Opera Review: Doin' the French Mistake

City Opera opens Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna.

Melody Moore as Regíne Saint-Laurent in Prima Donna.
Photo by Carol Rosegg © 2012 New York City Opera.

by Paul J, Pelkonen

On Sunday afternoon, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York City Opera offered its second production of the 2012 season: the U.S. premiere of Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna. Mr. Wainwright's name recognition and reputation as an award-winning singer-songwriter are seen as key to the success of this work and the opera company itself. But the two-act work is more of a curiosity than a valid artistic statement.

Mr. Wainwright's work has been called a "love letter" to opera in the press materials. But while the Canadian composer borrows freely from four centuries of operatic history, he does not break new ground. The effect is not so much a love letter as a ransom note, pasted together from Italian, French and German composers, with a post-script by Philip Glass.

To his credit, Mr. Wainwright shows skill in establishing a smooth orchestral surface. Luxuriant tonal pillows are provided to rest the voices of his cast upon. The score's inspirations range from the medieval to the minimal, with major debts to Massenet, Debussy, and in one scene, Wagner. Pleasant sounds flow from he orchestra pit, occasionally interrupted by irritating percussion stabs, keyboard flourishes and heavy brass chords.

The libretto (in French, by Mr. Wainwright and Bernadette Colomine) is a warmed-over Sunset Boulevard, transferred to the world of opera in Paris and with a happier ending. Like Norma Desmond, the diva (played here by Melody Moore) longs to return to the limelight in her greatest role--in this case Eleanor of Aquitaine. The story spends two acts in her gloomy Paris apartment, a chamber of burnished mirrors and broken dreams.

Ms. Moore sings the role with enthusiasm and energy, maintaining the long, soaring vocal lines with clear tone and a commanding stage presence. She reminisces on playing Aliénor, taking a recording down from her mantelpiece. She starts an onstage record player. The orchestra takes over. The walls melt away and suddenly the audience is in that fictional opera soaring on waves of orchestral writing. It is a magnificent coup de théâtre.

Mr. Wainwright created magic in this one scene. But cruelly, he gives up when the record ends, drawing the curtain on his opera-within-an-opera, forcing the listener back to the claustrophobic apartment and impending artistic crisis. In the final pages, the idiom changes from romanticism to minimalist expression, as Ms. Moore sets off vocal fireworks against simple, repeated cells played on the keyboards and strings.

The cast of Prima Donna: Randal Turner, Melody Moore, Katherine Gutherie Demos,
Tayor Stayton.) Photo by Carol Rosegg © 2012 New York City Opera.

In Act I, the diva is interviewed by André, (tenor Taylor Stayton) an opera fan turned journalist. André nearly enters a disastrous romantic tryst, but escapes the fate of Joe Gillis. Mr. Stayton presents an appealing onstage manner and a potent tenor voice with a bright timbre. The role is demanding, lying very high in the voice and requiring Strauss-like heroics when Mr. Stayton impersonates King Henri in the operatic flashback.

Baritone Randal Turner is Philippe, a grumpy butler--the Erich von Stroheim character. He is the closest thing that the libretto has to an antagonist. As the faithful maid Marie, soprano Katherine Guthrie Demos gives a sky-scraping performance. Ms. Demos brings some much-needed fire and energy to Regíne's gloomy chamber. Her Act II table-setting aria earned the loudest applause of the afternoon.

There is a lot riding on the slender shoulders of Ms. Saint-Laurent and Mr. Wainwright. It could also be argued that the faded soprano's attempted stage comeback parallels the struggles of New York's second opera company. City Opera left its Lincoln Center home last year, promising to use the "whole city" as its stage. But if the rebooted company wanted to make its bones as an innovator in the genre, this is not the opera to do it with.

Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

New York City Opera Preview: Prima Donna

Rufus Wainwright's opera comes to Brooklyn.

A scene from the 2009 Manchester premiere of Prima Donna. Photo by Peter Mumford.

The second production in the resuscitated New York City Opera's 2012 season is Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna, the story of an aging diva struggling to mount a comeback, or at very least come to grips with the twilight of her career. Melody Moore sings the title role.

