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Think about “opera.” Now, take the image of the fat lady with long blonde braids letting out a massive wail and replace it with a beautiful 26-year-old woman, singing powerfully, but sweetly, to her lover. Take the idea of non-relatable story lines in unfamiliar times and replace them with timeless tales of love, hate, betrayal, murder, jealousy and passion. Take the fear of something new and replace it with excitement.
This season, Syracuse Opera is presenting an ideal opportunity for both longtime opera lovers and opera virgins; it’s a season of classics, but also of some of the most accessible works of all time. The stories are enduring; the characters, unforgettable; and the music, recognizable.
The pieces include Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Performers selected from auditions held in New York City earlier this year include impressive names from throughout the country: Veronica Mitina and Kristopher Irmiter in Tosca, Kyle Albertson and Audrey Babock in Sweeney Todd, and David Cushin and Amanda Pabyan in The Marriage of Figaro. All will be joined by both new faces and other well-known performers throughout Syracuse Opera’s 2012-2013 roster. It’s a season that offers enough drama and emotion to move anyone with a pulse.
“If you have any soul at all, when you start hearing Tosca you see these relationships,” music director Douglas Kinney Frost explains. “We’re talking about date rape, jealousy, escape. Tosca is so overwhelmingly emotional, you would have to be a stone to sit through it and not feel something.”
Cristopher Frisco is a resident artist and performer in both Tosca and Sweeney Todd. “I think it’s great because it’s sort of a crossover between opera and musical theater,” he explains about Sweeney Todd. “It’s in English, no language barrier. It’s being done in a smaller, more intimate space. We’ll be nice and up-close. And it’s action-packed. Very few people make it out alive. . . ”
And Mozart’s Figaro is widely accepted as an absolute staple. “Some people say it’s the perfect opera,” says Cathy Wolff, Syracuse Opera’s general and artistic director. “It has tunes that will be familiar, including one used in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a scene in the movie where they’re playing a recording over the loudspeaker for the prisoners from The Marriage of Figaro.”
But for those who remain skeptical of the oft-maligned art form,
perhaps the physical experience of a play set to music will be enough to
convince opera virgins to pop their cherry. “There’s a physical
response to hearing those voices and the music that these amazing
creators have given us,” Wolff says. “And if it’s done well, it’s a kind
of experience that I have to say, and I have people who will argue with
this, it can be as good as sex for those of us who really react to it.
And I speak from experience.”
The Young And the Restless
Angela Theis is 26 years old, from Michigan and as wide-eyed and cheery as a child on Christmas, especially when she gets talking about opera. The bubbly brunette might be young, but she’s seen a lot of the world, thanks to her career path, one that landed her here in Syracuse as Johanna in Sweeney Todd and as part of the Resident Artist Performers program.
She saw her first opera in high school when her choir traveled all the way to New York City for a competition in 2003. While in the city, the group also saw a Broadway musical and an opera at the Metropolitan Opera. Theis’ eyes were opened then, in more ways than one.
“It was amazing,” she gushes. “We had horrible seats. We were all the way at the top. We all got dressed up and we were exhausted. I sat there in the seat with my hands holding my eyelids open so I wouldn’t fall asleep because I said, ‘Oh, I have to take this all in.’”
She studied business and music at Notre Dame, but she realized the operations side wasn’t for her. She focused more on music, but was on the fence about pursuing opera specifically until a semester in Rome. While there, she studied privately with an Italian opera singer who reminded her why she fell in love with opera in the first place.
“No English was spoken in the lessons,” she says. “It was a totally different teaching style than I was used to. It was about demonstration and just nothing academic and I was not used to that. I was used to following the rules and thinking about things so much, but it wasn’t about that in these lessons. It was about freeing your mind, your voice and expressing this incredible story. I was so moved by that and so inspired by his example and he would sing and the notes that would come out were just huge.”
Theis went on to receive her master’s of vocal performance degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After finishing her degree she scored the opportunity to pursue post-graduate studies in Salzburg, Austria, while she was a resident artist for the Utah Opera in Salt Lake City.
“I had really intensive periods where I was in Austria doing coachings and stuff and then I’d go back to Utah and sing and perform,” she says of her cross-continent commute. “I only did that a few times. I’ve got some frequent flier miles.” Today, Theis travels the country and the world on a mission to share her own love of the art form, one she wishes more people would undertake.
