Living at the Opera

L to R: Robb Harrison, Nathan Krueger, Kristin Griffeath, Dennis Tamblyn, Adam Shelton, Robyn Rocklein and Meray Boustani. Ingvi Kallen UA School of Music

In an interview in the Tucson Weekly a week before the U of A Opera Theater’s first performance of Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco on April 4th, Charles Roe, the program’s artistic director stated that although music director and conductor Thomas Cockrell was convinced that mounting Argento’s surrealistic work would be a good step for the Opera Theater’s next venture into American Opera, Roe’s “first impression wasn’t as positive.” After all, Roe had directed two popular works in the idiom - Mark Adamo’s Little Women and Kerke Mechem’s Tartuffe - productions that were not only enthusiastically received, but artistically on the money. It’s true Argento’s opera is a favorite among many university opera programs, but the opera is filled with numerous musical tangents and vocal lines that keep the singers running up and down the scale throughout the work. Besides that, the orchestra was placed over on stage left, out of the singer’s view of conductor Cockrell. Even with stage monitors helping the performers follow Cockrell as he led them through Argento’s musical mix of Ragtime melodies, waltz tunes popping up here and there, and pieces of Richard Wagner’s Ring thrown in as a tribute to one of Argento’s favorite composers, there was a good chance this production could prove to be risky business.

Whatever the musical and dramatic complexities of Argento’s ninety minute opera were, Roe and his forces met every challenge head on. In fact, one could say, this production was one of the most well-prepared and imaginative outings mounted by the U of A’s Opera Theater.

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Arizona Opera ended its 2006/07 season with a tightly-knit, well-tuned presentation of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, his best known opera that has enjoyed numerous productions since its New York City Opera debut in 1956. The work is based on the Biblical account of Susannah and her Elders from the Book of Daniel, as it appears in certain Bibles. From that account we learn the Elders, who steadfastly lust after Susannah, spy on her while she is bathing and soon realize that the young beauty will never give in to their lascivious advances, so they accuse her of fornicating with a young man. This charge is eventually proven false, and Susannah is saved from death. Floyd, using a librettist’s poetic license, simplified the storyline by relocating the bathing Susannah to an isolated community called New Hope Valley in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. There, she is observed by her own church Elders who are repelled by her audacity to bath in a small stream which is supposed to be used for baptism.

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When Charles Roe, the artistic director of the University of Arizona’s Opera Theater looked around for an opera to produce for the school’s 2007 spring production, he decided on Kirke Mechem’s 1982 work, Tartuffe. The director had heard the opera a number of years ago and was impressed by Mechem’s varied musical score and recognized he had a good singing troupe of graduate and undergraduate students that could give the eclectic score the justice it was due. And as an extra added incentive, Roe wanted a work that would equal if not surpass his successful and moving production of Mark Adamo’s modern adaptation of Little Women which the opera theater presented last year. So Tartuffe it was, and happily for the audiences who attended, the production turned out to be quite an artistic success for the University’s opera department.

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When Charles Roe, the voice professor and director at the University of Arizona’s Opera Department decided to mount Mark Adamo’s Little Women, a piece Roe readily admits to having fallen in love with on first hearing, he may have had some second thoughts about producing the opera but certainly not with Adamo’s lucid, lyrical arcs of tender melodies the composer dotted throughout his score. And since Adamo also wrote the text, the composer was able to connect the many threads of emotion thereby making more substantial character studies of the four young women growing into maturity during the American Civil War, than Louisa May Alcott was able to do in her very poular novel. Perhaps it was just these two artistic accomplishments that had given Roe pause, for he recognized the opera would not only need singers who could handle Adamo’s challenging vocal leaps but they needed to cope with the quick emotional changes the composer expects from his characters. Well, the director needn’t have reflected too long for he struck gold with the vocal talents he had on hand. In fact, if there was one quality that came to the forefront of this production, it was the singing. Even in roles that might be considered secondary to the principals, Meg, Amy, Beth and Jo, there was plenty of vocal strength and beauty to go around fulfilling Adamo’s intented musical warmth.

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The following comments on Ainadamar were written after a visit to the Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 2005.

There must be a running debate in musical circles, particularly with audiences and music critics, as to whether Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” is a theatrical musical piece or an opera. The performance on August 14th, 2005 by the Santa Fe Opera, whose refurbished opera house is situated in the stoic, primeval mountains of Northern New Mexico, certainly did not settle the argument.

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