete with mundane hellos and chitchat, that leads to a psychologically revealing conversation about Oscar’s future: should he face trial, honorably, or should he flee England? A vision of his lover, Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (who has scarpered off to safety, and who is eloquently embodied by the dancer Reed Luplau, in choreography by Seán Curran) persuades Oscar to make his tragic choice — whereupon the toys in the nursery come to life and enact the trial.

This scene, the finale of Act I, is about as Brechtian as you can get, and in many respects it’s the highlight of the entire opera and its justification as a work for the stage. It also provides an extraordinary spotlight for the indispensable Kevin Burdette, as the judge — here, a jack-in-the-box. And yet in turn this scene casts unfavorable light on Act II, where Burdette plays the governor of Reading Gaol, in this telling a cartoon villain less credible than Snidely Whiplash.

Victorianisches Verfremdungseffekt:
About as Brechtian as you can get.

Indeed, overstatement is a problem throughout this opera. In the opening sequence, the Marquess of Queensbury’s minions (Aaron Pegram and Rocky Sellers) effectively blacklist Wilde from every hotel in London, warning desk clerks of reprisals and calling out the poet: “Bugger! Queer!” Had they appeared only in this scene, they would have made their point — but they keep coming back, in other guises, always calling out nasty names. It’s a struggle not to shout back, “I get it already!”

Fortunately, Burdette and Pegram also play bad guys in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein at Santa Fe this season, so we know (if we didn’t already) that they’re capable of better. Stober and Burden (as Frank Harris) turn in thoroughly credible, beautifully sung performances in better-written scenes, but Croft is left to fend for himself.

He plays the ghost of Walt Whitman, functioning much as Che Guevara does in Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Evita, though at least in this case our narrator is known to have met our protagonist. Accounts of the meeting of Wilde and Whitman are fascinating, leaving a reader to wonder who was fooling whom. Here, Whitman is an ardent booster, and he provides background information better left to program notes.*

Most troubling is the voice type. Wilde is written for countertenor, the only one in this opera, in order to signal his otherness. But Whitman, who was just as “other” as Wilde, is written for baritone. Croft sings as well as I’ve ever heard him, but to no avail.

And so we come to Wilde himself. Openly flamboyant but not more, he was married and a father of two who fought back when he was accused of being a “somdomite” (as the misspelled note from the Marquess claimed — one of the only minute details missing from the libretto) rather than admitting his true nature. The opera finds him discovering compassion in Reading Gaol as he listens to two thieves (hello, Jesus?) and proclaiming a newfound mission once he’s liberated. Historically, of course, he never pursued any such mission. He led the remaining short years in squalor, exile, and attempted anonymity. But no matter! He’s a hero! A saint!

The trial scene, with Kevin Burdette
as Mr. Justice Sir Alfred Wills.

Certainly the scenes between Daniels and Luplau (whose Bosie takes on several guises, including that of Death) elicit the still-novel frisson of recognition for gay men who watch this opera, especially now, when the rights of couples are being recognized in so many parts of the United States. Yes, you think, that’s a relationship not entirely unlike my own, right up there on the stage where I’m accustomed to seeing nobody but men and women. Yet Oscar and Bosie’s love is never depicted with sufficient truth or feeling to move beyond what amounts to titillation.

This takes nothing away from Daniels’ performance, which is fully committed and sung with warmth and character. He’s onstage almost constantly, and one certainly admires his dedication. (And stamina!) Among the qualities that set him apart — and on the path to superstardom — at the start of his career, was his burnished, heroic virility, even while he sang in “feminine” registers, and he accentuated that by keeping a scruffy beard. Here, the beard is shaven clean away, the better to look like Wilde. But no razor, nor even his acting, nor even his dancing (in the best of the sequences with Bosie) can save this character or this opera.

We are talking about Oscar Wilde here, aren’t we? Well, no. Not really. It’s striking that, beyond the structure and aims of the libretto, Morrison and Cox fail at what might have been expected to be the easiest task: somehow they manage to quote liberally from their historical sources with barely a trace of wit. (For that, you think, Wilde might sue for libel — and win.) Oscar gets off one epigram, at the end of the opera, and while it’s welcome in the circumstance, it’s too late to do much good.

Evan Rogister conducts with the utmost sympathy, and he provides a driving force that the score itself lacks. David Korins’ set design is best in its discovery of the visual parallels between a Victorian library and a Victorian prison. David C. Woolard’s costumes are hit and miss, gorgeous in the case of Leverson’s gown, ingenious in the case of the toy jury, but downright ugly in the case of Wilde’s purple jacket and pearl-white overcoat, and nearly ludicrous in the case of the angelic Immortals.

It’s because of that immortality that Whitman wears a pale-cream suit. Yet ultimately, it doesn’t matter that Whitman looks like Mark Twain: we’re watching an opera about historical figures, in which truth has nothing to do with anything. Oscar is, as Wilde might put it, a trivial opera about serious people.

Theodore Morrison’s Oscar plays again August 12 and 17.
It’s unlikely you’ll get another opportunity to hear it. For more information and tickets, click here.

NOTE: Fort Worth Opera fans will want to know that tenor David Blalock sings one of the prisoners in Act II. He does so with a clear, open voice and great style — of course.

*I’m reminded of director Lee Blakeley’s decision to set Santa Fe’s new production of The Grand Duchess in the United States. Is there some prevailing belief that Santa Fe audiences won’t find a story compelling if there’s not something American in it? If so, then I’ve all the more reason to be grateful that La Donna del Lago isn’t depicted as a Laker Girl.

