The Future of the Orchestra

In September 2013 I shared an article on Facebook from the New Republic called “America’s Orchestras are in Crisis“. Published in the August 25, 2013 edition, Philip Kennicott’s article explores not only the financial crisis affecting orchestras around the country but the struggles of these institutions to define their mission for the 21st century. I’ve attended many performances in our local Symphony Hall recently and have been struck how, 18 months later, the strategies discussed in Kennicott’s article have been so aggressively pursued. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a matter of opinion but the direction taken, at least for our local symphony, could not be more clear.

To paraphrase the article, orchestras are confronting the new reality that audiences buy tickets for individual performances rather than in the traditional ‘season subscription’ model. Aside from increasing promotional cost, this means, to a degree, each event has to stand on its own to attract an audience. This leads the organization to confront the issue of how to balance their responsibility as leaders in their artistic communities bringing audiences to concert hall for traditional classic fare vs. putting programs in the hall that will fill the seats. Kennicott quotes The New York Times’ Edward Rothstein; “Cynically led by its managerial class, the orchestra is explicitly urged to lean toward pop and make courting audiences its primary activity.”

The opposing view is represented by a quote from Richard Dare, then the CEO and managing director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, who compares the tradition philosophy of classical music venues to “A musical North Korea.” ” Quickly now: Rise to your feet and applaud. The Dear Leader is coming on stage to conduct. He will guide us, ever so worshipfully through the necrocracy of composers we are obliged to forever adore.”

Our local symphony seems more closely aligned with the latter point of view. They stage not only the traditional “classics” and “pops” series but a buffet of concerts and special events designed to fill the seats. It may be anecdotal but when I compare attendance to the classical concerts to which I subscribe and the Pops and special events for which I often usher, the strategy must have a positive impact on the ‘bottom line’. There are usually large numbers of empty seats for the classics concerts while the special events are frequently sold at or near capacity. And for many of the attendees, this event is their first visit to the symphony. Say what you will about ‘cultural decline’ or ‘dumbing down the arts’ but there is much to be said for selling enough tickets to meet payroll, not to mention, giving audiences what they seem to want.
Box Office Blockbusters
All Night Long – The Music of the 1980’s
replay: A Video Game Symphony of Heroes
Broadway Romance
Gershwin
Sound of Speed (an evening of music inspired by auto racing).

There were popular guest vocalists:

The Texas Tenors
Diana Krall
Cheyenne Jackson
Colm Wilkinson

And the group I like to call “Symphony as Tribute Band”;

Evenings of the music of:

Louis Armstrong
Queen
Led Zeppelin
Neil Diamond

The 2015-2016 season seems to continue the trend. The classics series is an extremely conservative offering of what Harper’s Other Dad refers to as “Old War Horses”. These are pieces that classical music aficionados love and have seen a dozen times before. I imagine the hope is a list of recognizable favorites will retain, if not attract, subscribers.

For the ‘butts in the seats’ concerts there are some repeats and some new events targeted toward audiences that might otherwise not be drawn to Symphony Hall.

The Music of John Williams
Super Heroes
Pixar in Concert
Schoolhouse Rock!
Cirque de la Symphonie
A Night at the Oscars
“Pitch Perfect: a Celebration of Sports and Music”
The Gershwin Experience
Star Wars: The Music

The guest vocalists will include:

Jason Alexander
Kristin Chenoweth
Human Nature (“Bigger than the Beatles in Australia”)

The ‘Symphony as Tribute Band’ offering includes the music of;
Abba
Billy Joel
Whitney Houston
Michael  Jackson
Beatlemania
Sinatra Sings Sinatra

Returning to the Kennicott article, there is a quote that strikes me each time I read it. “Americans tend to draw the line between connoisseurship and fatuousness at a level just slightly higher than their own degree of appreciation.” In context that might be viewed as a negative but I actually find it a little optimistic. It means the sophistication of our tastes is aspirational. We want to be lead to a level of cultural appreciation slightly above where we are. Whether the audience will actually follow the lead of any arts organization that seeks to take them there, however, is to be determined.

