Verdi Chorus

FLASHMOB!

patrick — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:42:09 +0000

So there’s been a great amount of discussion amongst the chorus over the past couple years about our doing a flash mob. Video clips of singing flash mobs have been showing up on YouTube for decades and, of course, choral and opera groups are particularly suited to making a big, healthy noise in a big public space. Unlike pop singers we don’t need any electronic assistance in the amplification department. The problem is that almost as soon as all these videos started popping up the whole thing became passé faster than you could say ‘prestissimo’.

The other challenge is that we needed a good excuse. We couldn’t just wander into the local Barnes & Noble, gather around the escalator atrium and burst into song. Well, we could… but it would be so much better if we were doing it for a good cause. Enter Stacy Brightman, Director of Education and Community Programs for LA Opera. She had been approached by the people at City of Hope to organize a flash mob for a groundbreaking ceremony they were having in conjunction with a new building and to commemorate their 100th anniversary. The LA Opera Chorus is comprised of union musicians (who are also paid union wages) so unfortunately, hiring them wouldn’t be feasible. However, Stacy had called on the Verdi Chorus in 2010, inviting us to perform at the opening ceremonies for the ‘Ring Festival’ at the LA County Museum of Art. It was a pretty swank gig, and I speak with certainty when I say we covered ourselves in glory.

The date was set for Thursday, January 17th and we would have one rehearsal on the Monday prior. The flash mob portion would be the drinking song,’Libiamo’ from Act I of Verdi’s La Traviata, and then we would take the stage and sing what is essentially our theme song ‘Va Pensiero’ from Verdi’s Nabucco, capping it off with our first public performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel.

That last song is special to all of us in the chorus for one very important reason. Every summer the Verdi Chorus has a potluck party. It’s a grand tradition where we welcome new members to the chorus and have a chance to share food and visit. Since our rehearsals are almost all about the work, it’s a rare social gathering. There’s also quite a bit of very loud singing — mostly Broadway showtunes after imbibing several glasses of wine — and it’s always a lot of fun.

A few years back our Director Anne Marie Ketchum, had to undergo chemotherapy treatment, and she continued to lead our rehearsals in spite of all of the physical challenges that faced her, which couldn’t have been easy. At the party that summer, as the evening drew to a close, the chorus began singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” one by one the members spontaneously walked toward Anne Marie and gathered around, surrounding her with the rich, warm strength of their voices. It’s now the traditional ending to every summer event, and Anne Marie always says a few words about how important it was to her. Even for those of us who weren’t there that first time, it’s a moving moment that speaks volumes about what a family we are and how much support we offer to each other.

We had a large number of the chorus willing to participate and, for the first time, everyone received their music electronically via email. Big leap into the 21st century for the Verdi Chorus.

Monday’s rehearsal came, and we were joined by the soloists from the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program; Soprano Alisa Peterson and Tenor Ashley Faatoalia.

We’d done the ‘Libiamo’ before but Anne Marie (knowing us all too well) had something up her sleeve to ensure that we all got through the performance mistake free. Crib sheets. Very small pieces of paper, easily tucked into the palm, with not only the Italian lyrics on them but put down on the page in rhythm. Don’t ask me how she thought of that or even made it make sense, but it did the minute you looked at it.

Rehearsal went well with our guest soloists and Stacy Brightman came to cheer us all on. After they left we went through the rest of the program. I love singing Rodgers and Hammerstein and was really looking forward to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ During the first run through I could tell most of us were singing over the lumps in our collective throats. Then one of our youngest members, who just happens to be finishing her own chemotherapy, became emotional, and she in turn was comforted by her section mate sitting beside her whom had lost her husband of 40 years just a matter of weeks before.

The afternoon before the event I got an email from our President Thelma Sherman, that a number of us, myself included, were going to be fitted with a microphone and needed to arrive early for a sound check. A Microphone!?!? Seriously?…Me? I’m not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you I can be heard through brick walls. With ease. But with electronic amplification I might actually qualify as a nuclear grade military weapon. What about all those poor innocents gathered to enjoy the flashmob caught in the cross-fire and struck deaf? Weren’t we going to be outside? I suddenly had hellish visions of all the woodland creatures..birds, squirrels, deer, house cats, evacuating every tree, shrub and glade en masse for miles in every direction in the frantic search of quietude. Then the real terror dropped down around me like a biblical plague of locusts and my blood ran cold. What if I was really terrible and EVERYONE HEARD?

We all arrived at the City of Hope campus the next morning, and I was wired for sound along with a dozen of us while the others decamped to the vast meeting room that had been set aside for our comfort.

This was one of my favorite parts of the day because we were then literally in a ‘War Room’ setting with Anne Marie and DeReau K. Farrar, assistant to our conductor, mapping out our intended musical assault on the unsuspecting audience using a large whiteboard and dry markers. It was decided that we would flank the seated guests and join the majority of the standees until the right moment when we would let loose.

The War Room with DeReau K. Farrar and Anne Marie Ketchum

We casually strolled down to the courtyard where everything was set up and joined the milling crowd. Dr. Michael Friedman, the CEO of City of Hope and an opera lover himself, gave a short speech about the dedication of the Kaplan Family who were the major donors to the capital campaign for the new facility, and they broke out the golden shovels for the fresh plot of dirt in front of the dais. Then, suddenly, the LA Opera soloists were already singing the Act I duet from Traviata and followed with the ‘Libiamo’ while I silently prayed for my microphone to malfunction. The audience was certainly surprised when we joined in and then we moved up to the stage while our accompanist, Larraine Ann Madden played the lead in to ‘Va, Pensiero’. The thing about performing is that when it’s happening it goes by so fast, mostly because of the adrenaline. It’s over before you realize, and this was no exception.

We had a grateful audience, not only in the courtyard, but from the stage when I looked up you could see all the patients at the windows of all the surrounding buildings who weren’t able to come outside for the concert lining up to listen to us, which finally made me glad for my microphone.

