Opera Review: Burn This

Regina Opera roars back with Il Trovatore.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Manrico, the troubador,  Christopher Trapani (above) finds Leonora (Alexis Cregger, below) who has taken poison rather than marry the Count DiLuna. Photo by Stephen Pisano for Regina Opera.

When putting on Verdi's Il Trovatore, it is very difficult to get the balance right.  On Saturday afternoon at the first of four performances, Brooklyn's Regina Opera company struck the correct balance between dramatic energy and vocal heroics, in a performance that proves that young voices do indeed grow in the heart of Brooklyn. This was the final production of the current Regina season (their 48th) in a detailed staging by Linda Lehr that pleased traditionalists while sacrificing none of the opera's dramatic edge.

Festival Preview: New York Opera Festival 2019

The multi-borough opera festival is back, and bigger and better than ever.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

We will be swiping our way to the opera next month as the multi-borough
New York Opera Festival kicks into high gear.

This current opera season is in its endgame but that doesn't mean we're done yet. Starting Saturday, the New York Opera Festival  launches for its fourth year. featuring performances all around the city of familiar operas, oratorios, chamber operas and new contemporary works focusing on women's and LGBT issues. This exciting slat is bewildering to behold but Superconductor is here to walk you through it even though we're not going to plan your schedule for you.

Festival Preview: They're All Over the Map

NY OperaFest 2018 brings music to the masses.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Bronx Opera staging of Sir John in Love. The company will mount Der Freischütz as part
of NY Opera Fest 2018. Photo © 2018 Bronx Opera courtesy Unison Media.

The Metropolitan Opera's spring 2018 season is in its last weeks but the opera season rolls ahead undaunted. This week marks the start of the annual NY Opera Fest, a coalition between a number of the exceptional small companies that dot New York, members all of the New York Opera Alliance.. From pyramids in South Brooklyn to a hunt through the wilderness of the North Bronx. the city resounds with a cornucopia of opera productions.

Opera Review: Magic on a Budget

The Magic Flute at Regina Opera.

by Paul Pelkonen

An original set design for Act I of The Magic Flute.

For the last 42 years, Brooklyn's Regina Opera has been serving up the best of the repertory to enthusiastic audiences in a church hall in Dyker Heights. On Sunday afternoon, the company gave the second of four performances of Mozart's The Magic Flute, offered here in a sturdy, serviceable English translation.

Despite being one of Mozart's most popular operas, the fantastical Flute suffers from over-familiarity and the misperception that the simple story is aimed exclusively at children. The Regina players presented a version that spoke clearly to all generations in the audience, making the opera's two love stories come across as genuine while indulging in the work's mystic pretense.

The Super-Conductor Opera Preview Part II: The Pooh-Bah Edition

Brought to you by the Lord High Everything Else.

The Lord High Everything Else

Yes, we already published the annual Metropolitan Opera Preview.

It's in that box over there to the right, where we break down the coming season of high drama and music drama at the big limestone skyscraper-on-its-side on what used to be W. 64th St and Amsterdam Ave.

Here, we break down the rest of the coming opera season, from the New York City Opera on down to smaller (but beloved) regional companies in the outer boroughs. This schedule is not complete, and links go to the websites of the respective opera companies and venues.

Anyway, there's some really good stuff coming. Here we go!

September 2011:

• The opera season gets off to an early start with a run of Francesco Cavalli's Giasone at Le Poisson Rouge in the first week of September. 
• Les Arts Florissants revives their staging of Atys by Jean-Baptiste Lully, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, starting Sept. 18. William Christie conducts.

October:

• BAM starts the month off with a run of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Also, Tosca opens the 30th anniversary season of the Dicapo Opera, a charming "jewel box" house on the Upper East Side.
• The Amore Opera continues the tradition of chamber opera in the East Village with a "Fall Figaro Fest": Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia and the U.S. premiere of Mercadente's Il due Figaro, an unauthorized continuation of the adventures of the Almaviva clan, written in 1826.

Peter Maxwell-Davies.

November:

• Two exciting premieres this month: Juilliard launches their 2011 opera season with the U.S. premiere of Kommiltonen! by composer Peter Maxwell-Davies. 
• This month also features world premiere of Nico Muhly's opera Dark Sisters by the Gotham Chamber Opera. The new work will run for 10 performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College for Criminal Justice. 
• Angela Gheorghiu makes her one New York appearance of the season, as the Opera Orchestra of New York presents Adriana Lecouvrer at Carnegie Hall.
• Chelsea Opera offers Menotti's The Medium, and Brooklyn's Regina Opera presents Madama Butterfly.

December:

• Yale in New York mounts an annual concert series at Carnegie Hall. In the downstairs Zankel Hall, the company will perform William Walton's rarely played one-act opera The Bear. 
• The Dicapo Opera mounts Tchaikovsky's Iolanta. 

January 2012

• Wagnerians are already excited at the OONY's plans to mount a concert version of Rienzi at Avery Fisher Hall. Eve Queler conducts. Nice to have Wagner without spinning planks.
• Opera Lafayette, a period ensemble from Washington D.C. makes its annual visit with Le Roi et le Fermier by Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny. 
• Another Menotti opera. This time, it's The Consul, presented by the Dicapo Opera.
• The Bronx Opera presents a rare work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Poisoned Kiss. All performances are at Lehman College.

