bY jOHN fARRELL

LOLPERA IS A MUSICAL CAT'S MEOW

LOLPERA

What: Opera by Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza, presented by The Garage Theatre
Where: Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th. St., Long Beach
When: Thursdays, Fridays at Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Oct. 29
Tickets: $18, $15 for students and seniors. Cash only at the door.
Information: (866) 811-4111,www.thegaragetheatre.org

By John Farrell

It started, so they tell us, with one song about one particular photograph of a car reclining on a keyboard.

If you've surfed the Internet you know that picture, or one like it. Funny pictures of cats (yes, and dogs, too) are a dime a dozen: a momentary laugh, downloaded from a phone or a camera and left there for ever.

Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza found one of those photographs, and wrote a song about it. Then they found another, and another, and finally they realized that they had more than just a few songs. They had the beginnings of an opera, and now, at the Garage Theatre through then end of this month “LOLPERA,” the result of years of collaboration, is joyously crowded into the Garage Theatre's very small theater for performances that are remarkable, theatrically and musically. You owe it to yourself (and any four-footed feline in your life) to see just how special it all is.

The Garage is a small theater, and just crowding the seven musicians into the place, with Warkentine of the keyboards and six other performers playing everything from violin to harp, is worth seeing. Add to that 16 performers, singing and acting through more than two hours of music, and an audience that fills both sides of the performance space, and you've got a crowd.

No matter. Director Jessica Variz manages to keep everything moving, with plenty of dance movements, plenty of colorful characters, all in a set that cost just $600 dollars and is filled with lots and lots of televisions and computer monitors (mostly, but not all defunct) assembled by set designer DiCapria, with projections of funny kitty photographs on two walls that not only advance the story photographically and comically (many are very funny indeed, even if the cats in question don't know it) but also contain the words of the text that is being sung: a kind of super super-title that should be distracting, but is actually just a small part of the wonderfully engaging performances from all the cast.

This is not “Cats,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on T. S. Elliot's poems, but an original story that tells about life, love, and the battle between Ceiling Cat (Steve Sornbutnark) who is pure white and watches over you all the time and Basement Cat, (Angel Correa) who is black of fur and of heart. Astro Cat (Michael Burdge) is playing his music as the other cats try to live their lives, commuting to work, loving and giving birth, all the time looking to find cheezburger.

Precious Cat (Sayaka Miyatani) and Dreamer Cat (Pedroza,) Happy Cat (Allie Nelson) and Serious Cat (Ashley Allen,) Gutter Cat (Dinah Steward) and LOLrus (Anthony Pedroza) all contribute to this feline extravaganza, which plays out to music which is intriguing and worth hearing more than once, mixing jazz idioms with classical references in a compelling score.

There is so much going on in this production: funny pictures, the story line which mixes fantasy with more than a little recognizable human reality, the exciting dance numbers, solo arias and a triumphal final number (sans Basement Cat, who has been given a fatal bath) that you may need to see it more than once. ”LOLPERA” is ambitious, exciting, hip and down-to-earth. Bring your own cheezburger.

John Farrell is a Long Beach opera critic.

Shostakovich's Moscow Cherry Town a hit in west coast premier by Long Beach Opera

 

John Atkins, Peabody Southwell, Valerie Vinzant, Andrew Fernando, Benito Galindo, Vincent Chambers

Moscow Cherry Town

What: Opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, presented by Long Beach Opera, sung in bEnglish with English supertitles
Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 6424 Campus Drive, Irvine; Barnum Hall, 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
When: Tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre; Sunday at 2 p.m. at Barnum Hall.
Tickets: $25-$110
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

“Moscow, Cherry Town” came to Long Beach Sunday afternoon courtesy of Long Beach Opera for a hilarious, musical and lightweight two hours of bright tunes and silly situations.

Just once, unfortunately, but two more performances are scheduled, one tonight at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Irvine and a second next Sunday afternoon at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica, and if you like your music light-weight and tuneful, or if you wonder what Dmitri Shostakovich, the heaviest of heavy-weight Soviet composers, could turn out when he was just having fun, you should go hear “Cherry Town.” You'll have a great time listening to parodies of everything from Lehar's “The Merry Widow” to nascent Soviet rock; the production, minimal but just enough for the action, the cast, funny, bright, and always charming and the orchestra, led by LBO's Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek provide a cheerful look at the USSR that is surprisingly biting and political.

Surprising because Shostakovich has a long history of difficulties with the Russian government. He was a successful composer in 1934 when his opera “Lady MacBeth of the Mtsensk District” ran afoul of Stalin, was back in a starring role in 1941 and then forced, in 1948, to publicly repent. By 1951 he was again back in favor, and when Khrushchev took power he apparently felt safe enough to collaborate with Soviet comic writers Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky on “Cherry Town,” a comedy about the struggle of several couples and some typical Soviet bureaucrats over apartment space in the new Cherry Town apartment development, “happiness in a thousand concrete rooms.”

