Interview: Lauren Worsham

The limitless Lauren Worsham.
Photos from laurenworsham.com.

It’s hard to imagine two works more dissimilar than Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland and David T. Little and Royce Vavrek’s Dog Days, but on April 27, when Master Voices performs Toyland in concert at Carnegie Hall, one woman will connect the two. Soprano Lauren Worsham — whose shattering performances as Lisa in Dog Days rank among the finest I have ever seen — will take the ingénue role of Jane. She may not yet be the music-theater equivalent of Kevin Bacon, the necessary link to everything and everyone, but give her time.

Her limpid, vibrant voice commands attention, and she knows how to use it to project the kind of innocence that’s equally appropriate in Little’s Dystopia and Herbert’s Toyland. Already she’s excelled in operetta at New York City Opera and, on Broadway, in an acclaimed turn as Phoebe in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, warbling her heart out and picking up Drama Desk and Theatre World awards and a Tony nomination. She runs an opera company, the Coterie, and is the lead singer in Sky-Pony — a rock band — while also appearing in concert and in cabaret. To this observer, it seems there’s nothing that doesn’t interest her, and nothing she can’t do.

“I definitely try to do many things,” Worsham says, calling herself “a jack-of-all-trades and not necessarily a master of any of them.” (I beg to disagree.) “How did I get to the point where I can? I think it was more that I decided that I wanted to. I didn’t want to focus on one thing. As with most things in my life, my path found me.”

“Mirror, Mirror”: As Lisa in Dog Days.
One of the most astonishing performances I have ever witnessed.

Growing up in Austin, Texas, Worsham sang the music that was in the air around her, rock and blues, and her first voice teacher was a blues musician. She also sang in her high-school choir, and her interest in musical theater led her to audition for a college production of Candide. After graduation from Yale (cum laude, because of course) and a stint in the first national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, she found herself playing Cunegonde again, this time in New York City Opera’s revival of Candide, in 2008.

Worsham had begun to broaden and deepen her understanding of opera, with which she’d been only somewhat familiar. But she says, “I love narrative and I love drama, and at that point opera wasn’t focusing on those things in the way that a college student would have been aware of.” In NYCO’s late, lamented VOX program for new work, Worsham met Little and Vavrek, who were about to change many people’s notions of narrative and drama in opera. “Dog Days is the greatest thing I’ve done, maybe the greatest thing I’ll ever do,” Worsham says — adding, “until the next time I work with David and Royce!”

For City Opera’s Candide, “They double-cast me with a more trained singer,” Worsham remembers. “They set me up with a voice teacher, and I credit her with helping me open up my classical voice.” This training strikes me as crucial to her multifaceted career: the desire to do many things and the talent to persuade people to allow you to do many things will take you only so far if you don’t have the technique to pull it off. (My hat is off to Worsham’s teacher, Virginia Grasso.)

In Gentleman’s Guide, with Jane O’Hare and Bryce Pinkham.

Worsham also respects “good vocal hygiene.” The main thing for me is not yelling in bars. [Presumably when she’s performing with Sky-Pony.] There’s a difference between doing something one night, or every night of the week. Everything requires a different kind of maintenance and paying attention to your body. I definitely learned that the hard way with Gentleman’s Guide.

“When I first started, I had a high, nasal speaking voice for Phoebe,” she continues. “For the first eight months, it was fine, but then it started to catch up with me. In the same way that if you woke up every morning and bend your knees, you’ll get more flexible, but if you sit at a desk all day, you’ll lose flexibility. Using that voice gave my larynx bad habits. I’d never done a show that many days a week for that long. There’s a difference between a long game and a short game.”

While Worsham’s rock voice doesn’t sound precisely like her operetta voice, it’s recognizably the same instrument, and just as irresistible. Her approach to any piece of music, she says, is rooted in character: “Different characters have different ways they carry their body and different ways they use their voice. Different songs have different characters and different textures. Sometimes it’s a choice: ‘This would sound good.’ When it comes to opera, that’s a matter of technique, but when it comes to something like pop music, a lot of the time for me it’s a matter of letting go, of trying to be ‘on the voice,’ just trying to tell the story.”

Rocking out with Sky-Pony.
Worsham’s husband, Kyle Jarrow, is also in the band.

Story-telling is always her principal concern, though “in opera I’m also focused on continuation of the voice and on technique.” Recalling her harrowing aria from Dog Days, she says, “In the same way that I think I wouldn’t be telling the story we’re trying to tell if I belted ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ singing pop songs with perfect technique and vowels wouldn’t tell the story that song wants to tell, in that sense.”

Master Voices likewise believes in “The Art of Musical Storytelling,” and Babes in Toyland has told many over the years. At the time of its premiere, in 1904, it was customary to change the materials in American operetta, to drop one number and add another, or to re-work a scene to suit a particular performer. As the two movie adaptations show, the material is highly flexible: there’s no Laurel and Hardy in Disney’s Toyland. But there’s not really an Ur-text, and Toyland hasn’t seen a major New York revival in generations. Master Voices artistic director Ted Sperling has prepared a score and, with Joe Keenan, cobbled together a script. “It’s hilarious,” Worsham says, comparing it to classic movie scripts. “Everyone seems to have some zingers … there’s no straight man.”

Sperling has assembled a spectacular cast for Toyland, led by another soprano who straddles both Broadway and opera, Kelli O’Hara. Jonathan Freeman adds another villain to his résumé (he’s played Aladdin’s Jafar in every medium you can name) with the role of Barnaby; and Jay Armstrong Johnson, a Broadway favorite who sang the title role in NYCO’s most recent revival of Candide, is Tom Tom, Jane’s love interest. And with the master clown Bill Irwin as the Toymaker and the irrepressible Christopher Fitzgerald as Alan, Jane’s brother, “I’ll be focusing on trying not to pee my pants with laughing,” Worsham says. “I’ve really got to be at the top of my game with those two.”

Is this the face that launched a thousand quips?
It will be on April 27.

The audience can expect “a lot of fun, more than anything. I’m looking forward to that,” Worsham says. “I think we need it. Gosh, reading the news every day, it seems as if a little escape is harder to get to these days.”

Master Voices presents Victor Herber’s Babes in Toyland in concert at Carnegie Hall, April 27 at 7:00 pm. For tickets and more information, click here.

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In Search of Ana María Martínez

Ana María Martínez as Rusalka in Chicago.
(Where I didn’t get to hear her.)

