Gianni Schicchi Diary pt. 13

 GIANNI SCHICCHI THIS WEEKEND JUNE 15-16....www.operaprojectcolumbus.org

Last night was the final dress rehearsal.
There I was, pretty in pink, imaging I could put my feet up, watch the show, make a few notes and enjoy.
Be the daddy. My work is done.

I'm so naive. I'm not aware of any creative endeavor anywhere that doesn't suffer agony at the last minute. We did. Or at least I did. The old adage, "bad dress rehearsals equal great performances" is a comfort.

Not that we had a bad dress rehearsal. We were to run the opera twice, with a short break in between. Start cues were straightened out. The orchestra was sounding great in the warm ups. All of the players weer accomplished and professional. Some of very young. It is a band of winners.

Curtain call!

We hung around on stage, the singers partially dressed (No, no, no...get your mind out the gutter. Jeez) The overworked and under loved volunteers were continuing to stitch costumes, often in the dark. There was a delay as everyone was dressed and adjusted. Then phew! The show began.

Hissy fit number one when the coordination was thought to lag between orchestra and singers. Adjust, adjust, Move around. Some singers wherever they were had eyes glued to the Maestro. Not a way to perform. Hissy fit number 2. Done to blow off steam, not meaning much, certainly nothing personal, but may be disconcerting to some. Not to me. Hell, it was like Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, may they rest in peace.

But I could tell the singers were getting annoyed. I was getting the snarls and WTF out in the house. They shoulda seen my mug out there in the dark. Thee were a few tempi problems as a few were in a s-----l-----o---w mood . About that I will need to speak up and will  have done so by the time you read this.

Curtain call!

Gianni Schicchi's pants fell off. Best part of the show was when he took the god damned things off under his nightie and flung his pants and undies into the audience, Well, not quite. But I woulda done that. My Schicchi handled everything with aplomb, as did the entire cast all night, giving the audience the music, performances and the show-through a good bit of muttering and gnashing of teeth (me.)

Nice press coverage thus far.  There were a couple of audiences members over the past two nights. I was on my way to passing a hat to them. (Not you, Ryan) Cough up. No free rides. I wish I had but it's not my job, tactful guy that I am.I'm going to a wake this afternoon and a funeral in the morning. No, no my own. Don't get excited. For the rest I'm eating pizza and chocolate and doing two live broadcasts. And so it went. The shows themselves will be capital W Wonderful. This thanks to the artists and staff of Opera Project Columbus. Give them money.

P.S. To singers. This is one of my all time favorites. Helen of Troy after her wedding night In one of the great great great performances. Too bad she can't sing with all of YOU!

Gianni Schicchi Diary pt. 3

 Opera Project Columbus
Gianni Schicchi
June 15 and 16
see opera project columbus dot com 

We had a three day weekend. A surfeit of Reese's cups had me bound up and crabby, but I was rejuvenated
by the time rehearsal rolled around last night. We were at St. Marks church in the choir room, very nice with rather skimpy air conditioning. Oh, well. Beggars can't be choosers.

 I needed an emotional pick up today and speaking of Puccini:



 Moffo. What a beauty. A diva of my youth. She died in 2006 after a number of bad years career wise. When it as beautiful it was very beautiful.

 There's another opera production in business locally. That's a good thing. My old mentor Sarah Caldwell at the Opera Co.of  Boston wasn't the least bothered by neighboring college productions and a week long visit from the Met. "The more opera, the better." I agree but I haven't Sarah's gifts.


Rehearsing with many cast

Sarah Caldwell

members missing is  a challenge. Not so much for me but for the people on the stage. Remember once the show goes up I revert to my favorite position, hoping our hosts in the Jewish Center won't mind my putting my feet up.

Elvira Puccini

No notary and no Gubbio yet. Meaning it was quite tricky to stage mini processional on to the stage for Gianni/Buoso to dictate his will.  I and another fellow participated with our Pinellocchio, God bless him who comes a distance and never misses rehearsal. Still, we were crowded. I have them working in a (I hope please God) smaller space that we'll have deliberately. (You'd rather have too much booze than too little at Grampie's wake). Spinelloccio can only come late and since he's in part one only and we're working on part two.....well, I'm going to have to continue to adjust. god is good. So is zoloft..
Back to the other opera in town. Several of my key people are involved. What can I do? I'm the last one who would tell them to give up a paying gig.