The staging by Jian Jung, Sunday on a modified thrust stage at the Long Beach Center Theater, is simple but effective: a sign that moves around, maps of the Soviet Union, and a large crane are center stage. Costume designer Leah Piehl uses overcoats, a mink stole and plenty of worker-style clothes to set the stage, and director Isabel Milenski uses a sure hand to keep things comically moving, using a large chorus and an equally large cast.

There are Sasha and Masha, (Andrew Fernando and Peabody Southwell,) a young married couple who live in separate dormitories because they can find nowhere to put a double bed, Lidochka the museum guide (Valerie Vinzant,) Semyon Semyonovich, Lidochka's father (Benito Galindo,) Boris the explosives expert (John Atkins,) Sergei the chauffeur (Vincent Chambers) and Liusia a construction worker (Jamie Chamberlin) all looking forward to their new apartments in Cherry Town. Fyodor Drebednev (Roberto Perlas Gomez) and Vava (Susan Hanson) are a rich apparatchik and his lover who want to get a double apartment by depriving someone else of their apartment, and Barabashkin (Robin Buck) is the apartment manager who doesn't want to give out the keys: that would turn the people who are begging him for favors into tenants he would have to serve.

All the action is set to some of the most tuneful music that Shostakovich ever wrote. Apparently he was at best ambivalent about the result, and though he composed more music for the 1963 film version “Moscow, Cherry Town” was allowed to sit on the shelf for twenty years, but has found a new audience which loves its raucous comedy, its exciting parodies and now looks, from the post-Soviet world, at the period with more than a little nostalgia.

The entire cast, mostly made up of LBO alumni, had a great time with their performances. Hanson was a delight as a blond bombshell on the Soviet make, Fernando and Southwell perfect as the love-starved young marrieds. Vinzant was a delight as the sexy but understated Lidochka, and Atkins was everywhere as Boris, romancing two women and singing with delight. But best of all, perhaps, was Buck as Barabashkin, the apartment manager afflicted with dreams of power. His villainy was always comic, especially when he and Perlas Gomez dressed up in tutus for a dream sequence that was a hoot. This wasn't grand opera by any means, but it was a whole lot of innocent fun, and at the end the good ended up happy and the villains were left sweeping the stage. What more could you ask?

 

Long Beach Opera gives west coast premier of Shostakovich's comic Moscow Cherry Town in three performances in Long Beach, Irvine and Santa Monica; Milenski directs, Mitisek conducts

Moscow, Cherry Town

What: West coast premier of opera by Dmitri Shostakovich, presented by Long Beach Opera
Where: Center Theatre, 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine; Barnum Hall. 601 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
When: Sunday at 2 p.m. (Long Beach;) Wednesday at 8 p.m. (Irvine;) Sunday, May 22 at 2 p.m. (Santa Monica.)
Tickets: $25-$110
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

In the long, often frustrating and often glorious career of the man many consider the greatest composer, Russian or otherwise, of the 20th century, his operetta “Moscow, Cherry Town” is generally a historical foot note.

Shostakovich wrote the work, the longest of anything he ever wrote (and that is saying something) but apparently was ambivalent about it at its premiere in Moscow in 1959. That didn't stop it from being a hit at home, and a frequently replayed Soviet television special until it vanished from view in 1971, apparently the victim of the death of the operetta (a victim who has not surprisingly returned to vibrant life in the last 20 years.)

Called “Moskva, Cheryomushki” in Russian transliteration and boasting a libretto by Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinky, noted Soviet humorists of the time, the story is one that would never had been told under the regime of the repressive Stalin, who loaded honors on Shostakovich but also twice (in 1936 and 1948) had his music denounced publicly. Indeed, his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” from 1934, was sharply criticized by the local Soviet press apparently on Stalin's orders. (That didn't discourage Los Angeles Opera, nearly 70 years later, from producing a lively performance in October 2002.)

“Cherry Town” was as up-to-date as daily headlines, telling the story of newly-wed museum guide and his bride, an explosives expert, a government chauffeur and a construction worker, all assigned to the new apartment complex in Cherry Town, one of the most up-to-date residential districts in Moscow. But the problems begin when the new landlord refuses to hand over the keys, and get worse when the couple finally get into their apartment only to find that their next-door neighbor is cutting a hole through the wall to make two apartments into one to impress his would-be girlfriend. Russian bureaucracy and the housing problem that plagued Moscow in the decades after World War II are in sharp and ironic focus, and some critics find it surprising that Shostakovich was ever allowed, even in the somewhat relaxed Khrushchev era, to put the operetta on at all.