Equivolcation

“Equivocation is based on an historical event. It is, in fact, the founding event of modern England. The 5th of November is celebrated with national fireworks and is roughly the equivalent to America’s 4th of July.

The story has been told for over 400 years and the government’s version of the story has become a national myth. The only thing we know with certainty about the event itself is that it could not possibly have occurred in the way the government claimed.

What follows offers a plausible alternative……………..Bill Cain

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The event to which playwright Bill Cain refers in describing his 2009 play Equivocation is “The Gunpowder Plot”; the 1605 plot by Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I and his family, along with the entire House of Lords. The plot was unsuccessful.

The title is a reference to the A Treatise of Equivocation written in 1595 by Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit who was executed for his knowledge of the plot. Arizona’s Southwest Shakespeare Company has mounted a terrific production of Equivocation and seeing it is a wonderful night in the theater.

Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and a close advisor to King James I, commissions William Shakespeare (called Shagspeare in the play), somewhat against the playwright’s will, to write a play to reveal the truth about the recent Gunpowder Plot. ‘Truth’, in this case, is to be based on the account of events written by the King, himself. As Shagspeare, along with his acting company, struggles to turn the highly skewed summary of a failed assassination attempt into a drama for the stage, he discovers an alternative version of the facts that he feels may be more truthful. How can he tell his truth when it is not the same as the King’s? The finished play turns out to be something other than what was expected.

Cain’s play is a comedy, and a funny one. The language is contemporary. The costumes are a mash-up of contemporary and Jacobean clothing. The only character who affects an accent is King James whose Scottish brogue effectively sets him apart as a foreigner. The set is simple and non-specific as to period. The production employs a lot of old-school stagecraft. The performances are top-notch in every role. These elements combine to create a play that is both interesting and entirely accessible.

As a play, Equivocation is nothing if not ambitious. It is part backstage comedy, part historical drama, and part exploration of the character’s existential crisis. It is an indictment of the abuse of power by the State, an exploration of man’s belief in the promise of the afterlife and cost of what we may miss in this life by focusing so single-mindedly on the next. It looks at the troubled relationship of a father and daughter and the dangers of propaganda and State control of the arts.

At its core the play is about the meaning of truth. Is it, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder and, therefore, subjective? Is it merely the absence of falsehood? Garnet’s treatise is a how-to manual on equivocation; the art of saying something that isn’t a falsehood but creates a false understanding in the mind of the listener; of answering the question not asked rather than the one that was in an effort to serve a greater good.

My one criticism of this play is that it seems to be about so many things that it can’t do them justice. At times it seems to be more superficial than the subject matter deserves. It says a little about a lot of different things; but it says it all very well.

Cain wrote Equivocation for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival where it was performed in 2009. It was produced in both San Francisco and by the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City in 2010. It was produced at The Victory Garden Theatre in Chicago in 2012 and now in Phoenix in 2014. What intrigues me about that chronology is that the play has not been published yet. Photocopied manuscripts are available from Dramatist’s Play Service.

задумчивый и нудно*

March 1st, 2014 was ‘Culture Vulture Saturday’ in Harper’s Valley. It happens a couple of times each season; a day with two operas. In the morning we attended the Met’s “Live in HD” simulcast of Borodin’s Prince Igor. In the evening we attended Arizona Opera’s production of La Traviata. Never has the Arizona Opera looked so good in comparison with The Met.

Polovtsian Poppy Field

Prince Igor is an opera with an interesting history. Borodin worked on it, his only opera, for 18 years; from 1869 until his death in 1887. It was incomplete at the time of his death. He’d composed some powerful and beautiful music and a series of scenes but the work was not cohesively formed into an opera. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov took it upon themselves to complete the work and it premiered in 1890. A popular opera in Russia, it is performed less often in the West. The current production is The Met’s first staging of Prince Igor since 1917.

The new Met production is a departure from earlier iterations of Prince Igor. In this case, the director and conductor have reworked the opera significantly. They have re-ordered scenes based on notes left by the composer, eliminated some of the music added after Borodin’s death, and created a completely new ending using music Borodin composed for another work. Their intention was to refocus the story away from its historical epic tone and onto a more fully developed title character. All of that sounds really interesting. So why was I sitting in the theater thinking; ‘this is the worst thing I have ever seen on the Met stage’?