If I had a nickel for every time a New Yorker has asked, “Why doesn’t the Met hire Ana María Martinez?” I could probably have paid for my airfare to Houston last January to hear her in precisely the sort of role the Met should be begging her to sing: the water nymph Rusalka in Dvořák’s Romantic fairy tale, in which she’d triumphed already at Glyndebourne and in Chicago.

Ana made her Met debut as Micaëla in Carmen in 2005. I was in France and had to miss it. She went on to triumph in Paris, London, Santa Fe, Vienna, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, and Madrid (among others!). Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington became like second homes for her, and Houston really is her home. Meanwhile, New York had to wait. Opera lovers subsisted on recordings, video clips, her rave reviews, and the ecstatic word of mouth from friends who’d been able to hear her almost everywhere except New York.

At last, ten years after her debut, the Met asked her back, this time as Musetta, the seconda donna in La Bohème. The choice of role was curious, since she’s sung Mimì to acclaim all over the world. On the plus side, all her experience means that she’s worked with many Musettas, so she must have some idea of what does and doesn’t work — a head start, even before she rehearsed. To her performances last December, she brought wit, sex appeal, and plush tone.

Welcome back! Ana as Musetta at the Met.

I’ve come to expect the unexpected from her — the penetrating insight that changes my own perceptions — and yet I was almost startled by a seemingly insignificant moment in Act IV, when she brings a muff to warm Mimì’s hands. Mimì asks who’s speaking, and she answers, “Io, Musetta.” Listening to the tender warmth that Ana lavished on those words, I realized that I was hearing Musetta’s true character. This is who Musetta really is. She’s letting down her guard for once. She’s not putting on a show (as she surely is in her aria “Quando m’en vo”). She’s not playing with anybody’s feelings. She just wants to help her friend.

Please note that Ana accomplished this on the words “I, Musetta” — just as Shakespeare would have wanted her to do, in any of his “I am” speeches.

Running backstage after the performance, I greeted Ana with a happy “You’re alive!” — after all, she’s died in every other Bohème she’s ever sung. I had missed Ana: her performances, her winning smile, her kindness and wit. And when we spoke of the upcoming Rusalka in Houston, she added, “I hope you can see it. It’s something really special.” Now, Ana isn’t the sort of soprano to command her admirers to attend her performances, and she wouldn’t say something was special if it weren’t.

So off to Houston I went.

It was at Houston Grand Opera that I first heard Ana — as Mimì (here with Garrett Sorenson and Joshua Hopkins).

Unlike Musetta in Bohème, the title role of Dvořák’s Rusalka vividly displayed a full range of what New York has been missing out on — not least because for most of Act II, she’s mute and must pantomime first her yearning for her Prince (tenor Brian Jagde), then her desperation when he turns to the Foreign Princess (soprano Maida Hundeling). Ana is so complete a performer (a Gesamtkünstlerin, if you will) that, without singing a note, she held the audience’s attention and sympathy at every moment. (I attended the January 31 matinée.)

The extraordinary grace Ana showed in Act I, “swimming” onstage, hoisted aloft, flipping an enormous mermaid tail (even during her Song to the Moon), now turned into the tentative footsteps of a woman who has never walked before and is honestly afraid that she’ll hurt herself if she tries. (We recall that Andersen’s Mermaid feels pain as if she’s walking on broken glass.) Through her physicality, Ana created a poignant awkwardness that reminded me of the effects Gilda Radner so often achieved (to very different ends). You wanted to hug her, to tell her everything would be all right.

But of course it wouldn’t. Not for Rusalka. As Bugs Bunny says, “What did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

Director Melly Still and designer Rae Smith rightly emphasize the darkness of this opera, and Ana revealed all the darker colors of her voice, so that her high notes came to seem like the moon itself shimmering on the surface of deep water. She drew on enormous reserves of power for the marathon Act III, and yet she still had energy for a talkback session with the audience after the show.

Jill Grove as the witch Jezˇibaba (at once comic and terrifying) and Richard Paul Fink as Rusalka’s father, Vodnik (stentorian and tender in an awful costume), were spectacularly good, and conductor Harry Bicket, whose work I had known exclusively from 18th-century music, made a strong case for his abilities in 19th-century repertoire, even while maintaining an almost Mozartean clarity in the lush Romantic orchestration. Donna Stirrup directed this revival of Still’s production.

Like a sophomore attending the senior prom: she’s so sweet and pretty, but you know this isn’t going to turn out well.
Ana as Rusalka, Act II.
(Photo from the Glyndebourne performances.)

Leaving Houston, I congratulated myself. I’d given myself a booster shot of Ana’s magic, enough to hold me until another season rolled around. Little did I know — little did anyone know — that she’d be back in New York within weeks. Called on to replace Hei-kyung Hong in the title role of Madame Butterfly at the Met, Ana flew to New York from Los Angeles, where she was rehearsing the same opera in a different production. I’m not certain of the exact logistics, but there were a couple of back-and-forth trips before she completed the last of four performances — of which I attended two.

This is Ana María Martínez’s repertory, folks. Yes, I’m sure she was a lovely Micaëla, and her Musetta was inarguably wonderful, but dramatic leads are her natural habitat, where she can explore a character’s psychology and exploit the expressive range of her voice.

Butterfly is often portrayed as naïve in the extreme, but Ana understands that the heroine of Puccini’s opera has led a life of hardship before she makes her entrance in Act I. She’s seen plenty, and as she suggests when describing her career as a dancer, a lot of it was ugly and unfair. Thus Ana’s Butterfly isn’t naïve — and in fact she’s extraordinarily intelligent. She realizes that Pinkerton may not be completely honest with her, but she chooses to believe him. She knows how to be tough when she needs to be, as she demonstrates in Act II, dispatching Goro and Yamadori. When she kills herself, it’s not because she’s heartbroken or trying to hurt Pinkerton or upholding a code of honor — but because she believes it’s her son’s only chance for happiness. If Butterfly doesn’t kill herself, she’s in for a terrible time. Rejected by her family and most of Japanese society, she’d easily wind up not a geisha but a prostitute or a beggar. And her son would know that, and be tormented. So through her death, she frees him.

This is what Ana brings to the stage, even in a role you think you know backward and forward. Astonishing. Every word of text conveyed meaning, and Ana’s voice exulted throughout the vast Met, soaring over the orchestra, spinning out high pianissimi, making you listen, no matter how familiar the music may be. This was my first viewing of Anthony Minghella’s celebrated production, and on the whole I admired it — not least because it gave Ana room to do what she does so well. Critics and audiences agreed with me: she received rave reviews and thundering ovations.

