Leap of faith: Comonwealth Opera's professional debut is 'Cosi fan tutte'
Comonwealth Opera's professional debut is 'Cosi fan tutte'
Thursday, November 19, 20091
2
In its first production since its transition in June from a nonprofessional to a professional company, Commonwealth Opera will present Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte" this weekend at the Academy of Music in Northampton. The shift in the troupe's status has brought changes that will "thrill" audiences, says Eve Summer, assistant executive director of the company and stage director for "Cosi."
"It's the first time in 33 years that we will have a completely professional cast, orchestra, and professional production team," Summer said.
The Commonwealth Opera, founded by Richard Rescia of Northampton, has for 33 years produced operas and the occasional musical theater productions in the area, often mixing local talent with semi-professional or professional singers brought in for some of the more demanding leading roles. Rescia stepped down from his post as artistic director in 2004.
"In the past, Commonwealth Opera has always hired a few excellent professionals. The leap is making it all the time, all around," Summer said in a phone interview last week. "It's a level of technical musical skill and accomplishment and polish that will astonish and thrill audiences of western Massachusetts."
Although the company maintains a small office in Northampton, it has moved much of its operation out of the area, holding rehearsals for the latest production in Worcester to accommodate the talent and the production team, most of whom are from the Boston area.
That, says Summer, was done partly for convenience and partly to keep costs down. The company's operating budget remains at the same level as last year - between $200,000 and $250,000 - according to Summer, who lives in Arlington.
"We're on a very tight budget. We've really trimmed administrative costs enormously," she said.
To help keep their costs in check, Commonwealth Opera's directors, including Summer's father, Joseph Summer, the troupe's new executive director, chose "Cosi" for its inaugural production because it does not require expensive staging.
"It's a chamber opera, small, intimate, simple," Summer said. "In the future, our operating budget will have to increase, with more ambitious productions."
Party time
"Cosi fan tutte," which translates loosely to "women are like that," is a comic opera in two acts about love, lust, fidelity, friendship and greed. Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and first performed in 1790, the story follows two couples who are led by a pair of friendly conspirators to test their faithfulness to one another in a little game of partner mix and match. The fully staged production that is set in present-day Italy will be sung in Italian with English supertitles.
"This is about young people who stay up all night, drink too much, make really bad choices. And, at the end of the night, they are faced with the consequences," Summer said. "Considering all the goofy shenanigans that happen, it is such a truthful piece. We all know these characters and we can see in them a little of ourselves, our friends, our colleagues."
Accompanying the singers will be the Northampton-based Arcadia Players, a professional ensemble of musicians who play music of the 17th and 18th centuries on instruments and in a style that reflects the period when the music was composed.
"The audience will get to hear "Cosi" as Mozart envisioned it, and heard it, and audiences at his time heard it," Summer said. Arcadia Players' musical director, Ian Watson, will serve as the opera's musical director and conductor.
Appearing in the production will be soprano Andrea Chenoweth (Fiordiligi), a two-time regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions who has performed extensively across the country; tenor Joshua Kohl (Ferrando), who last season sang the role of Rodolfo in "La Boheme" with the Pittsburgh Opera; mezzo-soprano Glorivy Arroyo (Dorabella), a frequent performer with Opera Boston; baritone Paul Soper (Guglielmo) who has sung roles at Boston Lyric Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the National Touring Company of New York City Opera; soprano Mary Ellen Assue (Despina), who is known for her vocal range and acting skills; and baritone Philip Lima (Don Alfonso), whose singing has been called "glorious" by the Boston Globe.
Common goals
As for Summer, she has an extensive background in theater and grew up around opera.
"My father is an opera composer. I've been listening to opera since I was a baby. I was born with it in my life. It's been my world."
She says she and her father are of one mind when it comes to making plans for the transformed company's future.
"We share an aesthetic. Our goals for the company are the same." Among them: modernizing the opera's staging, partly in an attempt to attract a new, younger audience.
"Opera has a bad reputation as being elitist, snobby and stale, especially with young people," Summer said. "The gesturing and posturing associated with opera, the overacting, the melodrama static staging, all detract from the music and story rather than enhancing it. They [the audiences] deserve to see productions that are inventive."
To that end, she says, she has worked more closely with the singers on their acting than is common in opera.
"It's a small opera. I really had time to talk to every single singer, about character, about what we're doing and why. ... I'm confident that we've been able to talk about every scene, every choice. We've created people who are really real people."
Even so, she says, in her move to increase the focus on acting, she has faced some challenges.
"Before singers can think about character, they have to learn, to excel at, the music. To find the balance between time for music and staging, this is a challenge with every opera. But, it's a good challenge," she said. "I enjoy it."
As the company moves forward, Summer says, there will be some other changes: At least for the time being, the group has no plans to produce Broadway-style musicals, as it has done in the past.
"We're doing opera, opera, opera," she said.
And, while the Pioneer Valley is "home to the company's loyal fans and subscriber base," Summer says, there are plans to expand to other areas in New England where opera companies have closed, as they have in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
"There is a void in the opera community. Because of the economic downturn, companies have folded. We would love to be able to bring opera to those communities," she said. "But the base stays in Northampton."
This year the group does plan to retain one other popular local production: the free annual Messiah sing-along, this year scheduled for Dec 20 at 7 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church in Northampton.
"We want to keep the doors open to the community that's been so good to the Commonwealth Opera. But it's time to take the company to another level," she said. "This is less of a transition, more of a leap. It's our coming out party."
About this opera
WHAT: Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte"
WHEN: Friday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.
WHERE: Academy of Music, Northampton
COST: $50, $40, $25; students: $15
MORE INFO: Tickets are available online at www.academyofmusictheatre.tix.com or by calling the Academy of Music box office at 584-9032. For more information, visit www.commonwealthopera.org.
Kathleen Mellen can be reached at kmellen@gazettenet.com.