Part of the challenge, for me, is the opera itself. In true Russian fashion, Prince Igor is dark and brooding and moves at a pace that, at times, seems glacial. The revised score adds to my discomfort with the pace because; despite it being the title role, Igor doesn’t sing much. He sings in the Prologue though is silent for much of it. He appears in the new Act I though sings little. He does not appear in Act II at all. He re-enters about half way through the final Act though spends much of it brooding in silence. Igor is a brooder. The director’s effort to refocus the drama on the inner turmoil of Igor without more opportunity for him to sing leaves him wandering around the stage, flailing his arms, and. literally, spinning in circles, silently emoting his inner angst. A little of that goes a long way and this opera, with intermissions, is more than four hours long.

Igor was a 12th century Russian prince and Borodin set his opera in the year 1158 CE. This production updates it closer to the time of its premier; late 19th or early 20th century. Part of the audience’s obligation is to suspend disbelief so I normally try to give a production the benefit of any doubt regarding time & place changes. In this case, however it seemed more than usually troubling. Early in the Prologue a solar eclipse portends bad things to come and everyone is sore afraid of this evil omen. Hysteria over an eclipse makes perfect sense in 1150 CE; in 1900, perhaps not so much. Certainly it would not establish a basis for whatever existential crisis Igor is nursing since he started wandering around the stage looking vexed well before the lights dimmed.

Putivl in Ruins

The Prologue and Acts II and III are set in the town of Putivl. The hall has a Soviet-era feel about it but it certainly could have been pre-revolutionary. The costumes clearly establish the time as prior to World War I.

It sounds minor and I am not sure whether my issue is with the set decoration, the costume design or the lighting but, at least on the HD screen, the Boyars’ (noblemen) uniforms were the same color as the walls. At times, in the Prologue their bodies blended into the wall and their heads appeared to bounce around freely, about five feet above the floor. I can envision operas where that might be a desirable effect but, in this case, it was distracting.

The production used pre-recorded, Sergei Eisenstein-style, silent images, before the Prologue, in the transition from the Prologue to Act I, and during Act I. I could not tell how they were presented in the opera house but on the HD screen they were very dramatic. I liked them.  They were especially effective in conveying the battle and it’s aftermath. This prompts me to wonder, with the visual technique already established as a part of the production’s language, why they chose not to use such images again to show the battle that destroys Putivl at the end of Act II. Perhaps the images were supposed to exist only in Igor’s mind and were not used because he did not witness the battle of Putivl? This invites the question why black & white images, more akin to the muted color palate of Act III than to the dream sequences in Act I were used. It also prompts me to wonder why so many of the images are close-ups of Igor’s face. This is typically not an image one remembers. These facial images did afford the director opportunity to make the first visual connections between Igor and Christ, however. It is an allusion that will be repeated throughout the production.

In the new production, all of Act I is a dream sequence set in a Polovtsian poppy field. In the older structure this scene was part of Act II. I thought the pre-recorded material was slightly less effective here because it seemed out of synch with the live action. Also, some of the events he envisions in the poppy field are clearly dreams because the other performers are not aware of Igor. At other times, he interacts with the characters in the field. I presume the interactions with his wife (still in Putivl) are memories or fantasies but the images of his son who was with him in the battle and the Polovtsians cannot be memories. He interacts with the characters in the field physically at times. The sequence would have been clearer had there been some visual, or at least physical separation between the dreamer and the dreams. The Polovtsian ballet sequence at the end is wonderful but the whole Act is too long and too muddled.

Acts II and III are more traditionally staged, and a bit of a relief. The realistic staging, darker lighting and muted color palate are in marked contrast aesthetically from the Act I dream sequence but very much, ‘of a piece’ with the Prologue. They reinforces the dream-like quality of the previous Act.