Butterfly at the Met: Ana with the indispensable Maria Zifchak as Suzuki.

Having knocked out New York, Ana went back to Los Angeles for the run of the Butterfly production there — almost as if nothing unusual had happened. The Met went on about its business, too, and Ana isn’t on the roster for next season, not even in the new production of Rusalka. Who knows how long New York will have to wait to hear her again?

As for me, I’ve certainly made up for many of the performances I’d missed. And yet … she’s singing Elisabetta in one of my favorite operas, Verdi’s Don Carlo, in San Francisco in June. Ordinarily, I consider Eboli the more interesting woman onstage in that opera. But then again, I’ve never heard Ana’s Elisabetta. In fact, nobody has — this will be a role debut.

Can I justify the expense of flying out there? Can I justify missing out?

Backstage after Bohème.

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A Brand-New Rossini Opera at the Met

Rossini’s La Donna del Lago returns to the Metropolitan Opera Friday night. Joyce DiDonato once again stars in Paul Curran’s production, which had its premiere at Santa Fe in 2013 before moving to the Met (with a different backdrop) last February. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee, Joyce’s “Giacomo, disguised as Uberto” from Santa Fe, rejoins her in the same role. We are guaranteed an evening of spectacular singing and glorious music that, as Joyce has observed in an interview, respects the story’s “emotional truth.”

However, after multiple viewings of this opera, it’s not the emotions but the underlying story that I find less compelling than I did, say, the first time around. At last, I have decided to heed the advice of Rossini’s biggest fan, Stendhal: I shall pretend that I speak no Italian, and I shall invent my own plot for this opera.

Stendhal: Don’t say he didn’t warn us.

La DiDonato del Lago, ossia
Great Scozia
Synopsis

Act I, Scene 1: The scene opens on Loch Kansas, where a chorus of townsfolk greets a new day that will bring the most exciting football game of the year. Ardena Scozia, a glamorous opera star, returns to her hometown by means of a boat that is conveniently left offstage. She sings of her love for Malcolm, her long-ago boyfriend, who is currently the general director of the Loch Kansas Opera Company. Unbeknownst to Ardena, this evening’s football game will pit the local team, the Pittsburgh Picts, against their deadly rivals, the Glasgow Grizzlies. The quarterback of the Grizzlies, Giacomo, has disguised himself as “Uberto,” an itinerant salsa dancer, in hopes of meeting the beautiful singer. She invites him back to her home for a cup of heather.

Act I, Scene 2: Giacomo is shocked to learn that Ardena’s father is Duglas, the former coach of the Glasgow Grizzlies, who is now coaching the Picts. He also learns of Ardena’s betrothal to Rodrigo, the Picts quarterback. Unbeknownst to any of them, Ardena is still in love with Malcolm, despite the fact that he is transitioning to contralto repertory. After Duglas has left, Malcolm invites Ardena to the football game.

Act I, Scene 3: Picts fans prepare for the football game by applying body paint in the team colors, blue and more blue. Ardena supervises. Malcolm declares his support for the team, but unfortunately it’s the wrong one (Aria: “Go, Go, Grizzlies!”), and Ardena’s friends mistrust him. The stadium lights are turned on, signaling that the game is about to begin.

Pep rally.

Act II, Scene 1: Still disguised as “Uberto,” Giacomo searches desperately for Ardena, because only she has the coin needed for the toss that will begin the football game. Once again he declares his love for her, but she tells him she could never love any man who doesn’t wear a skirt. He then gives her a ring, which he claims he won for playing at a Super Bowl, many years ago. Rodrigo has overheard their conversation and recognizes Giacomo’s true identity. Rodrigo commands his teammates to sack Giacomo, but Ardena, who is also the referee, calls a time out.

Act II, Scene 2: The game is incredibly violent, and in its aftermath Ardena is dismayed to see that the heads of losing players have been placed on pikes all over the field. She vows to find the NFL Commissioner, to complain.

Act II, Scene 3: Ardena is surprised to find all of the NFL Commissioners surrounding “Uberto,” who soon reveals his true identity. He tells Duglas and Malcolm that Bertram, the top draft pick, will be the Picts’ new quarterback, replacing Rodrigo, who has been sidelined for the rest of the season due to a severe head injury (on a pike). Malcolm admits that she’s a woman, and on hearing this news, Ardena joyously flings herself (Highland style, of course) into a live volcano. All rejoice, as a new peace reigns in Kansas.

THE END

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Berg’s ‘Lulu’ at the Met

Petersen as Lulu in a promotional portrait.
I’m such a fanboy now that I want to get a pair of those hands to wear to all of her future performances.

Full disclosure: I am probably the least-fair critic of any performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu you are likely to find. The reason is my exceptional education in this opera, which I learned at the foot of Teresa Stratas, the soprano who created the title role in the world-premiere performance of the completed three-act score. Until Teresa and I started to talk about Lulu, I’d found this work absolutely fascinating and utterly unlistenable. But not long after Teresa started to explain it to me, I listened with greater and greater appreciation. Soon I called her to report that on many evenings I’d come home after work and play her recording of the opera. “Honey, be careful!” she replied. “That music can be dangerous!”

So it’s not merely my relationship with a singer closely associated with Lulu that seemed to doom my chances of ever witnessing a performance that met, much less surpassed my standards. That I attended the Metropolitan Opera’s new production three times — and would have attended more often, if circumstances had permitted — should tell you a great deal.

Dangerous Music: Stratas in the world premiere.
(“And comparisons are odious, honey.”)

Though a great deal of press surrounded the new production itself, by artist William Kentridge, my primary interest was in the singers, especially the leading ladies. Friends had heard Marlis Petersen’s Lulu and praised her extravagantly; she had decided to retire the role at the end of this run (last night).

And Susan Graham had decided to tackle the tremendous challenge of Berg’s score and the role of Countess Geschwitz, something I really wanted to see — because in the past I’ve been able to see only one performance when she created a role, or else I’ve seen her in roles she’s sung many times. Example: I saw only her only once in Les Troyens at the Châtelet, where she introduced the role of Didon to her repertoire — but five times when she returned to the role at the Met. And that in turn encouraged me to travel to San Francisco to see her Didon one more time, last summer.

This may be reflexive fan behavior, but I prefer to think that it’s something more. If this art — this opera — and this artist — truly mean something to me, then I must explore, study, immerse myself, in order to understand better.