Our baritone sings well and has the rare gift of singing with enough joy to enchant any audience. Many of the other singers are well prepared and fun. Some need work. I've been asked to save time in staging rehearsals for some  music touch ups. Withal, we've staged the whole thing, now its fine tuning, a few changes and eventually complete runs. Since there's so much physical action I need the singers to develop  muscle memory so their singing is not affected. I have asked for a brief meeting in the venue with as many as can attend.Even if a few show up, if they see the actual space it may offer better perspective.

Puccini by Mary-Jane Philips Matz

And how many directors do YOU know who send out a prop list for spoons, forks, dishes, a night cap and long johns? Take THAT Franco Zeffirelli!

I've been re- reading Mary Jane Philips- Matz's biography of Puccini. Her Verdi bio is the book of choice. No one in recent times has better documented this great composer. Puccini is a more friendly read and less scholarly. Matz makes good use of several very elderly people she met years ago who knew the composer. I wanted to interview her and mailed and e mailed and called and a week later read her obituary in the New York Times. She was pushing ninety. No one who loves Verdi or Puccini should miss her books. 

Puccini loved fast cars, women and hunting. He was quite the ladies man. His first serious girlfriend was the wife of another man. She and Puccini had a child together-scandalo!-and composer rued the day he took up with Elvira. Batshit crazy the lady was.

Hmmm. Maybe I can turn Ciesca or Nella into Elvira Gemignani Puccini. Scary!

OPERA PROJECT COLUMBUS

Opera Project Columbus began last year with two women, one who wanted to sing more and the other who wanted to help her sing more. How many orchestras and opera co.s have collapsed in the past ten years. Who 's nuts enough to start a new Opera Co. Are you? Not me. I'm already on cold cereal and generic lean cuisine.




Thank goodness the two wwomen were, if not nuts, then brave. You know what we have in Columbus, Oh? Football, beer, Football, good Chinese food, Football, soccer even hockey (sometimes, and I'm a Bostonian so don't get me started) Jeni's ice cream, terrific garage theater,  two professional orchestras, Football...and damned good young singers. Very talented folks, many of whom love Football. I wish they had a venue locally that would pay them heartily. They don't. That may come in time. Opera Columbus is doing a good job with the young audiece pool, who put down their I-phones and coke spoons long enough to enjoy La boheme.

Here's a bit from last season:






Tonight at 8 Opera Project Columbus presents an evening of opera scenes. None of this Bastein and Bastienne shit. La sonnambula, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, The Barber of Seville, und so weiter. They have folks who can sing this big boy big girl stuff.  I want them to keep together as a company  attached to a local church or museum 'in residecne' where they'll have a rent free place to perform. Many of this kids--er artists (sorry) are already working professionally. The New York Times has raved aobut one of them. Now its their communities turn. I have to get there late tonight but you don't. Bottoms in seats plase, tonight 7.30, Opera Project Columbus, First Unitarian Church, 93 W. Weisheimer, Columbus. Park in the funeral home lot (don't start)

 
I don't know all of tonight's singers but I don't mind telling you I have a great paternal affection for several of them. I'm also deply impressed with the professionalism, and how they condcut themselvs. Many are now having children of their own.

Sutherland, Callas, Pavarotti, Price, Domingo, Merrill, Tebaldi, Milnes, Corelli, Tucker, I heard them all. I got hammered with two of them and I slep--never mind-with another. They were all young singers once. People went to churches in their home town s to hear them. Nobody went away disappointed. Nor will you, See you tonight.

OPERA IN COLUMBUS OHIO

The meanest Buckeye linebacker is no match for a prima donna. Columbus's Southern Theatre had a packed house  on a January night in 1914, waiting for diva Mary Garden, Debussy's first Melisande and the toast of Paris and Chicago, to appear in recital. But Mary was eight hours away, leaping at the chance to sing a favorite role, Massenet's "Jongleur de Notre Dame" in the Windy City. A wire was dispatched to the hapless crowd in the Southern. Mary was a no-show. The audience wasn't amused, nor was the Columbus Citizen: "Mary, Mary quite contrary/How does your garden grow?/An opera date/will surely bring/more kale in the spring, y'know." Just for good measure, Mary cancelled her make up date, scheduled for four days later, to sing Manon in Chicago.