Act III shows the grim aftermath of Putivl’s destruction. Igor appears in the middle of the Act. There is a brief memory sequence, effectively delimited by a change in lighting and more Igor-as-Christ imagery. The former structure of the opera concluded with the people joyously celebrating the return of their Prince. In the new production, additional music has been added of a much more somber tone and Igor leads his people, by example, in beginning to rebuild. This offers one final opportunity to position Igor as a Christ-figure, in case anyone in the audience missed the previous allusions due to their sledgehammer-like subtlety.

I almost left the opera at the end of Act I. I disliked it that much. I’m glad I decided to stay. There is a very dramatic scene in Act II where it appears there may be a gang rape which is surprisingly strong. And I loved the final minutes where the new ending has been added. That means I enjoyed about 30 minutes of the 4.5 hours I invested in Prince Igor.

Aside from those positives, I found it muddled and mind-numbingly slow. There was insufficient groundwork laid for why Igor’s soul is so tortured and trying to explore those depths using only the singer’s facial and body movements without exposition or soliloquy was ineffective. Much of the acting felt like over-the-top histrionics. This may have played well in the back rows of the opera house but on the HD screen it looked like ‘Snidley Whiplash learns Russian’. It is quite possible that this production is the best way to present this opera. I can’t envision any circumstance where I might test that theory however.

*brooding and tedious

Der Fliegende Hollander

Arizona Opera queued up the second production of its 2013-2014 season last weekend with Wagner’s Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman). An unusual production, it was well received by the audience despite offering a good many reasons to be dissatisfied.

First performed in 1843, Der Fliegende Hollander is the earliest of Wagner’s operas still included in the standard repertoire. By Wagnerian standards it is short; running about 135 minutes in performance. Written in three acts, Wagner planned for the opera to be staged without intermission. The Phoenix production included one intermission at the end of Act I.

The story is stereotypically operatic. The Dutchman and his crew are cursed to sail their ghostly ship perpetually. Once every seven years he is allowed to come ashore in search of a loving and faithful wife. Should he find one, the curse would be broken.

Richard Wagner
1813-1883

The cast, led by Mark Delavan in the title role, did a wonderful job under what appeared to be unusual working conditions. A local review described the production as ‘semi-staged’. It was not a concert performance. The performers were costumed. Images were projected onto screens fashioned to look like sails as an alternative to traditional sets. There was even a small diagonal strip of performance space built out over the orchestra pit on which the performers could move around and interact. This is where the production’s choices started to get a little strange daring.

The reason they were able to build out over the pit is because the orchestra was on stage…covering most of the stage. With the chorus who sing the roles of sailors and towns women tucked into opposite upstage corners, they were forced to sing with or to each other over heads of the musicians.

Projected images where used as an alternative to sets but they were hard to see because the stage had to be lit sufficiently for the musicians to read the score. Also, the images seemed to change almost randomly at times without regard to the music or libretto. There was an image of a framed portrait of the Dutchman that appeared frequently. (Yes, a picture of a picture rather than , you know….a picture.) At times the performers would turn back to gaze evocatively at it. As staged, however, this meant the singers were facing directly away from the audience. It looked like they were looking at the conductor, which made sense since he was standing on stage directly behind them if they faced forward.

Arizona Opera did a production last season with mostly projected sets. Technically interesting, the disadvantage was the performers were fairly static, standing down stage in a single line and singing. In that production, however, at least the musicians were in the pit so, while the performers had limited space to move, at least the projected images had scale. In this case, we had the worst of both, no room to move and images of more limited impact because all the stage space was covered by the orchestra.

In the end, (Spoiler Alert!) there was no sea into which Senta, our heroine, could hurl herself. The projected portrait of the Dutchman reappeared and Senta’s image appeared beside him. Visualize Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” without the pitchfork.

Tosca – November 2013

The jet-set lifestyle of Harper’s Other Dad took him to Valley Forge, PA at the time of the MET’s ‘Live In HD’ simulcast of Tosca so we attended Wednesday night’s encore broadcast instead.

Puccini
1858-1924

Premiering in 1900, Puccini’s Tosca is a one of the world’s most often-produced operas. In the current season, the opera will have its 1000th performance at the MET. The music is beautiful. The story is a classic tragedy where the villainous Chief of Police, Scarpia, tears the passionate lovers, Tosca & Cavaradossi, asunder and everyone dies before the final curtain. That’s entertainment!