Not at all surprising, though, that Long Beach Opera is offering the west coast premier of the work in three performances at three different venues throughout the southland. It opens this Sunday with a performance at the Center Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center at 2 p.m., then moves to the Irvine Barclay Theater for a performance at 8 p.m. next Wednesday and finishes with a third performance next Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica at 2 p.m.

The production is directed by Isabel Milenski, a company veteran who is the daughter of Long Beach Opera founder Michael Milenski, who has directed such LBO productions as Janacek's “Jenufa” and Richard Strauss' “Die schweigsame frau.” The company's Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek will conduct all three performances, which will be sung in English with supertitles. The cast includes Andrew Fernando as Sasha, Peabody Southwell as Masha, Valerie Vinzant as Lidochka, Benito Galindo as Semyon Semyonovich and John Atkins as Boris.

Left to Right: Roberto Gomez (Fyodor Drebednev- Russian bureacrat), Robin Buck (Barabashkin-Real Estate Manager), Suzan Hanson (Vava - Drebednev's lover)

NIXON IN CHINA

 

What: Opera by John Adams, presented by Long Beach Opera

Where: Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Convention Center,

300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

When: Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 4 p.m.

Tickets: $45-$95

Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

 

 

By John Farrell

 

“Nixon in China” is big, bold, exciting, moving, sometimes outrageous. (Did we mention exciting? Let's do it again.)

 

It's the kind of opera you expect from a big opera company, with more than 100 performers, delightful and unexpectedly effective sets and costumes and enough music, minimalist some of it, lyric and effective all of it, to hold any audiences attention for its three our length.

 

It was produced by Long Beach Opera.

 

Frankly, it is time to reset our expectations. LBO has long been called “feisty,” “innovative,” “the small company with big ambitions.” It's time to admit, after more than thirty years and 100 productions, including, despite Los Angeles Opera's contention to the contrary, the first “Ring” in the Los Angeles area, that it is more than the little company that could. Under Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek, who conducted Saturday night, it has become an important force, perhaps the single most important force, for contemporary opera in Southern California.

 

“Nixon in China” is a shining example. It was produced by LAO in 1990 but has been singularly neglected here since, though it has many productions around the world, including performances in Vienna and Verona conducted by Mitisek.

 

Neglected no longer. Mitisek has brought together a fabulous cast, including John Duykers, who created the roll of Mao Tse-Tsung, and plenty of artists from LBO's recent performances. He brought in Long Beach Ballet, forty chorus members, a forty-three piece orchestra. It all adds up to one of the best and brightest operas in recent memory, a work that deserves to be heard again. (If you haven't heard it, or want to hear it again, a final performance Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. is still available.)

 

Richard Nixon is a controversial figure in America history. His trip to China in 1972 is a seminal moment in American history, and Adams opera, the first major work to take recent history and treat it with as much seriousness as ancient history, is as important as it is imaginative. With a poetic libretto by Alice Goodman, it explores the inner world of six people at one of the most important moments in their lives.

 

Michael Chioldi is Nixon, the communist-hating president who decided to open China, and his voice is as clear as his opinions are vague. Duykers is Mao, a philosopher now in his old age. Suzan Hanson is Pat Nixon, whose simplicity and middle-American virtues (though she was born in California) shine as she meets children and pig farmers on her tour of China. Ani Maldjian, with a fierce, fiery performance, is Chiang Ch'ing, Mao's wife. Robert Gomez is Cho En Lai, Chinese Premiere. Kyle Albertson is Henry Kissinger, the man who made the meeting between the two men possible. All sing with powerful, clear voices, aided by a microphone system and with Goodman's words project on a screen above the stage. Ariel Pisturino, Leslie Anne Cook and Peabody Southwell are Mao's three secretaries.

 

Wilhelm Holzbauer designed the sets, which were produced from his plans. The airplane Nixon and company arrive on is not as big as it was in the original production, but it will do. Mao and Nixon meet in a room filled with chairs twice life-sized that move as the men discuss their lives and their end-of-life goals.

The final act is after the ultimate banquet, with Kissinger drunk Madame Mao reading a newspaper and Pat and Dick Nixon looking back on their lives together. Only Co is concerned with whether what they did will actually bring good.

 

Peter Pawlik directs the cast with a willingness to allow each character a chance to speak. Mitisek conducts the sometime lush score with passion and effective clarity. Chorus master Henry Venanzi controls his charges with energy and a willingness to let them be individuals, even in the most controlled situations.