“Opera is live theater on a larger-than-life scale,” she explains. “It’s a combination of so many great things. Live music played by an orchestra, live singing, fantastic costumes, scenery. You have a combination of so many great things and when you hear this high note coming out of a tenor or a soprano, you’re blown away. You get chills. Your body experiences things on another level.”
The vocal feat of opera, where singers project their voices sufficiently to fill 2,000-seat auditoriums with no amplification, is just one facet of the performance that sets it apart from musicals or concerts. There is a lot to be said for that physical reaction, according to Frost.
“There is something literally with the frequencies,” he explains. “Everything we do is acoustic. And that one-on-one connection, you can’t replace. I can sense the energy behind me {when I conduct}. To me, it’s almost like, not like colors, but it’s like a distortion of energy going back and forth. A moment of supreme drama. The composer writes a pause and we all feel it. There is not a sound: 2,000 people utterly quiet because they’re completely committed. That happens all the time. It’s incredibly powerful.”
During this season, opera-goers will experience many moments of supreme drama throughout the three wildly emotional pieces Syracuse Opera will be putting on. Tosca is a story of betrayal where a passionate diva becomes a murderer in an attempt to save her lover’s life, all fueled by the heart-wrenching melodies of Puccini. Dark humor comes in the form of human-filled meat pies in Sweeney Todd, a piece that will be performed in a more intimate setting, allowing audiences an even more up-close-and-personal look at opera. And The Marriage of Figaro offers up the melodic brilliance of Mozart with sides of mayhem and madness.
All three will combat the four excuses Wolff most often hears from people resistant to giving opera a try. “One, they say, I won’t understand it,” she begins. Perhaps, she thinks, potential patrons don’t realize that super-titles in English appear above the stage. “Two, it’s too expensive, though we have a wide ticket price range starting at $18. Three, it’s boring. I always find that one interesting because if you pay attention to the plots of these operas, they’re like soap operas. And four, it’s not familiar. Oftentimes people don’t realize how much opera they really know. If they come to a performance, they’ll probably walk away going, ‘I knew that tune!’ It’s amazing how much opera gets used.”
Video Saved
the Opera Star
The connotation of the word “opera” is changing all the time and Syracuse Opera represents a movement away from the perception of old and snobby opera die-hards, to young, hip and adventurous opera fans. There’s no dress code at Syracuse Opera performances, so anything from jeans to gowns goes, and all types, from retirees to kids, pass through the doors.
There are groups that gather before operas for dinner parties where they listen through the opera to prep for the show. One high school group is called “The Tiara Society,” with students coming to shows decked out in prom dresses, tuxes and tiaras. Some even see a connection between music videos and opera, which could explain some of the recent popularity among young adults.
“My nephews who are in their early 20s—to them, opera is cool,” Frost says. “People say the MTV generation, the idea of a story set to music is what videos were and so if you stretch it out and people’s attention span gets a little longer as they grow up, it comes out of that. And the idea that the guy who listens to country music in his truck wouldn’t like jazz or a chick flick or opera is just not real anymore. People aren’t living stereotyped lives anymore. I’ll go to a hockey game and see patrons of the opera. This idea that I’m an opera person so I can’t like sports or I like wine so I can’t like country music—that just doesn’t exist in popular culture anymore. People are varied. They’ll see Sting on Friday and an opera on Saturday. It’s cool.”
For those willing to ditch the stigma and dump the stereotypes that opera has dragged around for too many years, this is the perfect season at Syracuse Opera to do just that. The season begins and ends at the Mulroy Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Concert Theater, 411 Montgomery St. Tosca arrives on Friday, Oct. 19, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2 p.m. The Marriage of Figaro wraps the season on Friday, April 26, 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 28 at 2 p.m.
Between these works will be Sweeney Todd. It will run for six shows: Friday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m.; Sunday, Feb. 10, 2 p.m.; Tuesday, Feb. 12, 7:30 p.m.; Wednesday, Feb. 13, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Feb. 15, 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Feb. 17, 2 p.m. The performances take place in the smaller Carrier Theater at the Civic Center, hence the additional show times.
Ticket prices range from $18 to $175 with subscription options also
available. All three performances will feature the Syracuse Opera Chorus
and Symphony Syracuse, while Tosca will also feature the Syracuse Opera Children’s Chorus. For more information, visit syracuseopera.com or call 476-7372.