Soprano Alisa Peterson and Tenor Ashley Faatoalia.

SATAN SINGS!

patrick — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 03:10:20 +0000

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wasn’t the first famous playwright to set the legend of Faust to paper. That palm is generally awarded to Shakespeare’s contemporary Christopher Marlowe for his Doctor Faustus which predates the German work by almost 200 years. In the upcoming concert we’re exploring the three most popular operas that were born of this famous legend and play and their similarities are expected but their differences are more intriguing.

The story follows the aged philosopher Faust who, in his dotage, has become disenchanted with the world. Sealing the most famous used car deal in history with the devil for his soul in the afterlife for another youth re-lived, he sets out to seduce the young peasant girl, Marguerite, unwittingly bringing about her end and showing himself the dangers of his own vanity.

Surprisingly the most complex version musically and dramatically, Hector Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, actually appeared first in 1846 to little acclaim with two performances at the Opéra-Comique and a third cancelled outright for lack of interest. Although its stature has grown over the years, it’s never gained the same foothold in the repertory as the other two versions. Berlioz’s “legend dramatique” is far subtler than its rivals which isn’t a surprise considering its composer. Berlioz led a hard life and was always fighting conventionality in one form or another. Many of his compositions were met with bewilderment at their first hearings and his work as a conductor, musical influence, and one of the builders of the modern orchestra is, arguably, far greater than his own legacy as a composer.

Charles Gounod’s Faust had its premiere at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris after having been rejected by the Opéra as not being sufficiently grand or provocative. Ten years later, with the addition of a ballet for Act V, it was finally presented at l’Opera and went on to become not only an audience favorite but the pre-eminent musical work of the Victorian era. It even opened the brand new Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1883 and had totaled more performances there and at L’Opéra than any other work up until World War II.

Not everyone was thrilled with Gounod’s reworking of Goethe and even though it was popular with German audiences, it was nearly always performed as ‘Margarethe’ so as not to besmirch the work of the Master. No less than Richard Wagner called it, “A repellent, sugary-vulgar, patchwork…wedded to the music of a second-rate talent.” but Wagner hated almost everything he himself didn’t write, with the possible exception of Bellini’s Norma.

Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, debuting at La Scala only nine years later, trumps all previous versions. He portrays a depraved Devil who not only instigates Faust’s downfall himself, sensing a weak spirit easy to snare, but makes him a truly lascivious and blasphemous ruler of the underworld for the first time. Berlioz’s Devil is merely a grim French gentleman and Gounod’s is no more than a cardboard Victorian ghoul. Boito puts before us a Satan who has nothing but contempt for the inhabitants of the world and who openly mocks Heaven and God in front of us. Nearly 30 years later Boito would adapt Shakespeare’s Othello for Verdi and you can see the influence in his writing in the great Act II opening ” Credo” for Iago where he talks about his belief in a God of vengeance and cruelty.

But what of our poor heroine? In the Goethe she’s Gretchen at the spinning wheel and she’s been immortalized in that dreary position by nearly every major Germanic composer of song. Sadly, she’s dramatically inert/ An innocent and easy target for a man of experience who has the Devil himself goading him on to her ravishment.

Virgin ravishing seemed to be the essential ingredient in the ratatouille of perfumed eroticism and chastity that makes up most French operas of that era. Point of fact is that French opera is filled to the laced bodice ruffle décolletage with bad girls who go good…and then die, forever enshrining their absolvement from their mean girl pasts. It’s hard to imagine in our own age of intellectual, career-oriented women any one of them succumbing to something so minor as an overflowing jewelry box. Yet, we have only to cast our eyes to the internet and the latest TMZ report of Paris Hilton’s antics to know it’s still true.

Odd too how Marguerite’s crimes vary in the telling. In the French versions she’s simply guilty of accidentally over-administering the sleeping potion given to her by Faust so that her Mother won’t hear his late night visits. The more blood-thirsty Boito shows Marguerite imprisoned and driven mad after having not only poisoned her mother but drowned her illegitimate child.

The most telling difference is in the handling of the chorus. In the Berlioz, Hell actually goes silent upon Faust’s final visit. Gounod does manage to whip his denizens into a fairly serviceable bacchanalia, with that added ballet, but it’s Boito who wins the prize with, by far, the most possessed and demented portrait of the damned. At its badly received premiere our own Verdi remarked, “He aspires to originality but succeeds only at being strange.” The passage of time has shown, I think, that Boito succeeded on both counts.

THE WRONGED ‘RING’

patrick — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:50:22 +0000

An amazing thing happened in the opera world this week. For almost a whole day the leading classical music magazine in the country was locked out of the institution it was created to support. Peter Gelb, General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera in New York, had decided that the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s publication, Opera News, would no longer be allowed to review performances in the house. Apparently, Mr. Gelb was more than a little miffed at the reception the Met’s new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen had received in the press, and in particular, the in-house reviews. There was also a very sharp editorial by the Features Editor, Brian Kellow, that evidently wasn’t well received in the executive aerie of the Met.

I imagine anyone would be upset if they’d spent $16 million dollars on a technical and theatrical marvel like “The Machine” that comprises the entire set design for all four of Wagner’s operas, only to have it met by furious tapping at critical keyboards proclaiming it a grandiose failure. Opera News was certainly not alone in being dismayed over the current production in spite of its fantastic effects. I have yet to read a positive review on the cycle in any publication in print or online, and most point to the dehumanization of Wagner’s epic by making the star of the evening the world’s most sophisticated Jumbo Tron.

Actually, sophisticated isn’t even the word for a 45-ton structure made up of a series of 24 planks on a central pivot that can be raised and lowered and spun independently. The surfaces of the planks are also video screens capable of projecting startling 3-D images. Set designers and directors have beaten their collective heads against walls since the first production in the 1860’s trying to bring Wagner’s sensational visions of mermaids and dwarves and dragons to the stage. To say nothing of the kaleidoscope of nature Wagner requires; lightning, water, rainbows, fog, and fire, fire and more fire. Enough fire in the finale to destroy the world and enough water to cultivate its rejuvenation.