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Santa Fe Opera 2013: ‘The Marriage of Figaro’

Family portrait: Susanna (Oropesa), Figaro (Nelson),
Marcellina (Mentzer), and Bartolo (Travis).
This and all photos by Ken Howard, courtesy of Santa Fe Opera.

Santa Fe Opera’s revival of Jonathan Kent’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, from 2008, is a perfect little jewel. Now in the sure hands of Bruce Donnell, the staging tells the story straight but not hyper-realistically: we see this most clearly in the set designs, by Paul Brown, which use a span of wall and a few items of furniture (naturally including an armchair in Act I) to suggest the location. Always in the background, we see a sort of meadow of flowers, periodically picked or replenished by silent lackeys. The most furnished, literally depicted setting is the Countess’ bedroom, and yet it’s suitably intimate, not Zeffirellian, in tastefully subdued colors.

The result is that the audience concentrates on the details of the relationships among the characters — which is precisely what Donnell and his cast of sensational singing actors have done. With John Nelson offering sensitive guidance from the orchestra, this is one of the most completely satisfying Figaros I’ve seen.

The two singers with whose work I’m most familiar are Susanne Mentzer (as Marcellina) and Daniel Okulitch (as the Count). Both have sung other roles in this opera many times: she’s a renowned Cherubino, and he’s a widely traveled Figaro. This experience may have lent extra insight into the characters they’re singing now — role debuts for both — and they’re gifted artists to begin with. But nothing could have prepared me for the delights they delivered in last night’s performance.

Compromising situations: Cherubino (Fons) spies
as the Count (Okulitch) tries to win over Susanna (Oropesa).

Mentzer is absolutely adorable, dancing with pleasure as she looks forward to marrying Figaro, and perfectly content with her consolation prize, the decidedly less enthusiastic Bartolo (Dale Travis). Her Marcellina is almost — dare I say it — girlish, and her motives are so clear and so understandable that we wind up sympathizing with her. That’s something I never quite expected to do in this or any Figaro. Her singing is warm and even, and she really whetted my appetite for her forthcoming album of songs by Carlisle Floyd.

I sat through the entire evening thinking that this was Okulitch’s 997th performance as the Count, rather than his fifth. He has mastered the aristocratic refinement so necessary to this character and so seldom seen, and he conveys menace without crudity or violence. This Count has terrible attitudes toward women, yes, but he is (or tries to be) a stylish seducer, not a brutal rapist; the singer who plays him must always show us some traces of the man with whom Rosina once fell in love. Okulitch did this brilliantly, with such scrupulous attention to the text that it seemed as though he were performing a straight play — except that he was singing all the while, in that suave, supple, yet mighty voice.

Smooth operator: Okulitch as the Count.

The rest of the cast comprises singers with whom I’m less familiar or whose work I didn’t know at all before last night. They’re marvelous individually and as an ensemble. Emily Fons is perhaps the most effortlessly boyish Cherubino I’ve seen — and she’d better be at the top of her game when so many of us in the audience remember Mentzer in this role. Lisette Oropesa (who shares Madeline Kahn’s birthday) sings Susanna with sweet vibrance and spunky stage presence. I admired Oropesa in The Enchanted Island at the Met two seasons ago, and here, with superior dramatic material, she’s winning.

Zachary Nelson incarnates Figaro with just the right amount of physical verve: he knows when to move and when to be still. (Another rare gift, especially in this role.) He delivers his music with abundantly virile tone, and he created a grounded character, a regular guy who just happens to be the smartest person onstage, give or take Susanna. Best of all was the genuine rapport among Nelson, Oropesa, and Fons: I really had no trouble believing that these people had known each other for years, which in turn makes the entire story more credible and profound.

Master, maid, and minion: Okulitch, Oropesa, and Jameson.

Travis looks like a picture-book illustration of Bartolo, and while he may have lost a little sympathy for resisting the irresistible Marcellina, he was hardly the caricature one so often sees in this role — a much nicer guy than the bully in The Barber of Seville. Keith Jameson’s Basilio is the rare music master who doesn’t act as if he’s dropped in from some other opera entirely; perfectly matching the comedic style of this production, he sings with the clarity and appeal I’ve come to expect from him.

Soprano Susana Phillips’ performance helped to show what was right about John Nelson’s conducting. Her big, creamy instrument has a natural plangency that works well for the character, and together she and Nelson developed a flexible approach that permitted her to ornament and stretch out lines and to drop into the softest possible singing as circumstances required in “Porgi amor” and “Dove sono,” with spellbinding results in both arias. Depressed as the poor Countess is, Phillips gave plenty of indication that she’s the same Rosina who fooled Bartolo in Barber — and who admits to her affair with Cherubino in La Mère coupable.

Susanna Phillips as the Countess.

In most regards, this was a straightforward production of a well-known work. Nothing groundbreaking. Comedy derived from character, situation, and expression, rather than from exaggeration, and political and psychological points were made without recourse to overwrought concepts and underlining. It’s clear that everyone concerned lavished exceptional care on this production, and by getting the little stuff right, they got just about everything right.

God is in the details, they say, and on the strength of this performance, I’d say that Mozart is, too.

Fun and games: Fons and Oropesa.

The Marriage of Figaro continues at Santa Fe Opera through August 23. For tickets and more information, click here.

For information about Okulitch’s recital album of new American art songs, and for updates on Mentzer’s forthcoming Carlisle Floyd album, click here.

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