City Opera has a proud legacy of innovation, having brought New York such works as Philip Glass' Akhnaten, Anthony Davis' X: The Life and Times of Malcom X and Richard Rodney Bennett's The Mines of Sulfur. This is the first new piece brought to the stage by the company since Séance on a Wet Afternoon by Stephen Schwarz, which was met with a mixed reception in 2011. Four performances are scheduled at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House.

Prima Donna is a two-act work with a libretto (co-written by the composer) that operates on several dramatic levels. On the surface, it is the story of Régine St. Laurent, a Paris-based opera singer whose voice and career have faded. She is determined to mount one last comeback, but age and her complicated past may have finally caught up with her. The work also has an opera-within-the-opera, Aliénor d'Aquataine, featured in the second act.

Mr. Wainwright's opera was originally planned for the big stage at the Metropolitan Opera. But in 2008, Met general manager Peter Gelb insisted that the Canadian composer/songwriter create his work in English. Mr. Wainwright walked across Lincoln Center Plaza, and negotiated to have the U.S. premiere of his work at the New York City Opera.

Recording Recommendations:

Prima Donna bowed in 2009 at Manchester, and has been performed at the Sadler's Wells Theater in London and at the Luminato Festival in Toronto in 2010. But as of yet, there are no CD or DVD performances. There is, however a documentary, Prima Donna: The Story of an Opera, chronicling Mr. Wainwright's creative process. I haven't seen it, but it might give some idea of what the piece is like.

Rufus Wainwright has a discography of six studio albums and two live albums. For the completist, a boxed set is available.

It's Only a Paper House

City Opera tickets reduced to $25 a seat.
by Paul Pelkonen

Leaving Lincoln Center has forced City Opera to be creative in seeking a new venue.
This one is low-cost, and best of all, folds up.

The New York City Opera has announced that all remaining tickets for its 2012 performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music will be just $25, thanks to a generous donation made by the Reed Foundation and the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. 

City Opera is scheduled to open its season February 12 with a Jonathan Miller staging of Verdi's La Traviata. The company will follow it with Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna, which will have its United States premiere on February 19.

Each opera will receive just four performances.

Following a lengthy labor dispute, the City Opera is beginning its first season as a "guerilla" opera company. It has left its Lincoln Center home of almost 50 years and "gone rogue," (my term) and spreading its season between three different theaters and two boroughs.

In addition to the BAM performances, the company will offer Così fan tutte at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Georg Philip Telemann's Orfeo at El Museo del Barrio, located on Fifth Avenue. The Così is an eagerly anticipated followup to Christopher Alden's acclaimed 2009 production of Don Giovanni. Mr. Alden will complete the "Da Ponte" trilogy of Mozart operas with a production of Le Nozze di Figaro in an upcoming season.

The company moved out of the former New York State Theater in April of 2011, citing the rising costs of being a secondary tenant in the recently renovated venue. This followed the cancellation of the 2008-2009 season, during which said renovations took place. A number of City Opera veterans, including tenor Plácido Domingo and soprano Catherine Malfitano were critical of the move, saying that the company was sacrificing its identity for economic reasons.

The 2012 season was announced in July of 2011. That announcement was picketed by members of the opera's orchestra and chorus, who were incensed at the company's new contract offers. A bitter labor dispute followed, with the intervention of a federal mediator and a January 9 lockout of the chorus. 

Musicians Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists reached settlements on Tuesday, assuring that the opera season will go forward.

Time Running Out for City Opera

Doomsday clock ticks for New York's second opera company.
by Paul Pelkonen

If only this were a production design for L'heure Espagnole.

A series of decisions and disasters may spell "das Ende" for the New York City Opera.

The opera company has locked out two unions: Musicians' Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists in a dispute over a new contract that has turned ugly.

City Opera was founded in 1943 by then New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Hizzoner wanted an opera company that was the working man's alternative to the Met, with its ritzy Opera Club and Diamond Horseshoe. The company originally performed at City Center.

In 1967, NYCO moved to the then-new New York State Theater on the south side of Lincoln Center Plaza. They continued to offer an eclectic mix of repertory favorites, with Verdi, Puccini and Bizet mixed in with lesser-known works like Boito's Mefistofele and Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe.