“The Machine” was the brainchild of Robert Lepage, who has helmed a wide range of theatrical productions and operas and even the Las Vegas spectacle “Ka” presented by Cirque du Soleil. Anyone who expected Mr. Lepage to hit a homerun with audiences and critics on his first attempt at the Ring Cycle displayed colossal naiveté, hoping for the equivalent of theatrical lightning striking four times. For Mr. Gelb to take it so personally, and react so harshly, says everything about how far powerful men feel they can go in our society to have their way.

Truth be told, bad press is the hallmark of any Ring staging. Wagner had his own detractors during his lifetime, this we know for certain. They included no less than Schumann, Rossini, and Berlioz. The stagings at Wagner’s home theatre in Bayreuth after World War II were tremendously abstract and relied more on lighting and were performed on a disk. That raised quite a few eyebrows in the beginning. Surely Mr. Gelb can’t have forgotten the outrage that was meted out by both press and public when the curtain rose on Bayreuth’s Centenary Production in 1976 directed by Patrice Chereau Instead of the bottom of the Rhine, the audience found themselves staring at a detailed representation of a hydroelectric dam with a trio of tarted-up Rhine Maidens flouncing about like common street walkers. It only got worse from there. The Valkyrie’s rock was nothing more than an abandoned construction project and the Hall of the Gibichungs was a slum. Thirty-six years later, of course, that production is considered an untouchable classic.

The last Met presentation, which debuted in 1987, was so hard line traditional it was faulted for being out of synch with modern staging ideas. So, if you’re starting to feel, at this juncture “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” I’d say I’ve made my point.

Peter Gelb was previously the head of Sony Classical and a born marketer. He’s done more good for the Metropolitan Opera than any administrator since Rudolph Bing, who revolutionized repertory and production and brought the Met into the modern era. Bing, in his final season, also hired James Levine to make his debut, which turned into a reign that we’ve just come to the end of. Even if Gelb quits tomorrow, which he certainly won’t, his legacy is assured as the man who fast tracked the Met into the 21st century both in repertory and production faster than any of his predecessors. To say nothing of the Live in HD theater presentations which have brought a quality opera-going experience to hundreds of thousands and added to the Met’s coffers in no small amount.

He should also be reminded as well that things could be worse. Los Angeles staged its first Ring in 2010 in a stunning, Brechtian production full of archetypes and imagery far beyond anything ever attempted and well outside the norm. Critical reaction was tepidly mixed and no one came. Had it travelled to New York, I assure you they would still be shouting about it from both sides of the analytical fence to this day.

I hate to say this, but I think it’s also true that many people who attend the Met on a regular basis, and I include critics and Brian Kellow especially in this regard, take it for granted. Very few theaters in the world present at such a high standard both musically and production-wise. Is it Peter Gelb’s fault that he’s taking too many chances with a traditional audience or is he still being too conservative in his choices? I hear both verdicts leveled at him on a regular basis.

The lesson to be reminded of here is that everyone has a right to their opinion and discussion is the only other thing, besides performance, that keeps art alive.

The Strange & Unusual Tale of Donizetti

robin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:31:34 +0000

The Verdi Chorus hasn’t performed many pieces by Donizetti. In fact, our repertoire numbers only eight choral pieces from four operas: Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux. In our concert this month, we will be performing excerpts and the Act I finale from one of his most popular comic operas, L’elisir d’amore.

Oddly, Donizetti is the most prolific operatic composer of all time, yet he’s remembered for only a handful of works. His nearly 75 compositions over his 30 year career fairly dwarf the output of the prolific Rossini with 39 operas, Verdi’s output of roughly 27 works including revisions, and Wagner’s meager 13. The reason for Donizetti’s astonishing output is actually simple: madness and money.

The story of his life and brief career is actually worthy of treatment by Edgar Alan Poe on paper or Tim Burton in a macabre film. Born into abject poverty and one of six children, the young Gaetano Donizetti showed musical promise and became the protégé of Simon Mayr, a German composer who happened to be the music director for the main church in the town of Bergamo where young Gaetano was born.

Denied the hand of his childhood sweetheart due to his modest circumstances and deemed an unwelcome suitor by her father, Donizetti became focused solely on professional success. Starting in 1816, he began to write three to four operas a year. Not just any operas, mind you, but vehicles. He was the go-to composer if you had a decent libretto and a good cast of singers ready for a challenge. He was particularly adept at fashioning music for sopranos eager to show off their technical prowess and sparkling coloratura facility. Donizetti excelled in the creation of the “Mad Scene” which gave 17th century divas the ultimate showcase for their art. Certainly Bellini and Rossini could claim loftier musical aspirations, but Donizetti defined the bel canto style in which they were all working.

Success came at a slow rate compared to his output and, where more gifted composers found themselves established by their third or fourth operas, Donizetti didn’t gain international attention until his 24th, the debut in Milan of Anna Bolena in 1830. At this point, he was deemed worthy of working with the famed Guiditta Pasta, who went on to create both Amina in La Sonnambula and the title role in Norma for Bellini the very next year.

Acclaim spread quickly and his operas were now mounted outside of Italy and as far afield as London, Paris and New Orleans. Donizetti had also finally married and was enjoying a much higher standard of living. He was also continuously plagued by headaches and bouts of what they used to refer to as melancholia. These symptoms, which alternated with all the feverish work of composing, are the first signs of the bipolar disorder that began to overtake his life in the next two decades.

Donizetti became more adept at comic writing and, although it was never his strong suit compared to the breezy syncopation of his contemporary Rossini, he did enjoy the occasional comic success. L’elisir d’amore was one that took Milan by surprise just two years after Bolena and, from 1830 to 1832, he had 11 premieres in Naples and Milan. Always a popular favorite with the public, he was hardly ever a critical favorite during an age when composers of note and integrity, like Schumann and Berlioz, often served as music critics.

