Taking Opera Seriously

From the Vault of the High Cs Dept.: Thirty years ago I reviewed a pair of NYC Opera performances at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and correctly predicted that the opera company’s residency soon would end. What didn’t end was the horrible amplification inflicted on mainstage events – although I should note that I haven’t been to that venue in many years, discouraged by the number of drunks who began showing up at Philadelphia Orchestra concerts. I assume the management was papering the house, but why pass out tickets at the city’s gin joints?

                                                                                          

THE TRUTH ABOUT the New York City Opera's short, pre-summer visits to SPAC is that they’re a satire. A spoof. When a production is done reasonably poorly, as was the case with “Carmen,” it’s a poor joke. When it’s a reasonably good production, like “The Mikado,” the joke gets merely depressing.

Richard McKee

You could say that the joke is also a riddle: how many people will pay for amphitheater and lawn tickets to see what we call opera until they realize it’s actually not even as good as television? And can we fool them next year, too?

Unlike music and dance, which are appreciated viscerally, opera is a theatrical experience that engages a complicated combination of the senses. It requires an immediate involvement from the audience. But New York City Opera, like many another pretentious company, shuns the use of the English translations. And they’ve suckered the audience into accepting distracting supertitles as a compromise.

Opera is also a celebration of the human voice, a celebration entirely negated by the fact that even the amphitheater audience hears the singers amplified through a hardly-adequate speaker system (the SPAC techies boast that it’s the same thing they use for rock concerts, man, and management turns an obviously deaf ear to the problem).

If this isn’t a joke, then SPAC and the NYCO are showing greedy contempt for opera and its audience. Certainly the lackluster “Carmen” did nothing to advance the art. It’s supposed to be a story of smoldering sexuality, but the characters moved and acted so chastely that it might have been set in a convent. Given the interference of the amplification, it’s impossible to judge the voices of the singers. Theresa Cincione, as the innocent Micaela, was a more convincing actress than Robynne Redmon as Carmen – but poor direction and a frightened-looking, inexperienced chorus will impede the worthiest performer.

Dennis McNeil played Don Jose as a softie, which sent him dangerously into Zeppo Marx-ishness. Joseph Corteggiano made the most of Escamillo in spite of that and the lack of a resonant lower register – but, again, that might have been due to the lack of a low end in the amplification. How can you tell when the opera is choked by electronics?

Because it’s in English and it’s a comedy, “The Mikado” fared better in those horrible surroundings. It also had the advantage of being one of the least busy stagings I’ve seen, which allows the singers to make more of their material.

The set was refreshingly bare – some Japanese-style screens were huffed around by the white-clad coolies – and the costumes were colorful without too much exaggeration.

James Billings

Because Gilbert & Sullivan operas depend upon personality, the key to a good production is choosing people who can make the most of the material. James Billings has sung the role of Ko-Ko many times, but still brings to it a freshness that demands attention and gets all the laughs he deserves. Although a G&S character baritone can get away with ignoring much of the music, Billings gives it the care it deserves. Which makes him all the funnier.

He was up against a longtime collaborator (and frequent NYCO performer) in Richard McKee, whose scenes as the imperious Mikado were also well sung and well paced – and too few. He and mezzo-soprano Diana Daniele, who sang the blustery Katisha, have big, speaker-rattling tones that suffered from the miking.

Michael Hayes and Abbie Furmansky had the ingenue roles of Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum, giving it all the intensity of a Puccini love-fest, which “The Mikado” doesn’t need.

They were also among the many singers making their company debuts during these performances. The contrast between newcomers and veterans was too often apparent.

Given the audience draw, the idea of opera at SPAC is a popular one. Because the NYCO’s strength these days is operetta, one option is to concentrate exclusively on lighter fare. Trouble is, the company is so costly that they’d still be placed in that opera-unfriendly amphitheater.

A better solution is to get rid of NYCO entirely. Work with the Lake George Opera, which is capable of excellent productions on a much smaller budget and isn’t ashamed to sing them in English, and put the performances in the Spa Little Theater, which would allow the voice to reign unamplified once more.

Carmen
The Mikado
New York City Opera,
Saratoga Performing Arts Center, June 19-20

– Metroland Magazine, 24 June 1993