I was disappointed in this production but my disappointment rests more with MET management than with any of this year’s performances. A little history may help for context.

Zeffirelli Production
1999

For a quarter century prior to 2009, the MET’s Tosca was a production designed by Franco Zeffirelli. It premiered in 1985. In many art forms 25 years would be a whole generation of viewers. For opera in general, and the MET in particular, it more likely means the Zeffirelli production was all audiences had seen since they entered middle age. Now in their dotage maturity, some of the MET’s audiences are more than slightly resistant to change.

For the 2009-2010 season director Luc Bondy designed a new production.

Bondy Production
2009

Lacking the lavish feel of the familiar Zeffirelli production, the production also contained elements that were either erotically charged or gratuitously vulgar depending on whether you liked or disliked them. At the opening night gala performance the singers received a standing ovation while the director and design team were greeted with boos and cat calls. Even Zeffirelli weighed in calling the production “idiotic” and Bondy “third rate”.

The 2013 production is still credited to Bondy but it appears the MET tried to address some of the concerns of those who disliked the production in 2009. The sets seem less minimalistic but rather than striking a more lavish note to appease the MET’s dowagers, they just seem ugly. The carnal aspects in Act II seems less gratuitous but the also more awkward. There was much criticism of the 2009 staging because one of the prostitutes on stage appears to have her face between Scarpia’s legs. With the new blocking, her face remains well above the belt but, the result is Scarpia is singing into her ear. For the HD audiences, there is a period of time where all we saw was the hooker’s wig and Scarpia’s eyebrows.

Most glaring of the bandages applied to the production was the climax. (Spoiler Alert!) Tosca famously ends with the heroine plummeting to her death after leaping from a tower. Criticism was heaped upon the 2009 production because they used a dummy and a quick blackout to simulate Tosca’s tragic leap into immortality. In this iteration the dummy has been replaced by a human stunt double. The blackout is slowed just long enough to assure all concerned that the person about to jump is, in fact, a human being. Of course, in that instant it is also obvious that it is not the soprano who has been singing the role for the preceding 3 acts.

No arts organization can afford to alienate its subscriber base, especially in these economic times, so I can appreciate the MET’s dilemma. Tosca is a staple of the repertoire and the subscribers will always turn out to see it. The MET can get away with doing something edgy or more avant-garde with operas like The Nose or Satyagraha. The old guard may opt to give them a miss. Even if the subscribers choose to attend, the productions won’t have to overcome expectations ingrained for decades. The cost of a completely new production so soon after the 2009 effort would be prohibitive but one wonders why the MET didn’t simply raise the white flag, dust off the Zeffirelli sets and give a new production a go in five years. I’m afraid they chose instead to alter a controversial production making it worse for those that enjoyed it in the first place without doing much to address the concerns of those that did not.

The Nose

Yesterday morning I attended the Met’s ‘Live in HD’ simulcast of The Nose. It was fascinating.

The plot, based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol, is absurd in every meaning for that term. Kovalev, a minor bureaucrat awakens one morning to find that his nose is missing. It has left his face. There is no evidence of wound or physical trauma; just a smooth flat space where his nose had been the night before. He is devastated by his disfigurement and the effect he fears it will have on his life. For it’s part, the nose starts its independent life by being baked into a loaf of bread and served to the barber who may or may not have accidentally removed it while giving Kovalev a shave. The barber attempts to throw the wayward nose into the river but he fails and the nose goes off to explore the world on it’s own, at one point pretending to be a government official. Soon, the nose has become more successful in society than its former owner and has no interest in returning to its life on Kovalev’s face. Hijinks ensue. The castration symbolism is pretty heavy handed but, more interestingly, the story is blatantly critical of social authority.

The history of The Nose is almost as interesting as the work itself. Gogol’s short story of the same name was written about 1835 during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I. Nicholas I was a hardline reactionary and one of the most oppressive the Romanov rulers. Social critique was not in style and the story was controversial.