By the end of this decade, his wife would deliver three children, none of whom would survive birth, and then she herself died of cholera. Donizetti burrowed even deeper into his operatic creations. The Italian sensors started exerting pressure on him more often for political and religious subject matter and he finally decamped to Paris to try his hand at grand opera and make enough money to retire as Rossini had recently done. From 1832 until he left Italy in 1841, an astonishing 24 operas premiered.

Donizetti’s next big success came with the gloriously lurid Lucrezia Borgia. My favorite story about this opera revolves around the capricious diva who created the title role, Henriette Méric-Lalande. Once a favorite of Meyerbeer and Bellini, she was now past her prime and the mindful Donizetti toned down his florid writing style to accommodate her limited resources. Deploying a much cleaner bel canto line in Lucrezia’s entrance aria,”Com’è bello,” it remains one of his greatest achievements. Still, Madame Méric-Lalande kept demanding a flashy coloratura finale to the opera, contradicting the effect Donizetti had envisioned for the bloody denouement. Her badgering became so persistent that Donizetti exacted his revenge in the cleverest way possible. He presented her with “Era desso, il figlio mio,” so fiendishly written it was a guaranteed show-stopper with octave leaps like vocal chasms and, in two instances, a triple-trill. It’s so fraught with challenges few sopranos since have actually attempted it without simplification.

The next few years saw Donizetti slowing a little in his output. He enjoyed an enormous success in Paris with the comedy Don Pasquale. Still, friends started to mention his degeneration, and his headaches, fevers, and depressions only worsened. It’s even noticeable in the portraits painted of him at the time which show a stern, haggard, and almost confused expression on his face. Letters to friends and family started to become increasingly incoherent and one day, under the guise of being taken to Vienna, he was institutionalized in a sanatorium at Ivry near Paris.

It was soon discovered that he was also showing the effects of syphilis and in those days the cure was worse than the symptoms. I’ll spare you the macabre list of treatments used on him that must have only worsened his already fragile state. Dark days, indeed. His behavior was so disturbing they wouldn’t even allow his mother to see him when she tried to visit. After an incarceration of 17 months, his nephew finally convinced the authorities to release him and, following a brief return to Paris, he was taken home to Bergamo, a specter of his former self, where he died less than a year later at the age of 50.

The saddest part of this tale is that, in spite of his enormous output, Donizetti didn’t leave behind a “masterpiece”’ in the sense of an ultimate work that can be pointed to which shows a consistent level of craft and inspiration. Only three of his operas remain in the popular repertoire of any opera house, and his first success, Anna Bolena, only had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2011. Ironically, this very skilled craftsman would suffer the same fate as his most popular creation, Lucia di Lammermoor, and share with her a descent into madness, despair, and finally death.

Profiles in Chorus: LYNN ARKIN

patrick — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:41:56 +0000

Veni,Vidi,Verdi starts its oral history project of the Verdi Chorus with bass Lynn Arkin; Treasurer Emeritus and one of the Founding Member of the Verdi Chorus who has been, throughout his life, an accountant, a commercial arbitrator and owned a photography studio.

Patrick Mack / Veni,Vidi,Verdi: Lynn Arkin you’ve been with the Verdi Chorus from the very beginning ?

Lynn Arkin: Yes, I have.

VVV: When did you start singing ?

LA: Well, my mother was an amateur singer and she played a little piano.

VVV: So you were raised in a musical environment ?

LA: I was raised in a village of only 1,200 people outside of Sioux City called Akron, Iowa. There weren’t very many of us so we all had to do everything. If we wanted to have a football team we all had to play football and if we wanted to have a basketball team we all had to play basketball. So our High School had a glee club. We all sang. One year our glee club went all the way to the State Championships.

VVV: Did you ever study professionally ?

LA: Around that time my mother decided I showed promise and I should have proper singing lessons. She found a retired diva who had sung at the Metropolitan Opera who was living in Sioux City. I’m sorry I can’t remember her name. I drove 25 miles,each way,every week for lessons on unpaved roads. That took a long time in those days.

VVV: Did you start singing solo then ?

LA: I started singing in local competitions. I was about 17 by this time. We sang what we called “contestant songs” in those days. Not really classical but not pop either. Stephen Foster, things like that. I won the state championship in Aimes, Iowa and the next step was the nationals which were held in St. Paul, Minnesota.

VVV: Wow !

LA: A couple days before I was supposed to leave my appendix burst and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks. They kept you there that long in those days. So, I never got any further then the state championship.

VVV: Where you an opera fan ?

LA: Well, yes and no. I was introduced to opera when I was in the Army stationed in Pennsylvania
awaiting my orders. We had some leave and my buddy said let’s go to New York and we went to the Metropolitan Opera and saw Puccini’s La Boheme. It was wonderful.

VVV: When did you come to California ?

LA: I moved to Los Angeles in 1969

VVV: What brought you here ?

LA: Winter. I promised myself I’d never complain about the weather again as long as I didn’t have to shovel any of it.

VVV: Were you still singing ?

LA: I was a CPA and I would sing in a piano bar near my house. Then I moved to Santa Monica in the early 80′s and on my way home from work I would stop into the Verdi Restaurant on Wilshire for a bite to eat or just have a drink at the bar. I loved the music and the performers. I became friendly with Bernie Segal, the owner, and one night when I was there he got up and made an announcement that they were trying to put together a chorus. There was a meeting scheduled and that was where I met Bobbie Mapstone, Tom Redler and Walter Fox. There were about 15 or 16 of us in the very begining.

At the meeting we met Anne Marie Ketchum and they went over how often we would meet and they said that we wouldn’t need to sing for our audition only pay our dues. I was so relieved and Walter looked at me and said,”I think I can handle that”.

VVV: What happened after the restaurant closed ?

