RSS
Home
Berkeley Opera celebrates 30th anniversary with bubbly Ruth Ann Swenson and champagne (Part 1 of 3)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Scott Marley, the wizard behind the magic at Berkerley Opera
Berkeley Opera celebrated it's 30th anniversary on Sunday night with Ruth Ann Swenson and some jewels from it's 30 year history. Carter Krizman and I attended and fell in love with it. 30 years ago I was a UC Berkeley sophomore and resident assistant. Freshman year I spent down the block from the First Congregational Church on Channing, a beautiful brick church the size of a block, where we tucked ourselves into the end of a pew upstairs. That night Carter and I even met Ruth Ann Swenson, a religious experience for the singers as well. Moreover Siggy Seigel poured Carter a glass of champagne. That means a lot because Siggy, a fixture at San Francisco Opera and an Italian aria loving board member at Berkeley, values his friends like family. Siggy also appreciates beautiful sopranos and other tenors like himself . . .
Carter and I have a colorful recap with photos and video coming up. So that’s where I’ve been for a few days. Carter and I sat in his car yesterday watching the sunset at Crissy Field as he reviewed the video on his laptop.
Meanwhile, some back story. Carter had come to Tales of Hoffman, the most recent production at Berkeley Opera. What would that come to mean?
Scott Marley, who adapted Tales of Hoffman for Berkeley, emailed about the lovelorn poet Hoffman last night,
The point is that in the telling of the stories to his friends, he comes to realize what these fantasies that are coming up are telling him about Stella, and he sees Stella as he hasn't seen her before, and the loss of his illusions about her is staggering. The Giulietta tale in particular causes him to see that, in order to be truly hers, he would have to murder a precious part of himself. And the price is more than he can pay.
At least, that's what I think is going on. I know a lot of people think the Antonia tale is the most tragic, but I think the point of it is that Stella's ambitions -- what Hoffmann sees as being "tempted by the devil" and compromising her artistry in order to win wider fame -- are making her dead *to Hoffmann*, not dead in reality. But the opera is filled with fantasy and dreamlike symbols and events, so there's a lot of room for interpretation.
Scott
Here's one campy version of the finale to Antonia's tale, which the trio performed at Berkeley Opera's anniversary. Even Anna Netrebko sings this one on her new CD Souvenirs.
Here's Antonia's aria.
Here's Jeremy Knight's new video of the actual Berkeley Opera production of Hoffman. It's Giulietta the courtesan's aria, Quick the Night Flies.
So is this all a warning to Carter about women or will I be his obsession if not his muse? Actually, I am the writer. Nevertheless since then Carter and I teamed up as he’s a photographer and videographer. He’s 6’1” and 179 pounds of gentleman so we had a great time cornering the opera singers at a champagne reception for what Carter calls an opera moment. For example, How do you handle stage fright? Carter asked Annalisa Winberg and Duana Demus. I followed with how does having your hubby there affect your performance? Annalisa performs with her husband and did so that night; Duana just married and her husband stood by, young, tall and nice looking. More on Joshua later.
Similarly I found the comedic mezzo Donna Olson was about the last to leave the party and asked her, what’s it like to sing pants roles? She’s been Cherubino and Prince Orlovsky.
It proved to be a carefree evening, one of love with it’s many faces. Bitter, henpecked, jealous, sardonic, enraptured, innocent, delusional and blissful, yearning from afar, redemptive and one’s salvation . . . and that’s just the first half.
I was so happy to see something from Tales of Hoffman and David Scott Marley looked dapper in his short pony tail at the anniversary. Why do I think to myself, Willy Wonka when I see him? To be fair his partner owns the Other Change of Hobbit fantasy bookstore on Shattuck. So he and I chatted awhile about Scott before the anniversary that night. The store has been open since 1977 when I was a freshman and the first Star Trek movie came out.
As I was leaving to meet Carter, he said driving from Sacramento seemed like a long way to come for such a small production. I answered Carter loved Tales of Hoffman and so did I . . .
He said Scott put Tales back in the order Offenbach wrote it, not the order grand operas often perform it in. Antonia and the ghost of her mother the famous singer come before the tale of Giulietta the courtesan.
I thought that was a happy ending, I emailed to Scott. He answered,
I am surprised the see the Giulietta tale from Hoffmann described as having a happy ending. It's meant to have the darkest ending of any of the three tales.
So. The trio at Berkeley’s 30th anniversary performed the song where the devil Dappertutto or Dr. Miracle brings a painting of a young singer’s mother to life. Marie Plette as Antonia the sickly young girl who loves to sing but physically should not; Donna Olson as the ghost of the girl’s mother brought back to life from a painting; Philip Skinner as the devil who conjures the ghost.
And so the mother prevails upon her physically weak daughter Antonia to sing, even when it means she will literally sing herself to death trying to become a famous (dead) singer like her mother.
In Hoffman, after a series of tales by the lovelorn poet all depicting a version of the opera singer he pines for, his vision of his beloved Stella clears, his rose colored glasses shattered. Yet Stella continues to be a source of inspiration as he lets the obsession die. His muse beseeches him to shed his mortal trappings and torment and be reborn as the poet she loves.
From Scott's libretto, page 75:
Tonight a passion starts
To last a thousand years
Let all your darkest fears
Be transformed by your arts
Into stories
Golden stories
Lasting stories
Chorus:
Dip your pen into your tears
Write your words on our hearts . . .
That song just felt so personal. It rang true. So Carter and I walked and talked relationships further, finding ourselves across the Golden Gate Bridge and back again. Maybe I’ve spent long enough at the Tosca Café, a state of mind . . .
.jpg)
On that note, Scott says he’s working on a Cinderella make over, La Cenerentola. I asked him if he would ever adapt Bellini's La Sonnambula, speaking of bel canto and coloratura. He said Bellini bores him with it's repetition.
Emails Scott,
The makeover is of Rossini's opera, La Cenerentola; it will be set in ancient China and the working title is The Golden Slipper.
Meanwhile, here's Ruth Ann Swenson to sing us out . . .
For more info: www.BerkeleyOpera.org
Photo of Scott Marley: Carter Krizman
Photo Tosca Cafe: Cindy Warner
Tosca Cafe drinks to doomed lovers
The Tosca Project World Premiere at ACT
Dessay and Juan Diego LIVE awaken love in La Sonnambula
Anna Netrebko sings Violetta in June's La Traviata
Life should feel like a Mardi Gras again
Anna N (as in Anna Nicole) and why her opera may still sound bafflin' on some remote island
Anna Nicole fights back from the grave and how opera takes on the bourgeoisie
Tone deaf diva touches and eviscerates
Tales of Hoffman sells out in a good not bourgeois way
Tales of Hoffman as bourgeoisie and the devil thwart poet's love
Anna Nicole and subject of celebrity a worthy one
Anna Nicole Smith weapon of mass distraction
Francesca Zambello to direct Die Walkure
Wotan shares his dressing room
Greer Grimsley Impressions, Passions, Stand by Me, Dreams
Tosca and how opera's embattled stay in fighting shape
Related Articles:
Comments