Susan Graham as Geschwitz.

Susan has sung Berg before — but the “Sieben frühe Lieder,” not one of his mature works, certainly not Wozzeck or Lulu. As an artistic undertaking, then, this step into an entirely new kind of music was significant for her. At first hearing (the second performance), she won me over easily, and (predictably, perhaps) she seemed to warm most to the passages in which Geschwitz’s music chimes closest to the scores of Mahler and of Berg’s other immediate predecessors. Geschwitz’s final monologue proved tremendously moving, as Susan located a wellspring of tenderness and sorrow. At the penultimate performance, I found her more confident onstage, freer with her body as she acted, and even more resplendent vocally. And last night she carried all her best qualities before her as she crossed the finish line.

In interviews before opening night, she referred a few times to the unkind ways Lulu treats Geschwitz, as if mystified by Geschwitz’s unrequited devotion to her younger friend. To me, this characterization is one of the most easily understood aspects of the entire libretto: of course Geschwitz is slavishly devoted to Lulu, for all the almost-inexpressible reasons that I’ve behaved in similar ways with some of the objects of my own affections. By the final performances, I sensed — without knowing for certain how or why — that Susan was grasping her character’s emotions more completely. In Act III, Scene 1, Kentridge gives Geschwitz a particular, silent gesture, at the foot of a staircase as she reaches toward Lulu above her; by last night, the gesture had become especially poignant, and Susan’s entire body went into it. Yep, that’s what it feels like.

Petersen’s physicality as Lulu is only one of the extraordinary achievements in her performances: she delivers something quite like a modern-dance interpretation of Lulu, her choreography reflecting that assigned to Kentridge’s addition to the piece, a dancer who plays (or writhes inside) a piano far to one side of the proscenium. That Petersen can do all of this while singing a notoriously demanding score is almost beyond belief, and she’s doing so in varying states of dress, looking wonderfully sexy all the while.

Daniel Brenna with Petersen onstage at the Met.

The Met Titles meant that the audience could understand the jokes and ironic juxtapositions of the libretto — and the singers got laughs where Berg must have hoped they would. But Petersen’s theatricality proved so expressive, so perfectly attuned to the character’s moods, that she might do very well without titles at all. On first hearing, I was even more eager to attend the Met simulcast, with all its closeups, to permit me to see what her facial expressions were like — but when I got to the movie theater, there was a technical glitch, the screen was blank, and now I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

Lulu’s music requires a great deal of singing in very high registers, some coloratura, some Sprechstimme, and almost anything else you can name; she’s onstage for all but a very few extended passages. Petersen maintained a purity and beauty of tone throughout, without a trace of the metallic timbre that helped to lower one acclaimed Met Lulu in my estimation. (Comparisons are odious, but remember: 1.) I already admitted I’m an unfair critic; and 2.) that other soprano’s performance helps to illuminate just how delighted I am to find a singer who really does justice to this opera.)

Petersen explained to The New Yorker that, at the end of the final performance, she would deliver her own death-scream (as Lulu is murdered by Jack the Ripper, offstage), rather than letting another singer do the honors. It was a fitting way to bid farewell to the character, and indeed Petersen’s death-scream wasn’t like that of Jennifer Roderer (excellent though she’d been). Petersen had a guttural urgency — maybe Lulu herself was reluctant to leave Petersen’s body.

As for the rest of the cast, I was especially impressed with Martin Winkler’s commanding Acrobat, robust of voice and exuberant in his stage presence: somehow, in all my experience of this opera, the role had never seemed so important or so rich. Similarly, Alan Oke’s fully realized characterization brought the Prince into fresh new focus, though Johan Reuter (Dr. Schön), Franz Grundheber (Schigolch), and Daniel Brenna (Alwa) were all excellent without offering any revelations — for me. (I told you, I’m unfair.)

Kentridge’s production involves projected images and video, as well as curious props (see the gigantic hands, above) and the aforementioned piano-dancer. Much of this is, as we were warned, over-busy and distracting. Yet even from the first performance, I found it easy enough to ignore that which didn’t interest me and to focus on the staging itself, which was often straightforward and at times revelatory, as in the physical interactions between Lulu and Schön. Ultimately my biggest quibble may be with Geschwitz’s costume, which makes her look more ordinary and less exotic than I imagine her. But maybe that’s the point, and Kentridge’s choice did make me question why I’d always found Geschwitz exotic. Because she’s one of the rare lesbians in opera? Because other Geschwitzes wear men’s clothing? I’m not sure. Kentridge also sold tickets: I’ve never encountered a Lulu with better attendance, and fewer walkouts.

Derrick Inouye conducted the final performances, but by then I was under the spell of Lothar Koenigs, who brought out an almost lush quality in the score, Late-Romantic colors that I hadn’t heard from Pierre Boulez or James Levine. Koenigs’ performance made me realize that this opera, which I used to find denser and no pleasanter than an accident in a lawnmower factory, now strikes me as eminently accessible. How wonderful! For as audiences, we can also evolve artistically.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
Susan’s next development — “transitioning,” shall we say, to Prince Orlofsky, tonight at the Met. Expect me to report about this remarkable juxtaposition of roles.

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Video & Recap: Madeline at the Metropolitan Room

Most of the cast. From left: Betancourt, Larsen, Harada, Leritz, Feltman, Hall, WVM, Shapiro, Burke, Copeland, Willison. Not pictured: Rice, Cohen, Ross, Cubeta.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

I’m told that I looked like a little kid playing with shiny new toys during every number of our tribute show, “Gone Too Soon: The Music of Madeline Kahn,” at New York’s Metropolitan Room on Saturday afternoon. You can’t really see that in the video that I’m posting here — the light was pretty dim where I sat — but you can certainly see why I was so happy. One talented performer after another came out and dazzled us on the Met Room stage.

Some of these people I’ve know for years — others I’d just met. I knew that all of them were first-rate. Yet even my absolute confidence in them didn’t quite prepare me for just how wonderful they were.

In a note to me after the show, Ann Harada reflected on the “gallantry” and “vulnerability” of performers — and observed that “It was also glaringly apparent that Madeline attracted ridiculously difficult material.” But these people are pros. You can see for yourself, by watching the video here.

Ann Harada. Photo by Maryann Lopinto.
To see the complete video, click here.

The show was born on a cold spring night, when Peter Napolitano, Janice Hall, and Adam B. Shapiro and I sat in the theater at Urban Stages. Peter was brainstorming, coming up with ideas to help me promote Madeline Kahn: Being the Music • A Life. “Have you thought about doing a cabaret show?” Peter asked.