LA: Well a bunch of us figured since we were having so much fun we should try to keep it going. So, we all pooled some money together and started trying to find a place that would give us space to rehearse and perform. In the beginning we moved around quite a bit until we found the church. We started in a gay bar in North Hollywood, We moved to a hotel in Santa Monica but that didn’t work out,a Synagogue on Olympic and two other churches before we finally settled at First Methodist.

VVV: How has the chorus changed over the years ?

LA: The number one thing is quality and we’re much better than we were in the beginning and much stronger from all the experience we’ve had. We used to perform a little Broadway stuff and I do miss that.

VVV: Do you have a favorite opera or a favorite piece that we sing ?

LA: My favorites are the big finales. The ‘Triumphal March’ from Aida and especially the ‘Easter Chorus’ from Cavalleria Rusticana. I don’t think I’m very good any more but Tom Redler won’t let me quit. I keep telling him I’m going to start taking lip synching lessons.

VVV: What would you say to someone out there who was thinking of joining the Verdi Chorus ?

LA: I love to sing and I always tell people I’ve had four great loves in my life; golf, singing, travel and photography. My 89th birthday is coming up and I’ve been very lucky. If you enjoy singing good music…come along.

VVV: Thanks,very much, for talking with us, Lynn.

The Eagle Eye

patrick — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:31:18 +0000

In my previous blog ‘Tenor+Error=Terror’ I gave the impression that I was pretty much infallible and never make mistakes. This is not true, of course. I did make a mistake one other time (as he casts his eyes downward in inherent tenor modesty). Here’s the story of my very first concert and during my first performance.

So, I was having the time of my life. The concert started with selections from Mozart’s Idomeneo and finished the first half with the Banquet Scene from Verdi’s Macbeth. At this point in the story Macbeth is starting to see the ghosts of the people he’s killed in order to become King and he’s cracking. The music has a swaying to-and-fro kind of tempo, that’s actually spooky, and it keeps building and building to big, loud, climatic phrases and then, in true Veridian fashion, we return to the quiet spooky part and start building again. Big, fat, high note for the tenor section held forever at the finale, which I nailed. Thank You.

Now, the most Anne Marie and I had spoken was at my audition. I was trying to keep a low profile because I still was unsure of myself on a lot of levels in this new environment. At the halftime, I was feeling pretty sporty and as we went up for part two, Anne Marie and Lorraine always stood in the hall and wished us well as we filed on stage. I know we exchanged smiles.

The second half of the concert for us were big set pieces from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. If you think the titles are too much of a mouthful just do what we do and say Cav. & Pag. I was whipping my way through my music and I had actually over studied, if that’s even possible. By the time we get to performance week, our rehearsal period becomes so concentrated, that by the concert I’m usually singing about a page ahead of myself in the music. It’s really just for reference at that point.

During one of the Pagliacci pieces as I was turning a page, I actually made a cut off a couple beats too early on a held note. It was during a very busy part of the music but Anne Marie immediately noticed and looked at me. Right at me. The expression on her face was just mildly quizzical, not cross or angry in any way. After turning a mild shade of red, I dove back into my music and we finished the concert in glory. No one near me mentioned my early cut off and I’m sure I stayed well clear of Anne Marie at the reception, just in case.

Then the Sunday matinee and, frankly, I had completely forgotten about it. No biggie. Anne Marie always gives us notes on the performance and the things to which we need to pay special attention such as, tempo changes and tricky passages that need more definition. There are a thousand little things in every piece that require some sort of nuance and the part that surprises me is that she always does this without having written anything down. The job of keeping us together is a large one. When she’s leading the soloists and the chorus in ensemble it’s an enormous task.

I was actually singing even better the next day which is funny because one feels tired from the night before but the voice is so warmed up you almost have to be careful not to step on the gas too hard. I took no prisoners during the Macbeth finale and then we were back at the second half and the complicated Pagliacci piece. I’m singing away and I notice that we’re coming to the spot where I made the early cut off and, just as we get to it. I look up from my music and my blood runs cold. Anne Marie is looking right at me, on purpose, no mistaking. She has this slightly amused and expectant look on her face. I remembered having to breathe again fairly quickly because the breath I had somehow had disappeared. I sang the phrase, held the note for the required number of beats and then shot Anne Marie a million dollar smile of relief which she returned right back to me.

For a moment I stood there in wonder over the fact that, with the myriad number of things that she has to pay attention to before, during and after the concert, she had actually remembered. Not only remembered but, was actually waiting for me when we got to the spot to remind me.

Wow.

I’ve told this story to everyone who knows me as an example of what an extraordinary leader Anne Marie is but I think this might be the first time she may be hearing it.

I did have one other minor social faux pas that merits repeating after I got my first cell phone.. Irritating cell phone rings were rampant at the time. Everywhere you went someone’s cell phone was going off and each ringtone was uglier and more disturbing than the last. The irritation level was pretty high. I had, cleverly I thought, insured myself against complaint or objection by downloading the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing The Star Spangled Banner as my ringtone. One of my favorite songs and who, I ask you, could object to that ?

I’m always very conscientious about keeping my phone on vibrate at work and during quiet situations, rehearsals included. Until….one evening when we were all working on a particularly difficult piece and finally were ready to run it from the top. Anne Marie said, “O.K., everybody up!” We stood, and just as she was about to give the down beat, the orchestra in my pocket started playing the National Anthem. Loudly. I scrambled for the off switch as fast as I could and stood there hoping the earth would open and swallow me whole. I did get the withering glance of the Goddess for a moment and then she smiled tartly and said, “Well, at least we were all standing”.

Rehearsals start soon and I can’t wait. I’ll keep you posted.

The Forza Float & Spin

Brandon Brotsky — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:17:39 +0000

Verdi gave his opera La Forza Del Destino a real mouthful of a title. As a result, we opera geeks just say Forza. It’s like ‘Vegas’. The ‘Las’ is for the neophyte. We know what we’re talking about.

When I told a good friend of mine that I was going to attempt to explain the plot of Forza in my next blog, her stunned response was, ”Forza has a plot?!?!”. But seriously, if they gave out awards for over complicated story lines, it would be a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize of ‘Huh?’.