 

“Nixon in China” is an opera which tells one version of an important point in American history. It also reveals what opera can and should be: entertaining and comic and tragic and insightful all at once. One performance this Sunday is still to come, and if you care about opera and about Long Beach Opera you will be there.

 

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. More of his stories can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com

 

 

 

 

  

 

The Cunning Little Vixen

What: Opera by Leos Janacek, presented by Long Beach Opera
Where: Center Theatre of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center,
300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
When: This Sunday at 4 p.m.
Tickets: $45-$95
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

The Center Theatre in Long Beach was virtually filled Saturday night for the opening of Long Beach Opera’s 2009 season, a production of Czech composer Leos Janacek’s “Cunning Little Vixen.”

That is great news for the local company, suggesting a growing interest in opera locally (though cynics might suggest at also shows an audience recently deprived by the closing of Orange County’s Opera Pacific.)

The cynics don’t win this time around. The production of “Vixen” mounted at opening night Saturday (the production will be repeated once more, in an afternoon performance Sunday) was a perfect example of what LBO has done for so long. Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek chose a work of vitality and excitement (and one that has been performed only once in Los Angeles, in 1981) assembled a cast of young singer-actors, engaged a designer and director who knew how to use the thrust stage of the Center Theatre to full effect, and the result is a musically powerful, dramatically satisfying whole. Janacek’s operas, including this one, are accessible and powerful, yet, with one recent exception, they have only been heard locally in Long Beach.

No, this isn’t the kind of polished production o opera you might find elsewhere, where the production hides behind a proscenium and an opera pit. Instead or professional distance, LBO offers performances up close and personal, with performers only a few feet away from the audience, emotions easily read on faces, a perfect example of operatic intimacy. In this case stage director pushes the envelope on that intimacy with cast members dressed as forest animals (including a mosquito with flight helmet, goggles and leather bomber jacket) mixing into the audience. One singer, playing the heavy-drinking school teacher, even has an audience member hold his scooter while he heads to the local tavern.

“Vixen” was written by Janacek when he was 70 years old, and though it is based on a comic strip that he found his maid laughing at, it isn’t quite a comedy. Instead Janacek used the story to look at his own life and the cycle of life itself. (Janacek was a married man with a family, and was pursuing a romantic affair with a much younger married woman at the time: he had much to think about.)

The story of “Vixen” follows the life of Vixen Sharp Ears (company veteran soprano Ani Maldjian: she was Anne in the company’s recent productions of Grigori Frid’s “The Diary of Anne Frank) who is captured in a verdant forest glade by the forester (baritone Michael Chioldi. He takes her home to raise as a pet for his family, but she values her freedom, and when she is full grown, turns into a feminist and escapes back to the forest. There she finds a mate and has a family, before being killed by a poacher. The forester, who has grown old, finds Sharp Ear’s daughter in the forest and sees in the daughter the story of the cycle on nature.

Maldjian has a very expressive face, big eyes and a voice of power. Her personality infuses the fox with strength, cunning and a human touch. Chioldi, athletic and earthy, is the embodiment of a man whose work is protecting nature, chasing poachers, maintaining a wild place he doesn’t quite understand.

There are animals aplenty in this opera, from the Badger (Andrew Fernando: he’s also the dog and the hunter who shoots the Vixen) to the Mosquito (Doug Jones, doubling as the schoolteacher) to the Vixen’s mother (Peabody Southwell, who also creates the role of the Vixen’s Husband) to a grasshopper (Melissa Simpson.)

Michael Foreman doubles as a randy rooster and the innkeeper, Adriana Manfredi is the woodpecker, Jenifer Hart Jackson a sleek and shiny dragonfly and Laura Parker a cricket. Kristina Driscol, in goggles and a crocheted sweater, is the owl and a couple of other, and Jesse Merlin sings a lonely and passionate parson Cheri Stark is one of a quartet of very funny hens who Sharp Ears, fox-like, kills. Marie Song is the surveyor.

The latter reflects Scenic Designer Alan E. Muraoka’s contribution to the mix. Janacek wrote well before the modern environmental movement, but Muraoka adds that to the mix. As the opera progresses over several years, the forest glade is surveyed, cleared and, finally, a road is paved through it, with the shadow of electrical power lines seen in the background. The forester may see the cycle of life, but it is slowly eroding.

Jacqueline Saint Anne has created wildly effective costumes for her menagerie, from hulking badger to the Vixen herself, whose costume, in layers from corduroy coveralls to plain white dress, are revealed a layer at a time. Janacek’s story, in an English translation by Norman Tucker, is`often broadly comic, and the costumes add to that comedy Stage Director Ken Cazan finds plenty of space for his cast to move with energy and abandon.