The opera company also served as the launching point for a number of great careers, featuring tenor Plácido Domingo, soprano Beverly Sills, and basses Norman Triegle and Samuel Ramey. Many of these singers went on to sing at the Metropolitan Opera and to international careers, but some, like Ms. Sills, and later, Lauren Flanigan, made City Opera the center of their New York careers.

The City Opera was also where a young future opera journalist had his first encounter with the art form. I saw everything from Turandot (my first opera) to Leonard Bernstein's Candide, Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, The Mikado and Sweeney Todd in that burgundy-and-bronze theater. It was a diverse mix of operas, operettas and the occasional musical, a dizzying flow of laughter, tears and music that helped form me into the writer I am today.

I ran through its corridors, rode in its elevators, and sat with Mom and Dad in our subscription seats, located in the Third Ring with a nice view of the whole house. A lonely kid--I read books (and libretti) at intermission. I well remember missing the entire second act of La bohème once because I was engrossed in the "Mines of Moria" section of The Fellowship of the Ring.  And I remember how thrilled we all were when City Opera introduced super-titles in 1983.

Those were good days. I saw stagings by Hal Prince and Maurice Sendak. We were thrilled by Sam Ramey in Attila. Even after my father died in 1985, Mom and I still went to City Opera. (She preferred orchestra seats.) Partially in his memory, but we had also become addicted. We still went there in 1990, which was when Mom bought her first subscription to the Met.

In 1996, I completed my education and started working in this industry as an Associate Editor at Citysearch.com, formerly MetroBeat. I was covering Opera, Sports, and Fitness. (Classical Music came later.) I well remember the first City Opera performance I wrote about in those days, Der Rosenkavalier with Gwendolyn Jones as Octavian. I was even more shocked when an up-and-coming heldentenor who wanted some publicity brought Ms. Jones with him to our office. I think the word "gobsmacked" applied.

Ten years ago, following the horrors of 9/11, it was City Opera that started the ball rolling again at Lincoln Center, with a curiously grim and zombie-like revival of The Mikado. The date was September 15th. I guess we were all feeling a little shell-shocked.

Now, City Opera has left that home at Lincoln Center, opting for a "run-and-gun" approach, marketing themselves as a "leaner" and "fitter" operation. Now that they've locked out its chorus (and starting on February 1) its orchestra, it may starve to death. There's one month until the scheduled premiere of La Traviata at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Let's see if they can find a way to stay alive.

City Opera Goes to the Mattresses

Negotiations break down (again). Labor lockout begins.

Union delegates Peter Clemenza (Richard Castellano, l.) and Paulie Gatto (Johnny Martino, r.)
 attempt to find new, innovative solutions to the current crisis at New York City Opera.
Image from The Godfather © 1972 Paramount Pictures.

11th-hour negotiations between representatives of the New York City Opera, Musicians Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists broke down on Saturday night. According to a report on Parterre Box, the negotiations failed after the New York City Opera rejected an offered wage concession at 9pm on Saturday Night.

In a press release Saturday night, Local 802 stated that the opera company is planning to lock out its musicians starting on Monday. That date marks the start of scheduled rehearsals for the company's season-opening production of La Traviata, slotted for a February 12 premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House.

According to a New York Times report published Sunday by Daniel J. Wakin, the City Opera will lock choristers out of planned piano rehearsals, starting Monday. Orchestral rehearsals are supposed to start on Feb. 1.

The lockout leaves 114 choristers, musicans, and conductors without a salary or health care. City Opera press spokeswoman Risa B. Heller says that the company has no plans to hire replacements in the event of a strike. Ms. Heller also maintained that the company still plans its 16-performance season as scheduled.

At the end of the Spring 2011 season, the City Opera claimed to be operating on the brink of insolvency. General Manager George Steel undertook a tumultuous series of changes. The company left its home at Lincoln Center, announced a drastically reduced budget. The City Opera also released longtime music director George Manahan from his contract.

For 2012, the company has planned four operas, in three different theaters located in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Planned offerings include Traviata, the New York premiere of Prima Donna by Rufus Wainwright, and new productions of Mozart's Così fan tutte and Georg Philipp Telemann's version of Orpheus. But all this may be moot without the chorus and orchestra, two key components of any opera company.