Adapted from a Spanish melodrama of the time, it’s story can best be described as lurid. Leonora Di Vargas, a young Spanish noblewoman, is in love with Alvaro, a South American Indian half-breed nobleman, who’s pedigree doesn’t seem to have survived his Atlantic crossing. At least that’s what Leonora’s father, the Marquis di Calatrava, thinks. In what must be the clumsiest elopement in opera, Alvaro inadvertently shoots the Marquis while trying to surrender his pistola after they have been discovered. The Marquis curses them both ( Maladizone! ) and dies. So much for the honeymoon.

Leonora, stunned by the ineptitude of her affiances’ skill with a firearm, spends the rest of her life (and the opera), avoiding her brother Carlo, who’s sworn out a vengeance of death on her and the crack shot boyfriend. Four long Acts later, there’s been a war, pestilence, famine and some cross-dressing.

After Alvaro unknowingly saves Carlo’s life on the battlefield in Act III, the two swear the bonds of fraternal brotherhood. Learning their true identities a few moments later, Carlo, hot-headed and ungrateful, declares the manhunt back on and gives Alvaro a sporting head start. Trust me when I say, it doesn’t end well for anyone.

But, if you’re a true opera lover all you really need to know is Act II, Scene 2. That’s the part with the cross-dressing.

Leonora arrives outside the Monastery at Hornachuelos (Gesundheit!), dressed as a man. She’s on the lamb but has just enough time to launch into one of the greatest Verdi Soprano Scena’s ever written. Opening first with her terror of travelling alone and nearly running into her brother in the scene before, Verdi then gives her a double aria, cleverly using the monks’ chanting on the other side of the wall as back up to the second half (very pre-Motown), before she pulls the bell and asks to be let in. How the monks managed not to hear her caterwaulings for the past 10 minutes just outside their door remains shrouded in operatic mystery.

Upon entering, she requests an interview (duet) with Padre Guardiano, at which time all she does is reveal her identity to him. He’s already heard all about her because, even before the invention of the TV, newspapers and the iphone, a story that juicy travelled pretty fast. Nonetheless, for anyone who was hanging out in the bar for Act I, Leonora gives a full recount of her predicament, replete with thundering high notes of hysteria and pianissimo plea’s for pity. She begs to be sheltered from the world forever and then throws herself on the mercy of the courtyard.

She immediately does receive the blessing of the Padre and then takes her holy vows. Now, even though the Monastery of Hornacheulos (Gesundheit!), should, in no way, be confused with any Four Seasons Hotel, Leonora demands to be shown to their very worst accommodation, a cave. Before she hangs out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ for the the rest of her life, (only the next two acts and, in reality, retiring to the relative comfort of her dressing room), she and her back-up monks do a little more singing.

First, the monks throw down another big ‘maledizione’ on anyone who even thinks of intruding on her solitude; a massive curse, so mean and nasty that it is unmentionable. Then, they sing a prayer of peace and protection. This prayer, “La Vergine degli Angeli”, is one of the most profoundly beautiful moments in all of opera. Leonora’s lyric histrionics of the last 20 minutes have spanned the entire soprano vocal range with nearly no emotion left unsung. Verdi presents the listener now with a hushed musical landscape and broad phrases arching plaintively to heaven’s ears. It ends with one of the few codas Verdi wrote with a downward musical figure. Solemnity perfected.

In “La Vergine degli Angeli”, the soprano has one last vocal calisthenic that she needs to pull out of her bag of tricks, the ‘Float & Spin’ combo. Most difficult and certainly why the Maestro allowed our Diva to warm up her entire repertoire of skills before this final hurdle. The ’Float & Spin’ is when the soprano hits anything above a ‘G’ natural and, by dint of skill and training, gives the note the aural illusion of suspension above the breath along with a hypnotic whirling that’s almost preternatural. When you hear someone do it right, it sounds as if the air supporting the phrase is really endless and the only reason the singer is breathing is to end the sentence of the lyric. Suffice to say, it’s the vocal equivalent of a Cirque du Soleil act.

At our upcoming concert, and, for the first time in our 28 years, you will hear the Verdi Chorus with our guest soprano, Susana Diaz, as Leonora, and Baritone Section Leader, Mauricio A. Palma II, as Padre Guardiano, perform the finale of this scene, with the curse and prayer. I was honestly surprised that this excerpt, which is so well known and so seemingly simple, had never entered our repertory before now. What I’ve discovered in rehearsal is that in spite of it’s simple appearance, it’s very difficult to perform, not only because of the necessary tension required under the quiet singing to keep it’s momentum, but the fact that it feels like you’re working in miniature with every breath having meaning.

I’m extra proud to be part of this debut, along with a lot of other new music for us. As we come into the home stretch with rehearsals, I know this is going to be a really special concert.

See you there!

Tenor + Error = Terror

robin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:39:52 +0000

Tenor + Error = Terror

There I was, innocently casting about for ideas for a Halloween blog, when the most terrifying thing imaginable happened right in front of me. An event so petrifying and unthinkable it may have left a few of our ranks scarred for life.

At the last Verdi Chorus rehearsal the Tenor Section made a mistake!

Impossible, you say? I know. Take a breath and let me try to explain the events that led to the Earth momentarily slipping from its axis. For our upcoming concert, our beloved leader, Anne Marie Ketchum, chose some pieces from Goyescas by the Spanish composer Enrique Granados. From a musical standpont, I have to say that they are very exciting. They have a vivaciousness and a tang that I think you only find in Latin music. The rhythms are sharp and muscular at times. We even get to sing,”Ole!” a lot. Bonus.