No, I had not. Bear in mind that, in that little quartet, I’m the only one who doesn’t have a MAC Award, that honor bestowed on the best of New York’s cabaret scene. (Peter has three.) But in that instant, our show took on a life of its own.

Much to my satisfaction, we wound up at the Met Room, where I’ve enjoyed several shows (including those of Peter, Janice, and Adam). All of us like the room — it has good karma, I think. Producer Joseph Macchia was looking to fill a slot in his “Gone Too Soon” series, so in we walked. Within a few days, we were lining up performers and coming up with material.

Adam, keeping a grippe on my book.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

Fittingly, the show started off with Adam, who’s been with the show since its inception. (His enthusiasm actually helped persuade me that this thing could work!) He paid tribute to the performance that first gave Madeline the idea that she might go into show business. Adam is such an irrepressibly joyful performer, and I’m fully convinced that he can do anything.

Actor–choreographer–producer Lawrence Leritz was next, charming us all with a little number from Kiss Me, Kate, in which Madeline made her New York stage debut fifty years ago. For Saturday’s show, as for our presentation at the Drama Book Shop in June, Lawrence proved himself stalwart, holding my hand through every storm. Little wonder I call him Megastar.

Lawrence: Make that Mr. Megastar.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

Janice had been preparing “Das Chicago Song” for a long time — she was ready to sing it at my book party in May, but somehow that didn’t happen. In a way, I was glad that she waited until now to sing it. With the song’s composer, Madeline’s dear friend Michael Cohen, on piano, the number was a revelation to us all. And the combination of Michael, Madeline, Kurt Weill, and Janice is tailor-made for me. If I didn’t have a copy of my narration in hand, I’d have been speechless.

Janice: Don’t ask why.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

Soprano Rosa Betancourt has impressed me every time I’ve heard her — notably as Musetta in La Bohème, with Fort Worth Opera in 2013. I knew she could bring wit and personality to her number, all the while maintaining a glorious lyric line. She more than lived up to my expectations, and our music director, Jeff Cubeta, accompanied her beautifully. As Joyce Di Donato says so often, it’s always fun to see a non-opera audience respond to opera when it’s done well.

Rosa: The girl can’t help it.
Photo by Russ Weatherford.

For the next set, Jeff ceded the piano bench to the legendary Steve Ross, “The Crown Prince of Cabaret,” who joined our cast less than 48 hours before. For his friends Joan Copeland and Walter Willison, he played three numbers from the show they did with Madeline, Two by Two.

I can now say I’ve done a show with Steve Ross. Amazing.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

Joan turned 93 a few days before our Drama Book Shop event, and on that evening she had taken a friend and me aside to sing her big solo from Two by Two, word- and note-perfect, just for us. It was pure magic — and a real gift to be able to share that magic with more people on Saturday. Probably few actors will ever rival her distinguished career (with “roles too numerous to mention,” as she said in her program bio) — and not many actors will rival the joy she finds onstage.

One of the most remarkable people I’ve met.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

I’d heard Walter sing “I Do Not Know a Day I Did Not Love You” before, and then as on Saturday it’s a stunning interpretation, imbued with tremendous feeling and glorious vocalism. Yeah, he didn’t get a Tony nomination for this show only because he stood up to Danny Kaye: he got it because he’s good.

Walter: I do not know a day I did not love to hear him sing this song.
Photo by Russ Weatherford.

Madeline’s Act I solo from Two by Two was cut during tryouts and had never (to our knowledge) been performed publicly in New York at any point in the ensuing 45 years. As conceived originally, she would have sung it to Joan. So Walter called Joan back to the stage and sang “Getting Married to a Person” (which he’d learned only at five o’clock that morning!). I treasure the way they interact — and now, more than seven years after I started writing the book, I can say I’ve heard Madeline’s lost song.

Walter & Joan: Like family, after all this time.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

Hanna Burke is a favorite and frequent participant in the “Gone Too Soon” series, as well as a devoted Madeline fan. Now that I’ve seen what she can do with one of the lady’s most famous numbers — evocative of Madeline and yet somehow her own — I can’t wait to hear more. She’s talking about a one-woman show of Madeline’s material, but she and I agree that it would be wiser not to use the title Madeline came up with when thinking about her own one-woman show: Kahn-cepts.

Hanna: Just happy to see her.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

My darling Ann Harada took the stage next with a number from At Long Last Love, an irresistible interpretation that took such care with the words that she even chose a dress to match the lyrics. Sometimes I wonder how such a huge voice can come out of such a tiny person, but Ann has tremendous control over her instrument. She rattled the rafters and caressed our ears, and she even threw in a little Lili von Shtupp for good measure.

Ann: Who knows how she does what she does?
Photo by Russ Weatherford.

The winner of this year’s MetroStar competition, Minda Larsen, gave us a number from She Loves Me, gorgeously combining sweetness and intelligence — not an easy thing. Because of some computer malfunctions, I had to assemble the program for the show several times — and just before the show started, we realized that I’d left out Minda. I felt terrible, and even worse when I heard her wonderful performance. A former finalist in the Lotte Lenya Competition with a limpid lyric soprano, she’s obviously my kind of people.

Minda: Sheer loveliness.
Photo by Russ Weatherford.

In a variety of roles in the Unauthorized! parody musical series, Julie Feltman has persuaded me that her voice can do almost anything. That’s precisely what’s required of the number she sang from On the Twentieth Century, which involves what the critic Walter Kerr described as “gutter coloratura,” ranging from basso growls to piercing shrieks, with plenty of ornaments. Julie is also a fearless comedian, and she tore into this song with abandon.

News Flash: Beautiful woman loses mind …

… sings coloratura.
Julie Feltman.
Photos Weatherford (above), Lopinto (below).

There’s a special satisfaction to seeing Sarah Rice, the original Johanna from Sweeney Todd — the first show I saw in New York. Her sly wit and radiant soprano are so well-suited to popular music from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, so I knew she’d excel in the Irving Berlin number she chose. You’ll see she’s wearing a cast on her arm — you’ll never guess how it got there. But it precluded her sharing another talent, playing the theremin. She’s learning the theme from Young Frankenstein, so maybe we’ll get the chance, some day soon.

Sarah: Source of surprises.
Screencap from video.