Mitisek, conducting from behind a screen and with a full-sized orchestra, finds the lyric detail and the folk influence in Janacek without losing the music’s dramatic power and simple elegance. It’s rich music, full of nature’s colors, charming and fresh.

The cast sings with clear diction and, up close, they are easy to understand, but supertitles are provided if you need them. This production is a wonderful reminder that opera doesn’t need to be huge to be effective, and the power of an energetic and enthusiastic cast.

This story appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram January 21, 2009.

 

Magic Flute Gets Better With Age

The Magic Flute

What: Opera by Mozart presented by Los Angles Opera,
conducted by James Conlon
Where: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center,
135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles
When: Tonight, tomorrow, Thursday, and Saturday, January 24 at 7:30 p.m.,
Sunday and Sunday, January 25 at 2 p.m., Wednesday at 1 p.m.
Tickets: $20-$250
Information: (213) 972-8001, www.laopera.com

By John Farrell

Mozart’s “Magic Flute” is one of the most familiar works in the opera repertory, a sure-fire charmer that balance s a serious philosophy with plenty of bright characters and what may be the composer’s most human and accessible opera score a freedom, written with a freedom from constraint few of his other works offered him.

The production of that opera that opened this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center is also familiar. The bright-colored comic book design created for the work by artist Gerald Scarfe originally appeared in 1993, in a production created by Peter Hall. This is the fourth time they have been used at LA Opera.

One difference, an essential on: This is the first time that the company’s relatively new Music Director James Conlon has conducted Mozart for the company, and it was a revelation. From the first few bars of the well-known overture it was obvious thins were going to be very different. Instead of the comic, bumptious overture of tradition, Conlon began the wok with a slow, gentle pace that emphasized the music’s thoughtful, humane size. Even those moments when the score moves into a march-like humor, the timpani were gentled and there was an air of expectancy: this was going to b a new look at an old friend.

New, also, if you look at the cast list, which features too many company premieres to list. Two cast lists, actually, for this production features two entirely different sets of principals in productions that continue through January 25.

Saturday’s opening night featured what might be called the A-list, with tenor Matthew Polenzani as Tamino, soprano Marie Arnet as Pamina, baritone Nathan Gunn as Papageno, soprano L’ubica (CQ) Vargicova as the Queen of the Night and bass Gunther Groissbock as Sarastro.

The cartoon nature of the world Scarfe created for these characters is apparent immediately. Polenzani has been touted as a hart-throb performer, but under a bright red wig and slathered in white pancake make-up it was hard to tell. He sang with clarity, though it is hard for anyone to make Tamino, whose first action onstage is to call for help and faint, much of a hero.  Gunn is another operatic love-interest, and in very tight yellow tights with a grebe codpiece he was the genuine article. He knew he was funny, and sang with delicious effect, but it always seemed he was wondering why he has feathers coming out of his tousled head.

Tamina is much out upon in “Magic Flute” and the diminutive Arnet was vulnerable looking, but had the tough spirit and delicate voice called for. In this version of “Flute” her mother, the Queen of the Night, descends from the heavens as before but director Stanley M. Garner lets her walk on the stage to sing hew two powerful arias, given her character and her music much greater impact. She managed the daunting coloratura of the two famously difficult arias with ease.

Almost the only principle performer in this production you might recognize is Greg Fedderly, and, unless you look closely you won’t recognize him as Monostatos, the scheming, green and mean servant of Sarastro. Fedderly has great fun with Monostatos, prancing about with legs spread like a baboon, and he gives him the human touch, green as he is.

Groissbock’s Sarastro is firm, stately in voice and character, though he doesn’t dominate the stage as predecessors in the role have. The three ladies, Tamara Wilson, Lauren McNeese and Beth Clayton, look great in their designer gowns (one an ersatz topless number) and sing together with great team work. The three boys, Ryan Schiller, Stephen Cruz and Caleb Glickman, look a little uncomfortable as they glide above the stage in a gilded, winged boat but are sure of themselves on the ground.
 
This “Flute” has worn well over the years: It is still colorful and comic in design, and garner’s direction is to the point. More important, Conlon leads his singers with gentle control, and breathes into Mozart’s great score the lively reality of character and emotion it always should have.

Six performances, including one tonight, remain.

This review appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune on Friday, January 16, 2009.

The Cunning Little Vixen

What: Opera by Leos Janacek, presented by Long Beach Opera
Where: Center Theatre of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center,
300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach
When: Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday, January 25 at 4 p.m.
Tickets: $45-$95
Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

It wouldn’t be precise to say that Long Beach Opera is going to the dogs as it opens its 2009 season tonight and next Sunday with performances at the Center Theatre of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

It would be precise to say that the company is going to the badger, the mosquito, the owl and most importantly, to the fox, as the company presents the Los Angeles-area premier of Czech composer Leos Janacek’s opera “The Cunning Little Vixen.”