The Tenor section so rarely makes a mistake of any kind that I could, with every confidence, substitute the word ‘never’ at the beginning of this sentence and still pass a lie detector test. The answer is simple. We almost always have the melody. Even when we sing harmony, it’s usually above the melody which means it’s still easy to pick out. The poor Second Sopranos and Mezzos are often lost in a thicket of downward stemmed notes trying to pick out their parts on the measure. To say nothing of the poor Baritones and Basses, adrift in the dreaded abyss of the Bass Clef, which I still refuse to believe is actually real. I’ll never understand how that works and am thankful everyday that I don’t have to. On some older music, there’s even an actual Tenor Clef with our very own insignia. We’re that special. It’s true. It’s not that we Tenors are smug or anything. We just like to think we’re perfect 24/7!

Now that I’ve drawn the curtain away from the mystery of our extraordinary batting average, I will recount the tale of how a simple page turn was the Waterloo that led to our apocalypse. Please understand that Goyescas is, in its’ rhythmic complexity to music, something akin to what calculus is to math. Maybe I exaggerate; how about long division? It’s hard. You need to concentrate. On top of that, add the linguistic gauntlet of singing in real Spanish, not the Latin or Central American variety with which we Southern Californians are so familiar. Oh, no. We’re talking the Spanish of Kings. The Spanish they lisp in Madrid. I have to be vigilant in the face of every ‘C’, double ‘L’ and passing ‘Y’. I’ve had to learn a completely new way to pronounce the ‘S’ with a very soft forward hiss that is immediately recognizable to anyone who has spent time with a Spaniard.

So, when we finally came upon this particularly awkward phrase, sprinkled with all these linquistic distractions, it was separated right down the middle by the most heartless page turn a publisher had ever placed in a printed score. It was no surprise that the Tenors had a train wreck. How bad, you ask? The shock wave jolted the rehearsal to a complete stop. It was so bloody and heinous, I thought we were going to have to call the musical equivalent of 911and off-duty members of the LA Phil. would arrive shortly with the choral equivalent of the jaws of life.

Luckily, we have Anne Marie. She is a serious and gifted musician whose skills for teaching difficult music are sovereign. Yet, even her mouth was agape at how badly we had mangled this moment. Then…the dreaded mirth. As the snickers started over in the Soprano section (I know who you are), Anne Marie rested herself against the piano, curled her mouth into the most satisfied Cheshire Cat grin, and suggested to the rest of the chorus that they all ‘savor’ this moment of Tenor fail.

After this brief respite and more general hilarity at the expense of our now humbled section, she set to work. It was a most methodical process and she ended up enlisting the help of the entire chorus. We learned the phrase in sections and then put it all back together until it was pointed out that even I had gotten it right.

I feel nary a twinge of embarrassment recounting this tale now because I’m supremely confident it will never happen again. Smugness restored.

In the spirit of the season, however, I will leave you with the rather macabre coda to the story of Granados and his Goyescas because it’s great success actually led, inadvertently, to his death. Plans for its’ premiere at the Paris Opera had to be scrapped due to the outbreak of World War I. It was, instead, debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1916 to such acclaim that Granados was invited by our President Woodrow Wilson to perform a piano recital at the White House. He and his wife then had to reschedule their return to Europe. On their voyage home to Spain, their ship, the French steamer Sussex, was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in the English Channel and all were lost…

LADIES & GENTLEMEN – CARMEN

Brandon Brotsky — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 04:46:13 +0000

LADIES & GENTLEMEN,

At this evening’s performance the role of ‘Carmen’

will be played by…a 3 year old.

Last Monday evening was our third rehearsal. We’re separated for the first half hour, ladies’ and men’s parts, and then, come together for the rest of our time until 10pm.

Anne Marie had us launch directly into the “Chorus of Cigarette Girls” from Act I of Bizet’s Carmen. This will be my first time singing anything from that opera and I’m sincerely excited to actually learn this music.

Without looking at my collection, I’d guess I own at least six complete recordings of Carmen, maybe as many discs of highlights and at least two DVDs. If the Carmen we’ve hired gets so much as a head cold the night of our performance, I’ll have the rose in my teeth! Trust me.

For a first run-through, the women sounded darn near magnificent. They’d obviously been practicing at home. Of course, the piece hadn’t reached its true pinnacle of greatness because the tenor section had yet to sing those tell tale phrases that announce the entrance of the opera’s star. I’ll pause and cast my eyes downward in inherent tenor modesty.

Then, an incredible and peculiar thing happened, unlike anything that has ever happened at our rehearsals before. Carmen made her entrance a few pages earlier in the form of a little girl – no older than 3 is my guess. She pushed open the door, just enough, and walked into the room.

Now, to get to that door you have to climb two flights of steep and narrow stairs. I know I speak for everyone in the chorus when I say that, at one time or another, in high heels or dress shoes, we’ve all had a near death experience on those stairs. This little girl had to have heard the music and decided it was worth investigating.

She had red hair that was curly and long and she was wearing a cute outfit that was green with red pants.

The church we practice and perform in hosts many civic groups, so it isn’t unusual to see a child in the halls, but it was the first time we had a visitor come all the way up those stairs.

She just stood there. She didn’t seem frightened or surprised. She did appear a little bit entranced as she stood very still and listened. Slowly, everyone started to notice her presence.

Anne Marie had definitely noticed at this point and I’m sure was about to stop conducting when the girl’s mother walked in. The stairs are steep and I’m sure her little toddler was up and around the corner before she even noticed. Her mother walked up behind her and I could tell she didn’t want to spoil the mood. After a few moments she took her daughter’s hand to guide her out of the room. Our little guest made it apparent she wanted to stay by not moving. If she had any words she was completely beyond using them. She was, no doubt, transfixed by the music. Her mother waited a moment or two longer, I’m sure enjoying the music herself, and then picked up her little girl and carried her out of the room.

The crying started shortly thereafter. Anne Marie smiled and some of us started to laugh. The crying continued and one of the soprano’s in the front row said, “We’ve never had a mascot”. A minute later she was out of hearing distance.

My sincerest hope is that this magical, musical moment has marked this little girl for life. I pray she never recovers from her first experience with opera. At such close range, it can be life altering. I have no doubt. I hope it fills her dreams and fuels her imagination forever.