When I told friends what the penultimate number on the program would be, and who would be singing it, they nearly exploded. I understood why. For hardcore fans (and who among us is not?), this was an occasion nearly as significant as Patti LuPone taking on Gypsy. Ann and Adam joined Sarah onstage for one more example of Madeline’s “ridiculously difficult” repertoire, and I was ecstatic. Perfect characterizations by all — I get the feeling that Sarah has sung at more than a few weddings in her time — and three glorious voices.

Today is for Sarah — and Ann — and Adam.
Photo by Russ Weatherford.

We concluded with a singalong. Confession time: I don’t sing at all. So I slipped to the back while the rest of the cast sang out, and the audience joined in. It was a fun way to end the show, and a useful reminder that Madeline’s legacy is alive and well — if only we pick it up and run with it.

For me, the highlight of the afternoon that you can’t see in the video was the rapturous expression on Joan Copeland’s face, whenever anyone sang. She was in her element on Saturday, connecting with an audience as only she can, reuniting with old friends and making new ones. And she loved the music. That means a great deal to me.

Peter Napolitano, Joan Copeland, Steve Ross.
Photo by Maryann Lopinto.

And I owe it all to Peter Napolitano. He had a dream, he made it mine, and then he made it a reality. At times it was a hard slog to get there — more work and infinitely more stress than I’d anticipated. (At one point, I observed that I don’t have the temperament for this line of work. In the gentlest, kindest way possible, Peter replied, “No, you probably don’t.”) But through it all, I knew that with this lineup of talent, we would have a terrific show, and ultimately it really was worth it.

Now that it’s over, several of us have remarked that we can sense Madeline smiling. The show is just one more demonstration that the book — and Madeline herself — have taken me in directions I never could have imagined.

The author. Who'd a-thunk it?

If for some reason you have made it all the way to the bottom of this page without clicking on the link and watching the video, here it is again. Right HERE.

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Interview: Caroline Worra on ‘The Long Walk’

Soprano Caroline Worra:
The Champion of New Opera.

Though I first heard her in Verdi, soprano Caroline Worra has over the years earned a sterling reputation for new work, singing in premieres and near-premieres with opera companies across the United States. When Mark Adamo’s Little Women opened at Glimmerglass, there was Caroline Worra, who managed to make Amy (my least-favorite March sister) appealing and sympathetic. When Fort Worth Opera brought Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied to the stage, there was Caroline Worra again, bringing life to a modern-day Penelope whose husband’s long wartime odyssey cost them both all that they shared.

I started to count up the contemporary roles in her repertory — The Mines of Sulphur, Lizzie Borden, and Orphée, just off the top of my head, and there are lots of others — but ultimately, it’s not about numbers. To everything she does, Caroline Worra brings clarity: she lets nothing stand between her and her audience, spinning her stories with irresistible immediacy of expression. No matter how difficult or surprising the music, her message comes across.

With Opera Saratoga this summer, Worra will sing three roles in another world premiere, Jeremy Howard Beck’s The Long Walk, an adaptation of Iraqi War veteran Brian Castner’s coming-home memoir. From workshops and sing-throughs to opening night, Worra has been involved in The Long Walk at every step: in fact, “The entire cast has stayed with the project for two years, which is incredible,” she says. “We generally don’t get this kind of luxury.”

The Long Walk’s cast also includes Daniel Belcher, Heather Johnson, Donita Volkwijn, David Blalock, Javier Abreu, and Justin Hopkins. Two years ago, the company assembled to work through about half the opera, with only piano and an electric guitar for accompaniment. “The next year, it was a little bit longer,” Worra says, “and this past March, we read it again with the full orchestration. To be with a piece for this long, in these crucial stages of existence, has been a treat for all of us.”

As Older Alyce in Glory Denied
(with Sydney Mancasola as Younger Alyce in background).
Photo by Ellen Appel, courtesy of Fort Worth Opera.

Opera isn’t Broadway, and until recently workshopping has been a rare practice, but it’s an important part of the process for Lawrence Edelson and American Lyric Theater, who commissioned The Long Walk. “I’ve been a part of so many world premieres,” Worra says, “and quite often you get to the venue, and the score is completely published, and it is what it is. And quite often, once you’re into the production space, it’s too late for cuts and edits.” But for The Long Walk, even now that rehearsals have begun, composer Beck, his librettist, Stephanie Fleischmann; stage director David Schweizer, and conductor Steven Osgood “have continued to work together to make sure they are streamlining the piece and creating the correct amount of drama and the pulse for the crucial moments and the drive to the end.”

Perhaps needless to say, singers who can cope with this kind of ongoing editorial work — which may entail learning, un-learning, and re-learning words and music even as opening night approaches — must possess quick minds, first-rate musicianship, and generous, collaborative spirits. Caroline Worra began developing these qualities when she was still an undergraduate, earning her bachelor’s degree in piano. “I enjoy the technical aspect of being able to sing through and learn music that sometimes is almost more instrumental in nature,” as contemporary scores often are, she says. “I’ve found the challenge of taking things that maybe are written in a difficult manner and trying to make it just seem and feel and look and sound natural.”

The themes of Worra’s musical life came together when the piano major began to study voice with Costanza Cuccaro. Cuccaro’s husband, Edwin Penhorwood, is a composer who sometimes played for Worra’s lessons. Penhorwood has written extensively for his wife, and often shared his new work with her pupil. “It was great to be around a composer who was composing brand-new things all the time,” Worra says. “I loved that right away. [Composers] are creating new things, and it’s exciting to me.”

When she first heard Cuccaro sing, “I felt there was something so natural and clear about the way that she sang and the way that she communicated,” Worra says. “That’s what really inspired me to become a singer.” Today, Worra still aims to uphold her teacher’s “natural” expression, even in challenging vocal lines. “I think that’s actually what a lot of composers are trying to do, to write things that will sound natural,” she says. And the singing technique also informs Worra’s acting, because it “really lends itself to a sort of clarity of intent on the stage. This is what helps a lot of some of these roles that I get to do, to be able to rely on that technique that she taught me, so that I can have a very natural acting style.”

Even when she sings 19th-century opera,
it’s sometimes a world premiere:
As Gertrude in Faccio’s Amleto
with Opera Southwest, 2014.

When Cuccaro and Penhorwood left the University of Missouri for Indiana University, Worra followed them there, earning a doctorate in vocal performance, “to learn this craft, to just stay in a protected environment as long as I could,” she says, and she still studies with Cuccaro whenever she can. While in Bloomington, Worra minored in conducting. That study has given her rare insight into the conductor’s job, and as a result, “I enjoy that communication between the conductor and the singer,” Worra says. “That’s really crucial in those new works, when you’re creating things. The conductor and the singer are really dependent on each other.”