The fox in question is the title character in Janacek’s opera, based on a daily comic strip by Rudolf Tesnolidek and Stanislav Lolek that the composer’s servant of 44 years  Marie Stejskalova introduced him to. Bystrouska, the vixen whose name translates as “Sharp Ears” is the central animal figure in a menagerie that includes many forest animals and even a few of the human kind as well. When Janacek 70 years old, began working on the opera he spent time studying animals and the sounds they made so he could use them in his work, the nearest thing to a comic opera he ever wrote.

LBO’s Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek, who will direct the two performances of the opera, has chosen a young and energetic cast for the opera, which will be sung in English and feature English language supertitles as well. Soprano Ani Maldjian, who sang the role of Anne in “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Grigori Frid in LBO productions in 2007 and 2008, will sing the starring role of the Vixen.  Michael Chioldi will sing the Forester, Doug Jones the Schoolmaster, Peabody Southwell the Fox and Jesse Merlin the Priest.

“Vixen” has all the earmarks of a fairy tale: Talking animals with human-like attitudes about life and a story line simple and straightforward, like all fairy tales it has a serious philosophical message. Janacek wrote his own libretto for the work, and it expresses his late-life ideas about the meaning of life. Many see the character of the Forester in the story as Janacek himself.  And they suggest that the Vixen is a stand-in for Kamila Stosslova, the young married woman who he called his “muse” and with whom he carried on a long and passionate correspondence and love affair.

It is the beauty of the springtime forest that begins Janacek’s opera. Animals dance and sing and the Forester, finding a young fox poppy, takes her home as a pet for his children. The Vixen grows up and, after engaging in a political argument with the local hen, kills several. (She is, after all a fox.) At night she gnaws though the rope with which she is tied and escapes into the forest.

The Forester and his friends the Priest and the Schoolmaster are seen playing cards in the second act, where the friends joke with each other. On their way home, though, they hear a shotgun blast. It is the Forester trying to kill the Vixen. She meets a male fox; they fall in love and announce they will be married.

In the third act the Vixen has a family, and they find the forester’s traps amusing. Harasta the poultry dealer goes by and they find a way to fool him and steal from his bag of poultry. But the Forester has gone for his gun and kills the Vixen. He and his friends gather at the tavern where they talk of life: the Forester feels old, the schoolmaster hears that the woman he loves has married someone else.

On his way home the Forester is overcome with a feeling of memory: picking mushrooms with his wife when they were young. He sits down in the forest where the story began and, as the animals gather around him, including the grandson of the frog that he met years earlier, he falls asleep on the ground.

The story as metaphor might suggest a great creative mind at the end of its journey, but that metaphor would be wrong. Janacek wrote two great operas after this one, he Makropolous Affair” and “From the House of the Dead” and his Glagolithic Mass.

“The Cunning Little Vixen” marks the beginning of LBO’s 2009 season, which continues with a production of Vivaldi’s “Motezuma” in March and April and a dual production of Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis” and Carl Orff’s “The Clever One” in May.

This article appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram and Torrance Daily Breeze Friday, January 16 2009

Janacek Celebrated at Special LB Opera program

The Lion in Love

What: Film “In Search of Janacek,” play “Passion and Obsession”
starring Michael York and Sonja Berggren, Lyris String Quartet
playing Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2, refreshments
Where: Art Theatre of Long Beach, 2025 E. 4th St., Long Beach
When: Sunday from 3-6 p.m.
Tickets: $30, $25 for subscribers
Information: 562432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

By John Farrell

Special to the Press-Telegram

Long Beach Opera opens its 2009 season next weekend, with the Southern California premier of Leos Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen.”

To celebrate  that production, LBO will take over the newly restored Art Theatre in Long Beach for a three-hour celebration of Janacek’s life and work, including n award-winning film about the composer, a play about the composer’s romantic life based on his private letters, and a performance of one of  the composer’s string quartets.

The multi-media performance begins at 3 p.m. and continues for three hours. Tickets are $30, $25 for LBO subscribers.

Petr (CQ) Kanka’s television film “In Search of Janacek” was released commercially in 2004 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. In it Kanka explores the composer life, his difficult childhood and his development of his own musical language, accomplished with hard work and an education he largely gave himself. The film is in Czech with English subtitles.

Michael York, who appeared in two works presented by LBO last season, Richard Strauss’ setting of the poem “Enoch Arden” and HK (cq) Gruber’s  “Frankenstein!!” (cq)

will then star as Janacek in a presentation of “The Glow of Your Kisses,” a play by Cecilia Fannon, produced by Panndora Productions. Fannon’s play is based on the composer’s life and letters, and explores the decade long love triangle between the composer, his mistress Kamila Stosslova, his wife Zdenka, with the story told through the words of Janacek’s long-time maid Mara.