If Columbus had no resident opera company until 1981, Central Ohioans traveled to hear the

Royal Hughes in 1926

Metropolitan Opera on tour in Cincinnati, braving a flood for an opening night "Faust" at the Music Hall in 1884. Special trains were run from Columbus, and the New York Times reported, "There were some strangers present, who came into the city early in the day on trains that ran through long stretches of water, and who heartily wished they had not ventured from home." Cleveland was a favorite Met tour stop, from "The Barber of Seville" in 1899 to "La traviata", with Granville born Barbara Daniels as Violetta, eighty- seven years later. Not that Columbus lacked for operatic glamour. Adelina Patti appeared at the Auditorium Theatre on Town and Front Streets in 1893, but not before receiving her $5,000 fee in gold coin. Our large German population demanded Wagner, inviting Angelo Neumann's touring company to present its potted Ring cycle in 1899. Memorial Hall opened on Broad Street in 1907 to make a home for touring orchestras and artists from Rachmaninoff to Jan Peerce.

Mary Garden (1874-1967) blew off Columbus

Mary Garden finally arrived, with the touring Chicago Opera to triumph in Alfano's "Resurrection" in 1928. She returned the following year for Thais and Fiora in Montemezzi's "The Love of Three Kings." Garden was not the only star to come through Columbus. Rosa Raisa, Puccini's first Turandot, appeared as Aida with Alexander Kipnis. Charles Hackett was a big name in radio. Maria Olczewska, Richard Strauss's favorite contralto in Vienna, sang Carmen in Columbus. The Columbus Auditorium later became a Lazarus annex. "If you want to stand on the very spot where Mary Garden thrilled 5,500 opera lovers in 1929, you can", writes Phil Sheridan in his 1978 Those Beautiful Downtown Theatres. "Climb either of the two short stairways to the range and refrigerator display, walk to the center, face east, and you're there."

Full scale opera productions came through Columbus between 1935 and 1950 via the touring San Carlo Opera. Organized by a Brooklyn born impresario called Fortune Gallo ('lucky rooster') the San Carlo's "Aida" could play on any stage, the public seldom bothered by the chorus of six and whatever elderly camel could be rented from the local zoo. Dorothy Kirsten, James Melton, Richard Tucker and contralto Coe Glade all played Columbus with the San Carlo, usually at the Hartman Theatre. Beverly Sills began her career at seventeen with the touring Charles Wagner Company, visiting Columbus in 1949 and 1950. Mees Hall hosed a 1954 tour of Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte" starring Phyllis Curtin. Miss Curtin, America's loveliest soprano, remembers Columbus fondly. "I felt myself really growing and changing as an artist during those performances at Mees Hall." Maria Callas sang one of the last concerts of her career in the Ohio Theatre in 1974, repairing to the Kon-Tiki for a late dinner. Broadcaster Mary Rousculp (Hoffman) had caught La Callas Port Columbus earlier that morning for a pithy, impromptu interview, one of the the diva's last.

The Ohio State university presented staged opera going back to the days of Royal Hughes ,whose

voice students included Ruby Elzy, the original Serena in "Porgy and Bess".  Irma Cooper, long a beloved local artist and teacher, sang a sinister Herodias in "Salome" at Mershon Auditorium, with Grace Bumbry in the title role. Evan Whallon's love for singers led to a series of operas with the Columbus Symphony, including "Die Fledermaus", "La boheme", and "Don Giovanni".  James King and Pablo Elvira co starred in Verdi's "Otello", and Christian Badea led one of the most complex of all opera scores, Richard Strauss's "Elektra" with Johanna Meier and Barbara Conrad.

Michael Harrison put Opera Columbus firmly on the cultural map, following a "Tosca" in 1981. The thrills were not all on stage. "Jack Hanna brought all sorts of animals for our Aida" remembers Harrison, today General Director of the Baltimore Opera. He brought two llamas into my office, and they relieved themselves in the elevator! That was the production where the tenor threatened to have me killed for firing him. The Columbus Police protected me admirably." Harrison points to the world premiere of Pasatieri's "The Three Sisters" with pride, and "I loved coming back to sing the Simpleton in "Boris Godunov" with the great Jerome Hines. That was a role to which everyone thought I was ideally suited!"

Irma M. Cooper

"Opera Columbus went under for four days in January, 1991, but Irma Cooper, Phil Jastram and Rocky Morris raised the money to keep it going," remembers former General Director John Gage, now with Dallas Opera. "Phil was not going to let it go under." Bill Russell brought bel canto elegance back to the Palace Theater with "Anna Bolena" and "Lucia di Lammermoor", along with another world premiere, Leslie Burrs's "Vanqui".

Today, Opera Columbus moves into a new era with performances at Ohio State's Mershon Auditorium. Opera IN Columbus is different than Opera/Columbus, but our hometown company continues to set a high standard.

see also www.operacolumbus.com prima donna. On a cold