Almost a century later, at age 22, Dimitri Shostakovich creates his first opera based on Gogol’s short story. It is now 1928. The Romanov’s were ousted a decade earlier. Lenin had died in 1924 and Stalin was consolidating power and creating a regime that would become more oppressive than Nicholas I would have imagined possible. Shostakovich creates an opera that is also critical of the social system. Throughout his lifetime Shostakovich would fall in and out of favor with the Stalin-era Soviet power structure.

It is hard to identify what influences had the greatest impact on the 1928 opera’s style. The music is modern and atonal. Long passages are percussion only. While Gogol’s story predated the Absurdist movement in theater and fiction, Shostakovich would have had the opportunity to know of it by the time he created the opera. Jarry’s Ubu plays had been written a quarter century earlier.  Kafka’s  The Metamorphosis was published in 1915 and Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search of an Author premiered in 1921.

The Met’s new production is created by South African artist William Kentridge. It is visually stunning as the action moves back and forth seamlessly from live action to abstract animation. Many of the design elements were taken from newspapers and publications the artist located in Russia and has described as including “Stalinist kitsch”. I think the design is a perfect match to the music and libretto. I also think it is well suited to the Live in HD simulcast format. Much of the action on stage exists in two dimensions and so is ideally suited to the movie screen. The opera is structured in three acts but, with a running time of less than two hours, is intended to be performed without intermission.

It is short by opera standards but still tests the audience’s focus. There are few ‘numbers’ that invite the audience to stop the action with applause. Shostakovich was reported to be irate that an earlier performance was done in a concert setting feeling the material could not be appreciated without action.

The Nose is not for everyone. About 10% of the audience in the movie theater left by the middle of Act III. I am curious to know how it will be received by Lincoln Center audiences. One the one hand, Mr. Kentridge’s work is popular in New York museum circles. At the same time, the Met’s subscribers are well known to express their displeasure with anything that falls outside their expectations for the way things have been done in the past. We’ll see. I admit I am not anxious to see The Nose again soon. But I am very glad I saw this production of it.

Call Me Pearl (’cause I’m so cultured)

Andrew von Oeyen

The first of the season’s haute culture weekends has arrived in Harper’s Valley. Last night the Phoenix Symphony performed an interesting program. The first half was all Beethoven starting with the overture from Egmont; a Goethe play for which Beethoven wrote an overture and incidental music, and finishing with Piano Concerto #4. The latter was made more interesting by presence of Andrew von Oeyen at the piano. Aside from being quite a gifted pianist he is as cute as a bug’s ear.

The second half was more diverse; Richard Stauss’ Don Juan followed by Debussy’s La mer.  I was not familiar with the Strauss piece and didn’t love it but La mer is familiar ground and they covered it well.

The guest conductor for the evening was Philip Mann. Mr. Mann is dynamic to watch and, for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, reminds me of Harpo Marx; though he speaks more eloquently.

This morning kicks off the Metropolitan Opera’s Live In HD simulcast season with Tchaikovsky’s 1879 opera, Eugene Onegin. Based on a story by Pushkin, the opera tells the story of the ill-fated love between the title character and the lovely Tatanya. She’s a comely lass who’s read too many romantic novels. He’s an aloof country gentleman who doesn’t want her until he can’t have her. In un-operatic fashion, both principals are still alive when the curtain comes down. In true Russian fashion, however, their ever-after is not a happy one.

This opera marks the first of our visits to the new venue with assigned seats. The drive to the theater was 25 minutes instead of 3 but, because of the assigned seats, we are able to leave 45 minutes later.

Culture Vultures?

In a conversation yesterday, a person with whom I was chatting described Harper’s Other Dad and I as “culture vultures”. I’m familiar with the term as a description of people who are higher-than-average-volume consumers of the Arts. I’d never heard it applied to me before and it is certainly not a term that I would use to describe myself. I don’t think I like it….”vulture”. It sounds like I’m circling above a museum or concert hall waiting for artistic road kill. I don’t think that’s true. It also sounds like I am indiscriminate in my tastes. That’s not true either. Perhaps I am over-thinking this, however. We are, indeed, relatively high volume consumers. I spend a lot of time with my ‘butt in the seat’ at one performance or another.