The death of vinyl: Janis Kelly in the Manchester premiere of Prima Donna.
Photo by Tristram Kenton.

February

• Claiming "all of New York" as its stage, the revamped New York City Opera opens at...BAM. The company will offer a Jonathan Miller staging of La Traviata (from their old partners at Glimmerglass Opera.) Also, the eagerly anticipated U.S. premiere of singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright's anticipated opera Prima Donna.
• The Met and Juilliard present a co-production of Armide featuring promising young Juilliard artists. This is a follow-up to last year's The Bartered Bride. Gluck's opera will be conducted by Jane Glover. This may be a tough ticket, as it is (probably) a sneak preview for an upcoming Met production.

Not Rigoletto: Charles Laughton (left) as Quasimodo
with Maureen O'Hara in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
© 1939 RKO Radio Pictures.

March

• City Opera moves again, to the Lynch Theater for a new production of Mozart's Così fan tutte. On a happier note, Dicapo Opera presents The Most Happy Fella, and the Regina Opera offers Cavalleria Rusticana, paired with a short concert. 
• Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra present a concert performance of Franz Schmidt's Notre-Dame, a rare setting of Victor Hugo's story of a love-struck hunchback. (Not Rigoletto. The other one.)
• Finally, OONY offers a TBA opera with Placído Domingo. Betting books will open before the announcement is made. Well, not really.

April

• As the Met's Ring creaks into high gear, Gotham Chamber Opera will present a rare Mozart work: Il Sogno di Scipione. At the Lynch Theater at John Jay.
• Dicapo pits their Violetta against the Met's with their own production of La Traviata. (No Ikea furniture is involved.) 
• Also, the Juilliard School mounts another staging of Don Giovanni. This one is by Stephen Wadsworth.

May

• In their final migration of the season, New York City Opera presents Telemann's Orpheus at El Museo de Barrio on the Upper East Side.
• The Bronx Opera winds down their season with Hansel und Gretel at Lehman College.

Opera Review: From Paris, to Venice, to Bensonhurst

Regina Opera presents Les contes d'Hoffmann

In a palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, the courtesan Giulietta (Christina Rohm, left) and
 Nicklausse (Margaret O'Connell, right) a friend of the poet Hoffmann,  sing a romantic barcarolle.
Photo by Art Lawson © 2011 Regina Opera.

Brooklyn's own Regina Opera closed its 2011 season this month with a potent performance of Jacques Offenbach's final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann.



Hoffmann (sung by tenor Ubaldo Feliciano-Hernandez) is a fictionalized version of an actual 19th century poet, best remembered today for creating the original story of the Nutcracker. In this opera, he finds himself at the center of three of his own stories, pursuing love with an automaton (Olympia), a courtesan (Giulietta) and a sickly would-be opera singer (Antonia), and his moral deterioration and despair. Eventually, he realizes that all three women are different aspects of his beloved Stella. Ultimately, he rejects her to continue his work.

Part of the problem with putting on this opera is figuring out which version of the score to use. Offenbach died before finishing the work, so there are a number of options, most of them provided by musicologists and men of the theater. For this staging, the director Scott Jackson Wiley made conservative choices. He placed the Antonia act, with its dramatic finish at the end of the opera. Dappertutto's aria from the Venetian act, ("Scintille, diamant") was transported to the Olympia act, using alternate lyrics provided by conductor Anthony Morss. The result: a taut, sleek performance that made this opera's considerable length go by at a rapid pace.

The performance featured a strong cast. Ubaldo Feliciano-Hernandez overcame a small cold to deliver a powerful, ardent Hoffmann, capable of the work's tragi-comic moments and passionate in his long duet with Antonia. Bass-baritone Bryce Smith was stellar in the quadruple roles of the Four Villains, bringing a different kind of evil to each of Hoffmann's nemeses. The highlight of his performance was the rarely heard 'Tourne, tourne miroir," written by Offenbach but rejected by many singers as being too treacherous.

Offenbach intended for the leading ladies to be sung by the same soprano. This production split the role, allowing a series of engaging singers their turn in the spotlight. Andrea Bargabos soared through the role of the doll Olympia, hitting the difficult series of high coloratura figures in "Les oiseaux." She also engaged in robotic physical comedy, remaining in character for her curtain call. Christina Rohm was a sultry Giulietta, with a rich instrument.


As Antonia, Maryann Mootos has a big, unsubtle instrument that was a little large for the hall, but sang beautifully in her duet and in the trio that brings her act to its fatal climax. And although the double role of the Muse/Nicklausse was shortened in this version of the opera, Margaret O'Connell was exceptional, handling the gender-bending of the part convincingly and engaging in a lush, sensual "Barcarolle" with Ms. Rohm.

For the last four decades, Regina Opera has brought the works of Verdi, Puccini, and other masters to their Brooklyn neighborhood. Based in a small church auditorium, their innovative productions use a full orchestra of professional musicians. Director Linda Lehr did much with limited resources, creating a convincing German tavern and a sensual Venetian bordello. The latter was a picture of Carnival decadence with veils, masks and a whiff of S & M. Too strong of a whiff for some. The couple behind us left, shocked.