Sonja Berggren will star as the maid Mara, Zdenka will be portrayed by Edita Brychta and Hellena Taylor will play Kamila.  Fannon, who is an adjunct professor of Theatre t Long Brach City College, will direct the performance.

Kamila Stosslova was Janacek’s muse, and his String Quartet No. 2 was inspired by her and their long relationship, preserved in more than 700 letters they exchanged. Janacek called it “Intimate Letters,” and a performance of the quartet by the Lyris String Quartet, Alyssa Park, Shalini Vijayan, Luke Mauer and Timothy Loo, will end the evening.

“The Cunning Little Vixen” opens next Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Center Theater in the Long Beach performing Arts Center for the first of two performances. That performance begins at 8 p.m. A second performance is set for Sunday, January 25 at 4 p.m. The production stars soprano Ani Maldjian who recently reprised her performance as “Anne Frank” for the company, as the Vixen. The production will be sung in English with English supertitles.

On March 28 and April 5 Long Beach Opera will present the United States premier of Antonio Vivaldi’s opera “Motezuma,” one of the first full-length operas written on American themes. Mitisek will conduct both performances, the first at the

Center Theater in Long Beach, the second at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica.

Finally, in keeping with LBO’s penchant for performances in unusual venues, the company will perform Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis and Carl Orff’s “The Clever One” inside the hull of R.M.S. Queen Mary. Those performances, which are rapidly selling out, are set for Friday May 8 and Sunday, May 17.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. This story appeared in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on January 9, 2009

     

Celetial Opera Accepts the Challenge of Handel

Giulio Cesare in Egitto

What: Opera by Handel, presented by Celestial OperaWhere:
The Women’s Club of South Pasadena, 1424 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena
When: Saturday, November 15 & 22 at 7:30 p.m. & Sunday,
November 16 & 23 at 3:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25, $15 children, students and seniors
Information: (626) 628-3305, www.celestialoperacompany.org

By John Farrell

When “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” premiered in London in 1724, Ancient Egypt was a world as unknown as the far side of the moon.

What Egypt looked like, what Egyptians wore and the gods they worshipped were forgotten, undiscovered by archaeologists, covered by the shifting sands of the desert.

No matter. Handel knew that human emotions hadn’t changed all that much in 1800 years, and he wrote what has been called his greatest opera around the well-known story of conquering Julius Caesar and the beautiful Cleopatra.

“Giulio Cesare” was hugely popular in Handel’s lifetime, a work written in Italian for English audiences in the style know later as “opera seria,” serious opera written about the lives of heroes and kings with vocal music of the most challenging kind.

Opera seria and the operatic music of Handel fell out of fashion before the end of the 18th century and “Giulio Cesare was forgotten an unperformed for nearly 200 years.  It was revived in 1922 and has since become a regular, if only occasionally performed, part of the opera repertory. It is big, difficult, wonderful, a challenge for even the biggest opera.

It is the opera Celestial Opera, South Pasadena’s game small-scale opera company, is performing to open its eleventh season. “Giulio Cesare in Egitto” open at 8 p.m. at the South Pasadena Women’s Club Saturday night and continues there Sunday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. and in performances next weekend.

“We haven’t done a Baroque opera before and it is a challenge for us,” said Michelle McWilliams, artistic director and producer of Celestial Opera in a lunchtime phone conversation. “It was already in our minds that we wanted to do something different for our season this year. We wanted to do something this big year. “Giulio Cesare” is big, indeed, and in the spring the company is planning a production of Gounod’s “Faust,” another big opera.

For “Giulio Cesare” Celestial Opera is making an important addition to its musical forces. The production of the opera will introduce the Celestial Opera Company Chamber Orchestra, and 8-piece group that is the first big musical group the company has used. “We are finally able to ad an 8-piece orchestra to our performances,” McWilliams said. “It will feature a string quintet plus oboe, harp and piano.”

The version of “Giulio Cesare” that Celestial Opera will produce will be sung in the original Italian, but the recitatives in Italian will instead be spoken in English translation.

“We have replaced the recitatives with English dialogue. All of the dramatic action in the opera is in the dialogue, and we think this will help our audiences follow the opera’s action.”

On of the standards of 18th century opera was the use of male castratos in principle roles.  Castratos, males who were castrated in boyhood to retain their high tenors, are no longer available, and opera companies must either use counter-tenors, men with high voices, or rework the music for lower voices. “We are using mezzo sopranos in those roles,” McWilliams said. “It is a treat for them because the music is so spectacular and there are so many dramatic roles available in this opera.”