We try to support local arts organizations when we can so we subscribe to the local opera, symphony and ballet companies.

We subscribe to the Classical series at Phoenix Symphony which includes 12 concerts between September and May. The season began Friday night with Beethoven’s Symphony #9, which I can never hear without thinking of A Clockwork Orange.

Ballet Arizona’s season includes five productions. They  is trying something new this season. Celebrating the opening of their new home, they have added a series called Studio Spotlight where subscribers visit their studio space for a preview of four of the five productions.

I know very little about dance. I enjoy the productions. The music is great. The performances are visually beautiful and the athleticism is impressive but my appreciation is pretty superficial. I look forward to learning more during the Spotlights so I can become a more discerning audience member.

Arizona Opera does five productions during their season. All are operas I have seen before but it can be nice to see new productions of familiar material. My one fear is we are seeing La Boheme done by AZ opera and the Met so it is likely the AZ production will suffer my comparison.

Like Ballet AZ, the local Opera is celebrating a new home and one of their productions, Don Pasquale, will be performed in their new studio space. It will only be the second time I have seen an opera staged in a smaller venue. I am looking forward to it.

I addition to the Arizona Opera productions, I am also looking forward to the new season of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD simulcasts. We’ll be able to see nine productions in their 2013-2014 season. I am most excited to see Shostakovich’s The Nose next month.

Of course the season isn’t all about culture with a capital ‘C’. I enjoy a local theater company called Nearly Naked Theatre. They are doing five shows this season. I blogged about the first of them last month when we saw A Devil Inside.

So, adding up the subscriptions, season tickets, and tickets we’ve already purchased it totals about 40 evenings of entertainment between now and Memorial Day. That sounds like a lot. Especially when one considers there will be additions.

When we first moved to the Southwest, a friend warned us not to get our hopes up regarding the Arts. Phoenix is a larger city than the area from whence we came and, at the time, it was booming economically but, as he put it; “It’s a desert in more ways than one.” After eight years here I have come to disagree. The quality may not match the standards set in the world’s cultural capitals but the quality is acceptable or better and I am just now coming to realize the variety on offer is actually quite impressive.

This afternoon we are joining some friends for a matinee of a musical called Ruthless. I am not familiar with this show. We purchased tickets mainly to join our friends for a nice ‘brunch & matinee’ Sunday but I checked out some clips from other productions I found on Youtube and it looks interesting. I am sure I will blog about it shortly.

One of the local ‘gay rags’ published a ‘preview article last month of all the entertainment coming in the 2013 – 14 season in the Valley from sources great and small. Even excluding the events in which I have not even a passing interest and those I have seen before (which, in some cases, still won’t stop me seeing them) the volume and diversity of the offering is staggering.

Of the national tours with Phoenix stops I would love to see Once and Peter and the Starcatcher. Local companies are doing productions of Katori Hall’s The Moutaintop; David Ives’ Venus in Furs, and Hamlisch & Ashman’s musical Smile.

There are always trade offs to be made and priorities to be established. I am not likely to make time, nor budget, for Jersey Boys, Bring It On, nor I Love Lucy: Live on Stage but will most certainly drive 2 hours to Tucson to see a production of Joe Orton’s Loot. And if we can plan a weekend ‘up the hill’ to Flagstaff around the performance schedule of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind I will see what I can juggle. I will happily skip The Texas Tenors and One Night of Queen, especially if it makes room in the calendar to see Jon Robin Baitz’  Other Desert Cities or Samuel Hunter’s The Whale. 

So many choices – so little time…. and money.

A Devil Inside

Harper’s Valley’s Nearly Naked Theatre kicked off its 2013-2014 season last night with David Lindsay-Abaire’s 1997 play; A Devil Inside.

There are a few things to keep in mind when seeing this play. First, it has nothing to do with “The Devil Inside” from the horror genre. If you’re looking for an exorcism you’ll need to keep looking. Secondly, if you’re only familiar with David Lindsay-Abaire from his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play; Rabbit Hole, you are in for a surprise. This play is a comedy; a dark one, to be sure, (oh my yes, “dark” doesn’t begin to cover it.) but very definitely a comedy.