In The Long Walk, Worra sings three roles: Brian’s sister, in a birthday-party scene that shows the difficulty he’s facing as he adjusts to life at home; an Iraqi woman, “mourning and singing about how our children are dead, and how angry we are” in a “dramatic and terrifying” sequence; and Brian’s psychiatrist, who diagnoses him not with the post-traumatic stress disorder he’d supposed he had, but with “blast-induced traumatic brain injury,” a side-effect of the explosives he detonated as part of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit during the war. Receiving this diagnosis “helps him to the next stage of recovery,” Worra says. “If you know what’s wrong with you, you have a little more drive and hope, and you can try to recover into as much of a normal life as you can possibly have.”

By now, singing new music is normal life for Caroline Worra — The Long Walk isn’t even the first time she’s gotten to meet the real-life people she’s singing about. “I enjoy every second of getting to work on these new pieces,” she says. “I know how lucky we are to be able to do world premieres. Creating things that nobody has ever seen before is one of my absolute favorite things to get to do.”

Jeremy Howard Beck’s The Long Walk
Opera Saratoga
at the Spa Little Theater in Spa State Park
Saratoga Springs, NY
July 10 (world premiere) and 25 at 7:30 pm
July 13 and 17 at 2:00 pm
For more information and tickets, click here.

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Interview: Justin Hopkins on ‘The Road of Promise’

Bass-baritone Justin Hopkins.

Among the cast of the Collegiate Chorale’s upcoming U.S. premiere of Kurt Weill’s The Road of Promise, the name Justin Hopkins stands out. The bass-baritone will sing the role of the Dark Angel next week, and I first encountered him at Fort Worth Opera, in Glass’ Hydrogen Jukebox, in 2011, where he displayed a commanding voice, keen musicality, and the skill to deliver a long, emotional monologue — spoken, not sung — with more power than most stage actors his age could muster. To The Road of Promise Hopkins brings a couple of credentials that should serve him well: he’s a former winner of the Lotte Lenya Competition, sharing second place in 2012; and as a veteran of the Philadelphia Boys Choir, he knows his way around big choral works.

“I would not have had a career in music without my experience with the Boys Choir,” Hopkins said. “Number one, it established my love and appreciation for the music that I’m singing today.” He points to Britten’s War Requiem, which he’s just sung for the first time as a baritone soloist — but which was the first piece he performed with the Boys Choir, when he was nine years old. With the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, the Requiem made an impression, and Hopkins remembers being “astonished at the size and scope of this piece, and how it moved things.” He bought a recording of the piece and listened to it “over and over, while my friends were listening to God knows what. The fact that I performed the War Requiem all those years ago informed my performance this year.”

Hopkins also credits the choir’s director, Robert G. Hamilton, for instilling in him the discipline he’s needed to pursue a career in music, lessons he sums up as “You needed to be in constant focus and attention, but you needed to be passionate. I’ve taken that with me, and that informs my drive and my passion for performing today.” The choir also influenced Hopkins’ musical aesthetics. “Dr. Hamilton was in constant search of contemporary composers at the forefront of choral music,” Hopkins says, and the Boys Choir performed a wide-ranging repertory that embraced classical and modern works, as well as show tunes. “I had a great balance of new and old music from a young age,” Hopkins says, and this steered him toward an “ability to — not to grasp but just to engage in both forms.”

That said, modern and contemporary works often address subjects that are more immediate and accessible to him. He cites the War Requiem, which incorporates Wilfred Owen’s poetry from World War I and recalls World War II, in which Hopkins’ grandfather fought; Hydrogen Jukebox takes on a variety of contemporary politics and mores. Hopkins’ upcoming engagement, the world premiere of Jeremy Howard Beck’s The Long Walk at Opera Saratoga, tells of a soldier’s return home from the war in Iraq. These themes offer “an easier or more direct route to identify with the music” and help “to conjure up the emotional relationship” more than is sometimes true of older pieces.

In Hydrogen Jukebox.
Fort Worth Opera, 2011. Photo by Ron T. Ennis.

The Road of Promise offers a modern look at ancient stories, since Weill’s librettist, Franz Werfel, uses tales from the Bible to respond to the persecution of Jews under the Nazis. Hopkins grew up in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, an exceptionally integrated community where he had Jewish friends (“I attended a lot of bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs”) and tried to learn more about their heritage. Discovering the horrifying history of the Shoah, he could on some level relate that legacy to the African–American experience of slavery and diaspora, he says, locating “a common bond … of racism and oppression.” Now he points to the “great sense of kinship and brotherhood between the two communities,” especially during the early years of the civil rights movement. “The relationship of African–Americans and Jewish–Americans in the United States is very important… I’m actually sad to see that the relationship doesn’t exist as much as it did in the past.”

Kurt Weill himself wrote one of the principal artistic works reflecting the solidarity between Jews and blacks in the 1940s, Lost in the Stars, his final work for Broadway. A protest against South African racism, Lost in the Stars, held a clear message for America, and in 1950, the original production couldn’t go on national tour because it was impossible to secure lodging for black cast members. “It wasn’t that long ago,” Hopkins observes, and now the show’s title number has entered his repertory. “It resonates with audiences much in the way that ‘Ol’ Man River’ does,” he says. “He got it, Kurt Weill — and Kern and Hammerstein — they understood the plight of the community which they were writing about.” And because The Road of Promise incorporates stories that are a part of Hopkins’ own faith, “I feel as if I am able to relate to it on an emotional level that much more.”

For The Road of Promise, Hopkins will be working with conductor Ted Sperling, whom he admires as a performer and as a role model of sorts. “He’s so fluent in so many genres,” and Hopkins would like to see his own career follow a similar path. “I love opera, very obviously, and I love oratorio, in concert performances. I love drama … and I would love to be regarded as a versatile performer who seems as at home on the opera stage as he does on the concert platform and in the musical theater and on the theatrical stage. I’d love to be a jack-of-all-trades, because I love it all. Given the opportunity, I have something unique to offer in each of those areas.” He’ll get no argument from me.

Collegiate Chorale presents
Kurt Weill’s The Road of Promise
Carnegie Hall
May 6 at 8:00
May 7 at 7:00
Click HERE for information and tickets.

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Interview: Jennifer Rivera on Rossini’s Sins

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera.

