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The Carmen Project
by Kathryn Bumpass |
Don't delay! Put OperaSLO's performances of Bizet's popular opera Carmen, on your calendar now. Those important dates are Saturday, October 12 at 7:00pm, and Sunday, October 13 at 2:00pm. Tickets are now on sale. Prices range from $10 to $75. You can reserve yours 24/7 at PAC-SLO or by telephone at 805-756-4849, Tuesday through Saturday, noon-6:00pm.
OperaSLO is pulling out all the stops for what's being called The Carmen Project, a major collaborative undertaking by classical performing groups in San Luis Obispo. Bizet's opera requires more than just singing. A large and colorful orchestra, ballet dancers, a children's chorus, and a large adult chorus are also essential parts of the production.
Dr. Brian Asher Alhadeff, artistic and general director of OperaSLO, has assembled an impressive list of local groups for The Carmen Project that includes the San Luis Obispo Symphony, Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo, the Cuesta College Chorus, and the Central Coast Children's Choir.
Mushegain
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Lead soloists hail from all over the United States, including recent favorite tenor, Ben Gulley, in the role of Don Jose. Last April, Gulley successfully debuted in the role of Prince Tamino in OperaSLO and Cal Poly's Co-Opera production of Mozart's The Magic Flute.
The sultry role of Carmen will be played by mezzo-soprano Karen Mushegain, heard locally in Festival Mozaic's 2012 season. Soprano Ciera Lambourn will sing the part of Micaela, and bass-baritone Isaac Musik-Ayala the role of Escamillo.
Maestro Alhadeff notes that "The Carmen Project is more than a collaboration among arts organizations. It's also a picture of SLO-life and civic arts support as well." Among the other contributors is Los Osos artist David Kreitzer, who has created and donated the publicity poster for the event. "The original image is a glorious large watercolor entitled Carmen, which is for sale. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to OperaSLO," Alhadeff stated.
Ben Gully |
Further, Wedell Cellars winery has designated an entire barrel special release pinot noir from their Santa Rita Hills vineyard, entitled the Carmen wine, also bearing the Kreitzer image. One hundred percent of all wine sales benefit OperaSLO's 2013-2014 season.
The Opera
Carmen is a music tale of romance, seduction, jealousy, and violence, peopled by soldiers, cigarette girls, a bullfighter and his retinue, gypsies and bandits, as well as a sexy heroine and a soldier who is helplessly captivated by her. Carmen, as she tells us in her opening aria, the famous Habanera, is like a bird free to fly. She may love a man, but if he loves her, her love may vanish. Not to psychologize, but the process of seduction may be more exciting to her than its achievement.
She successfully seduces Don Jose and causes him to desert the army, spend time in jail, and take up with her cohort of gypsies and bandits. Destroyed by his mad passion for Carmen, he flies into a jealous rage when she falls in love with the bullfighter Escamillo. You'll have to attend the opera to see the end.
Carmen was first performed in 1875 at the Opera-comique in Paris, widely considered a "family" theater for the performance of sentimental comedies of manners and the like. It shocked its early audiences and the critics. The opera initially ran for thirty-six performances, but Bizet died on June 3, 1875, after the thirty-third performance and before the opera assumed the overwhelming popularity and appreciation it has enjoyed from the later 19th century to the present day.
Special Notice: Tenor Ben Gulley, who was to sing the role of Don José in two performances of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen on Saturday, October 12th at 7:30 and Sunday, October 13th at 2:00 has regrettably withdrawn from the city-wide production because of a severe bout of Asian Flu.
The MET Live in HD
October also marks the beginning of the Met Live in HD series in San Luis Obispo. Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin is the season opener on Sunday, October 20, at 2:00pm.
Based on Alexander Pushkin's novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin, the opera's story turns on a young girl's, Tatiana's, infatuation with the sophisticated Onegin, a man she hardly knows. In a breach of decorum she writes him a letter confessing her love. He, in turn, rejects her sentiments politely but coldly.
At a ball, Onegin, plagued by boredom and cynicism, flirts outrageously with the fiancée of his best friend, Lensky, who in his anger challenges Onegin to a duel. Though both regret having agreed to the duel, honor demands that they go through with it. Lensky is killed; Onegin goes abroad.
A few years pass, and Onegin returns to Russia. He is a guest at a party in honor of Prince Gremin, a friend from the past. Imagine his astonishment when he discovers Tatiana has married the Prince and is now a mature, gracious woman of high standing in society. This time he falls in love with her. In private he confesses his love, and now it is she who rejects him; though still in love with Onegin, she is determined to remain loyal to her husband.
Interestingly, Tchaikovsky did not call this an "opera", but rather "Lyric scenes in three acts". Indeed, there is little action of the usual sort, in large part because there is not much in Pushkin's novel. And Onegin is very closely based on the novel, even to the point of using Pushkin's words directly in parts of the libretto.
There are few big arias for the principals, and the most famous of those, Tatiana's "Letter scene", is based on a few relatively simple songs connected by recitatives, as Russian music scholar Richard Taruskin has observed. Lacking big gestures, Eugene Onegin unfolds as a remarkably intimate opera, a series of "lyrical scenes" indeed.
The Met's new production stars reigning diva Anna Netrebko as Tatiana, with Mariusz Kwiecien as Onegin and Piotr Beczala as Lensky.
As they used to say on the Monty Python Show, "And now for something completely different". Shostakovich's early opera The Nose will be shown Sunday, October 27, at 2:00pm. The Nose is a shrill, satiric and hilariously funny opera about a man whose nose detaches itself from his face and refuses to return.
The story, based on a novel of the same title by Nicolai Gogol, recounts the search for the nose, which has assumed the persona of a high-ranking official. Indeed, the sharpest satire is reserved for bureaucratic officialdom and those who both populate and depend on it. The shrewish woman, the drunks, the social climbers also figure prominently in the story.
The Nose was first performed in 1929 in a concert version, that is, without staging, a move Shostakovich firmly opposed. He wrote, "The Nose loses all meaning if it is seen just as a musical composition. For the music springs from the action. It is clear to me that a concert performance of The Nose will destroy it."
Indeed the action is the main source of the satire as well as the music. The parade of characters, their often absurd behaviors, the improbabilities of their relationships to each other and to reality – these all generate a pervasively rude kind of music that perfectly captures the both the subtle and the slapstick humor of the opera. Bring your sense of adventure and your sense of humor to the Met's production.
Paulo Szot portrays the hapless Kovalyov, the man who loses his nose. Andrey Popov is the police inspector and Alexander Lewis is "the Nose."
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