The plot is almost impossible to summarize. Gene’s mother celebrates her son’s 21st birthday by revealing that his father, dead for 14 years, did not die of heart failure as Gene had been told all his life. The truth is more interesting if harder to believe. Gene’s 420-pound father had set out from New York City walking to lose weight. When he reached the Poconos he was stabbed in the back and his feet were cut off. Now that Gene is an adult, his mother wants him to leave the family’s Lower East Side laundromat and avenge his father’s death.

David Lindsay-Abaire

Gene is smitten with Caitlin, a fellow student in his Russian Literature class. Caitlin is in love with, and stalking, their professor; Carl, with dreams of becoming the post-modern Anna Karenina. Carl is plotting to murder an appliance repairman; Brad, in part because Brad is boring and in part because Carl is obsessed with Dostoyevsky. Brad is mourning an unrequited love of his youth but also quite taken with the enigmatic Lily; an artist with lots of secrets and a fascination with feet. All their stories are bizarrely interwoven. Hijinks, hilarity and tragedy ensue; often simultaneously.

The acting in this production abandons realism in favor of a style might be described as melodrama; way, WAY over-the-top, melodrama. It is an interesting choice and one that is well suited to the material. I found reviews of other productions of the play that followed the same course. It is a risk but one that mostly paid off last night.

The risk lies in the fact that the performers need to walk a razor-thin line, staying true to the style while not falling over the cliff into what could only be described as ‘bad acting’. It is the difference between an actor honestly playing a character who lives in a hyper-dramatic reality and an actor who plants his/her tongue firmly in their cheek, winks at the audience, and proceeds to mock the character they are playing. One can create an alternative reality and play the role with verisimilitude or one can ‘mug’ for the audience. There was a little of both last night but, happily, more of the former than the latter.

Oddly, the audience were not good partners to the actors in this regard. We attended the opening night performance and the majority of the audience were supporters of the company, as we are, or friends of the cast. In Act I there was a lot of laughter based on audience members’ knowledge of what the actor was doing rather than what was happening in the play. For the rest of us, it was a little like watching the ‘out-takes’ at the end of a movie. There is a point where watching other people laugh at ‘inside’ jokes stops being funny and starts being annoying. When the actor onstage begins to play to that laughter, it is the kiss of death for a performance. There was some/too much of that at the beginning of the play last night but the cast recaptured their focus quickly and, soon, the laughter was lining up pretty well with the language and action on stage.

Full disclosure: this was the 12th play I had seen in the past 14 days. I am an unabashed theater junkie but I think I might have enjoyed this performance more next week, or the week after, than I did last night. I think it is a good start to the new season, exactly the kind of production I hope for from this group, and I look forward to the productions to come.

Stratford Festival -Mary Stuart

We closed our visit to Stratford, and our week in Ontario, with Schiller’s Mary Stuart. I’d never seen the play before though it is very familiar. It was assigned reading in German class during my freshman year in college. It think it was probably only the 4th or 5th play I’d ever read. I also knew the plot from having seen Donizetti’s opera Maria Stuarda. The libretto is adapted from Schiller’s play.

The play tells the story of the relationship between Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots; pretender to Elizabeth’s throne and mother of her successor, in the period leading up to Mary’s death. It makes for great drama. It does not make for great history, however. The critical moment of the play is the face-to-face confrontation between the two queens. In fact, they never met.

The production blends time periods. The costumes evoke the Elizabethan age but the play begins and ends with security men in modern suits with ear pieces ushering ER on and off stage. Similarly the set pieces and decorations evoke the historical period but the stage is surrounded by modern looking razor wire. I’m not sure how much these modern elements add to the experience but I did not find them distracting. The production design included a few more abstract elements. Some were extremely effective, others less so.

Stratford veterans Lucy Peacock and Seana McKenna are perfectly suited and perfectly matched as Mary and Elizabeth, respectively. I’ve seen both many times over the years and have rarely been disappointed. I certainly was not disappointed this time.