After Gioachino Rossini completed William Tell, in 1829, he never wrote another opera — thus crushing for all eternity the dreams of millions of mezzo-sopranos, for whom he’d created so many gratifying roles, but no more. “Retiring” to Paris until his death in 1868, the composer pursued his interests in good food and good company, bestowing his name on dishes that pleased him and reigning benevolently over much of Parisian society. And yet he was still a man who’d written 39 operas in 18 years. Music had seemed to bubble up from him irresistibly, like a natural spring of Champagne, and even in retirement, his source did not run dry. Little bits of musical invention kept slipping out: Les Pêchés de Vieillesse, he called them, “The Sins of Old Age,” occasional pieces to be played or sung primarily for the amusement of his friends.

Now Jennifer Rivera, one of the brightest mezzos of her generation, is turning to the Pêchés for a recital on Saturday, January 24, at the Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium, under the aegis of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts. This is a no-fooling, not-to-be-missed opportunity to hear a young artist whose Rossini singing has been praised by none other than Marilyn Horne: in one of my first conversations with that great lady, she bragged about Rivera and urged me to hear her whenever I could. It’s as if Abraham Lincoln told me whom to vote for. You just don’t argue with that.

“Picking some of Rossini’s French music was a must,” Rivera says, given the aims of the Salon/Sanctuary series and even the auditorium itself, which may look more like a ballroom than a Second Empire salon, but which is close enough in spirit to give audience members the sense that they’re hearing the music in the environment for which it was created.

Rossini, as the Parisians saw him.

Long before Rossini retired, Stendhal used the word “delightful” to describe his music, and the word applies to the Pêchés, as well. “These songs certainly don’t sound like they come from someone who has given up their craft,” Rivera says, answering a few questions by e-mail. “I guess what delights me about them is how full of character the ones I have chosen are, and what incredible contrast in style they demonstrate. Rossini is obviously a master at creating vocal drama — that is, he is able to create a sense of drama within the context of the vocal line, whether through acrobatics or beauty of melody. I know that well from his operatic writing, but it’s exactly the same type of very clear characterization in his song writing.”

A prodigiously early bloomer (as was Rossini himself), Rivera began singing leading roles with New York City Opera while she was still a student at Juilliard; I have particularly fond memories of her work in Hansel and Gretel and Chabrier’s L’Etoile. Among her other successes with NYCO was Rosina in Rossini’s Barber of Seville, also the vehicle for her debut with the Berliner Staatsoper. “I really first discovered Rossini when I was in high school, which is when I first started singing ‘Una voce poco fa’ and getting to know parts of Rosina (if you can believe it),” she says. Around the same time, she heard Marilyn Horne as Isabella in “Italian Girl in Algiers” at San Francisco Opera (“a very formative experience”) and, on video, Frederica von Stade as Angelica in Cenerentola. By now, Rivera has sung Rosina and Angelica many times, and she’s eager to sing Isabella, the first chance she gets. She looks exceptionally, almost disturbingly good in trouser roles, at which Rossini excelled, and so I’d like to hear her tackle a few of those, too.

Who’s a pretty boy, then?
As Nerone in Handel’s Agrippina.

Rivera first sang Rosina at the Juilliard Opera Center. Kenneth Merrill coached her and conducted that production, and “since that was my first leading Rossini lady, I really learned to sing that style of music from him,” she says. On Saturday night, Merrill will accompany her on piano, after a mishap waylaid the pianoforte he originally intended to use — “but I’m sure Ken will have just the right tough that will make the music feel in period on whatever instrument he is given. …We have never performed a recital together before now, so it is extremely fitting that we would be performing Rossini!”

In addition to Merrill, another of Rivera’s Rossinian mentors is Marilyn Horne, with whom she studied at the Music Academy of the West. I asked Rivera what Horne can teach the next generation. “I would say the biggest thing young singers can learn from listening to Marilyn’s recordings is about style,” she says. “She had a tremendous penchant for the clearest and most definitive version of bel canto style. A lot of Rossini singing today is of the ‘ha-ha’ ilk — that is, to put a small aspiration between each note for clarity. But Marilyn’s style was to retain the speed and clarity of the coloratura, yet in a true legato where there was no break between the notes.”

As Rosina in Central City, 2013.
Photo by Mark Kiryluk.

“While this other style can certainly be very exciting,” Rivera continues, “I think Marilyn truly embodies the basic nature of bel canto singing by always keeping the line, and by having an extraordinarily even sound from top to bottom. It’s the healthiest way to sing, and that’s a great lesson for any young singer. There will never be another person who possesses anything quite like Marilyn’s iconic sound, but the technical ease and style with which she dispatched all music, and particularly bel canto, is an ongoing master class to all who hear it.”

Saturday’s program will also feature songs by Pauline Viardot, who (like most of her family, including her sister, the legendary Maria Malibran) sang Rossini’s operas in her time and presided over a Parisian salon of her own. “As a composer, she was clearly very influenced by Rossini (and you can tell especially in her florid writing),” Rivera says, “but she also had her own voice. And it’s a treat to sing music composed by lyric mezzo by someone who possessed that exact voice type herself. I can’t imagine I’ll have another occasion to write that sentence.”

Oh, don’t ask why: Rivera as Weill’s Bessie.
Photo by Richard Termine,
courtesy of Gotham Chamber Opera.

I last saw Rivera in Gotham Chamber Opera’s Baden-Baden 1927, a re-imagining of the quadruple-bill of one-acts that included Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel. As Weill’s whiskey-bar-seeking Bessie and as the cunning Nurse in Toch’s Princess and the Pea, Rivera once again proved herself an extraordinarily expressive artist, with a rich, supple, immensely appealing instrument, at once dark and lustrous. In repertoire that ranges from Handel to Jorge Martín, from Early Music to half an hour ago, Rivera represents the kind of versatile, intellectually curious, artistically adventurous American singer I admire so much. She’s also a fine writer whose essays for the Huffington Post are acclaimed and passed along by other young singers, confirming her status as a leading voice of her generation in one more way. And she takes her writing as seriously as her music, doing actual reporting and interviews to get the latest on the attempts to revive New York City Opera, for example. (Professional journalists aren’t covering the story nearly as well.) Since NYCO’s demise, her New York appearances have been all-too rare — one more reason to rush to hear her on Saturday.

Salon/Sanctuary Concerts present
Rossini in Paris
Jennifer Rivera, mezzo-soprano
Kenneth Merrill, piano
Saturday, January 24, 8:00
Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium
417 East 61st Street, New York
For more information, click here.

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