I want her to be haunted by the music from Carmen until one day she hears it again, and on some level, finds the fulfillment she remembers craving. She will hear Carmen again, but what I really want, most of all, is for her to hear this music again, over the loudspeaker in her dressing room, as she’s positioning that red rose in her hair just so, about to make her Metropolitan Opera debut as Carmen.

I went to sleep on that dream that night.

You know I can’t make this stuff up.

Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me!

Brandon Brotsky — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:14:38 +0000

Sounds like I’m warming up, doesn’t it?

As this is my first official post on the new and exciting Verdi Chorus blog, I’ve been asked to sidestep my inherent tenor modesty (pause for laugh) and give a little background about myself and how I came to join The Verdi Chorus.

To say I arrived in a roundabout way would be an understatement, but how glad I am that I did will be evident in a moment. I’ve been an opera fan since my teens and having always had a voice, it just seemed like I was almost fated to be an opera singer. I studied seriously for many years, had done the opera programs at Santa Monica College and UCLA and had even served a 3-year stint in the chorus of the Baltimore Symphony when I moved there with my voice coach and her husband.

The realities and sacrifices of becoming a working singer became less attractive with time and I missed my home and family too much and came back to Santa Monica. I settled into the career of a luxury travel agent and friends would ask me to sing at parties. My boss also asked me to sing at our holiday gatherings but that was the extent of my public performing for nearly 10 years.

Another travel agent friend, Robin Van Zak, heard that I sang and every time I ran into her at an industry function, she would start talking about the Verdi Chorus and how I should join. I was riding a particularly high horse out of the barn named “ I’m a Soloist “ and did my very best to be polite to her endless entreaties. I joke with Robin now that she should be given a finder’s fee since this went on (and I’m not kidding) for years.

I should probably mention that tenors are ‘thin on the ground’ as my voice coach used to say. The natural male voice is really a baritone, of which there are many along with basses. But “a good tenor is hard to find” and all choirs and choruses have a particular challenge building a tenor section.

One day, years later, it did occur to me that for someone who loved singing and sang all the time, my living room was a pretty quiet venue and kinda small. Sure, my neighbors loved me and they could ALL hear me, but it wasn’t the same. Enter tireless Robin at yet another travel industry get together. Her pleas had taken on a defeatist and antagonistic edge by now, but a deal was struck, a call was made and I had an audition. It was only then that I discovered that the Verdi Chorus rehearsed and performed 10 blocks from my apartment in Santa Monica. By the way, I don’t drive. A sign, you say? Perhaps.

The first person I met was the Chorus Secretary, Thelma Sherman, now our Chorus President, I am very happy to report. Warm and welcoming, she wished me luck as she directed me up to the chorus room. Who me, nervous? I hadn’t sung for anyone who really knew what they were listening to in 10 years and hadn’t had a voice lesson in almost as long. I met the Chorus Director, Anne Marie Ketchum, who proceeded to have me sing scales for what seemed like an eternity of pain. My nerves were so bad I could barely support my voice. Sight-reading – the terror mounts! During a break we discovered we’d had the same voice teacher and a mutual colleague back from the days of the Verdi Restaurant. What a relief! I remember apologizing for the state of my voice and Anne Marie, very graciously and deftly, deflecting the remark. I was in!

The first rehearsal is always my favorite because that’s when we find out what we’re going to sing in the coming concert. I discovered that Anne Marie made very imaginative choices and that we had very similar taste. The first half of our concert were pieces from two rarely performed operas that happen to be favorites of mine: Mozart’s ‘Idomeneo’ and Verdi’s ‘Macbeth’. Another sign, perhaps?

Another large voiced tenor joined that season, Martin Olvera, and we were happy to find a very friendly competition between us. The first concert was a serious thrill, singing all this great music I had loved all my life and the bonus of being able to really sing out with my mature voice which was a new feeling. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and as the performance drew closer, I started to feel myself becoming a singer again. All the old muscles back and working.

During the Spring session that year, we were asked to participate in a community outreach concert with a number of church choirs and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. We sang 3 Verdi choruses and I sat behind the timpani while they performed Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’. I regained full use of my hearing a few days later, but in the meantime, it occurred to me that the LA Phil had not heretofore been beating my door down so, maybe this was a good gig to stick with.

Two years later we were invited by Jacaranda, which is a contemporary music ensemble in Santa Monica. We were asked to join them in the American premiere of a recently discovered piece by Olivier Messiaen that had been written to commemorate the release of the prisoners at the end of World War II. ‘Chantes des Deportes’ is a page and a half of bombast at the top of everyone’s lungs and the stage was crammed with every instrument you could imagine including more timpani than I had ever seen in one place and a concert grand piano without the lid. With two hundred musicians and singers, it was a geschrei. We performed it once and then gave an encore. It’s on YouTube now. So, I’m figuring at this point that I’m as famous as I’m ever gonna be and I have the Verdi Chorus to thank for it..

Last year we were invited by the City of Los Angeles, the LA Opera and the Music Center to be part of the Wagner Festival surrounding the first performances of The Ring Cycle. The whole first half of our concert was Wagner and it had been a life long dream for me to sing his music someplace other than my living room. It was a tremendous experience on many levels and our soprano soloist, Erin Wood, was a school mate of mine at UCLA. We also performed at the opening ceremonies for the Ring Festival at a very swank shin-dig at the LA County Art Museum and were even able to attend the dress rehearsal of “Gotterdammerung “.

I look back at these five, seemingly short, years and can’t imagine what challenges and experiences the future holds. We have achieved so much under the guidance of our Board and the leadership of our wonderful Director, Anne Marie Ketchum. Through sheer serendipity I became a guest music critic on an opera website, Parterre.com, and then suddenly I’m invited to blog for the Verdi Chorus on this, our new revamped site.

I’m looking forward to sharing with all of you, the stories of our members and the importance of the music we all love and perform. Perhaps this will shine some insight into the process as we build our next concert together.
Let’s begin!