“Giulio Cesare” tells the story of Caesar in Egypt after his military victory over Pompey. Caesar wants to make peace with the defeated leader but Pompey is murdered by Tolomeo to please Caesar. Cleopatra and Tolomeo both want the chance to rule Egypt. Cleopatra falls in love with Caesar and after Tolomeo is killed and Caesar is victorious he makes Cleopatra queen. The chances for arias of high emotion, of love and hate and ambition and revenge, gave Handel a chance to write some of his most powerful music.

“This opera is a great challenge,” McWilliams said. “The drama is so compelling, the drama is amazing.”

“Giulio Cesare” is being directed by Sara Widzner, and Brian Farrell will conduct the performance. Costumes have been created by designer Lisa Soto.

At 6:30 p.m. before each Saturday performance there will be a free pre-concert lecture.

This story appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, the Whittier Daily News and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune on Friday, November 14. More of John Farrell’s reviews can be found at http://byjohnfarrell.typepad.com/

Ring Festival Los Angeles

What: 45-day arts festival celebrating the music and work of composer
Richard Wagner, held in conjunction with Los Angeles Opera’s
presentation of Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
Where: Various venues around the Los Angeles area including theaters,
museums, restaurants and other sites. Final details will be announced
in January, 2010
When:  April 15- June 30 2010
Tickets: Details will be announced.
Phone: (213) 972-8001

By John Farrell

Los Angeles Opera will join forces with more than fifty local arts and cultural organizations for a two and one-half month long festival to celebrate the company’s presentation of Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle of four operas in summer 2010.

“Ring Festival LA” will run from April 15-June 30 2010, simultaneously with the LA Opera presentation of three full cycles of Wagner’s operatic tetralogy “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” the first complete production of the operas ever in Los Angeles.

At a press conference Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center, home of LA Opera, the company’s General Director Placido Domingo and LAO Chairman and CEO Marc I. Stern announced details of the festival, which Domingo said he is certain will be “the biggest festival in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival.”

The presentation of Wagner’s four “Ring” operas, “Das Rheingold,” Die Walkure,” “Siegfried” and “Gotterdammerung,” has long been a goal of Domingo and LA Opera, a goal that has been postponed several times because of funding an production difficulties. The four operas are generally considered the opera world’s greatest work and also its greatest challenge. They require a larger than usual orchestra, a cast of operatic specialists who can handle the work’s enormous vocal and acting demands, and productions of similar size. The four operas stretch over more than 14 hours of music, and are traditionally performed over a period of seven days. Both Domingo and Stern consider the presentation of the operas to be a mark of Los Angeles’ artistic maturity.  “… this massive undertaking is L.A. Opera’s coming-of-age celebration,” Domingo said in prepared remarks he read at the news conference.

Three cycles of the “Ring” are scheduled, beginning May 29, 2010 and continuing with performances through Sunday, June 26. The productions, directed and designed by Achim Freyer will be conducted by James Conlon and will star bass Vitalij Kowaljow as Wotan, soprano Linda Watson as Brunnhilde, bass Eric Halfverson as Hagen, soprano Martina Serafin as Sieglinde and Domingo as Siegmunde. It is possible, if funding becomes available, that one “Ring” cycle may be made available as a live simulcast.

The festival concept was created from a suggestion of Domingo’s at a roundtable discussion arranged by the Los Angeles Times to find way to celebrate Los Angeles’ unique cultural signature.” From that discussion the Ring Festival Los Angeles has grown to include organizations as diverse as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, the Griffith Observatory, the Sundance Institute and the American Jewish University. Programs include lectures, film screenings, art exhibits, library exhibitions and school programs. The entire program will be announced in January of 2010.

Amongst the highlights of the festival programs already announced are a two-day seminar at Mount St. Mary’s College titled “Two Rings: Wagner and Tolkien,” comparing the literary parallels in the two literary masterpieces and  at the American Jewish University a seminar on “Richard Wagner and the Jews: The Use of Wagner by the Nazis.

There are several film screenings planned during the festival.  Director Tony Palmer will host a screening and discussion of his film “Wagner,” starring Richard Burton,” at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The Sundance Institute will present “Sing Faster: The Stagehand’s Ring,” an award-winning documentary that goes backstage at the San Francisco Opera’s “Ring” cycle.  The Goethe-Institut (cq) Los Angeles will present “Wagner und die Frauen,” a film directed by Andreas Morell.

Many other events will be scheduled as plans for the festival are developed over the next year.  More of John Farrell’s reviews and features can be found at http://byjohnfarrell.typepad.com/