But the big story this year has been the company's reluctance to negotiate a fair working wage with its musicians and choristers. The City Opera has offered to reduce orchestra members from a $40,000/year salary to a reported wage of just $4,000 with very minimal insurance. Musicians and choristers even offered to work for free for a year in order to keep their health insurance. This offer was rejected last year by the City Opera.

This story comes on the heels of an on-line plea from composer Rufus Wainwright to save the City Opera season (and Prima Donna, which bows at BAM on Feb. 19. Mr. Wainwright said: "If talks break down and there's a strike, the company will likely be decimated, thus leaving the city of New York with only one large opera house where as all the great cultural cities of the world have at least two."

After this offer was rejected, the City Opera requested the intervention of a federal labor mediator late in 2011. Negotiations have been held under a condition of press blackout. That blackout may be lifting with tonight's published interview with chorus member Neil Eddinger, which appears in its an entirety on Parterre Box.

Mr. Eddinger has thirty years experience in the City Opera chorus, and is a member of the AGMA negotiating committee. He said: "If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage, you can't afford an opera company. I'm tired of rich people trying to get something for nothing."

He added: "The board would like to traipse around...masquerading as patrons of the arts but they won't pay their artists. NYCO should put up or shut up. And by that I mean, pay or shut down."

Mr. Eddinger's statement seems to respond to Mr. Wainwright. "If George Steel had started his own company to book interesting musical events (e.g.. Rufus) and try to add another facet to our musical-artistic life, I would say 'Go for it!' But to hijack an existing repertory company with a noble history and so pervert it from its original intention is criminal."

Further Down the Death Spiral

City Opera orchestra, chorus plans strike.

The intrepid City Opera scouts Japanese locations
for a planned 2012 staging of Madama Butterfly. 
Naruto Whirlpools by Utagawa Hiroshige.

Even as socialites and royalty celebrated a "new era" for New York City Opera at a gala fund-raising bash this week,  plans for the 2011-2012 season have been jeopardized. 

Talks have broken down between City Opera's management (led by current General Manager George Steel) and representatives for Musicians' Local 802 and the American Guild of Musical Artists. These two unions represent the orchestra and chorus, the backbone of any opera company. 

Mr. Steel plans to rip out that backbone, and essentially pay artists like freelancers, with minimal salary and almost no health benefits. The cash-strapped opera company abandoned its Lincoln Center home last year, and is planning a "roving" season of just five operas, to be staged in various venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The abbreviated season and new, smaller venues, also carry higher ticket prices than the former New York State Theater.

According to a New York Times report by Daniel J. Wakin, the company's current offer to the musicians reduces orchestra salaries from a livable $40,000 a year to a "reduced" rate of $4,000. The offer came after City Opera deliberately let the old contracts expire at the end of April, 2011.

In an e-mail obtained by and published by parterre.com, Mr. Steel reported that negotiations were "at an impasse." You can read the whole e-mail here.

Also stripped in the new contract offer: health benefits. Earlier this fall, Local 806 representatives offered to play "for free" if they were allowed to keep their old health benefits. That offer was rejected by Mr. Steel last month.

Other recent sacrifices made by City Opera include the axing of music director George Manahan and the slashing of the Vox program, a workshop which allowed young composers working on new operas to get an airing.

The planned strike will probably not affect the company until January, when rehearsals start for the City Opera's planned performances in February. Those performances, planned for the Brooklyn Academy of Music include an imported Glimmerglass Opera staging of La Traviata and the New York premiere of Rufus Wainwright's new opera Prima Donna. For a full preview of the City Opera's truncated season, click this link.

In other news, the City Opera board recently voted to extend Mr. Steel's contract for three years. According to the Times, Mr. Steel's recent tax returns list his salary at $407,000/year. He did not get a raise.

Who Are You, New York City Opera?

The 2011-2012 New York City Opera Preview

Act III of Jonathan Miller's production of La Traviata from the Glimmerglass Festival. 
Photo by Richard Termine. © 2007 Glimmerglass Festival.

The New York City Opera has fleshed out some of the details of its skeletal 2011-2012 season, the company's first since its April announcement that it was leaving Lincoln Center.

However, as the company has not yet reached a deal with Local 806 or AGMA over union contracts for its musicians and choristers, these performances may be met with picket lines and large inflatable rats.

The Fall schedule (which, in happier days started in early September and ran into early November at the former New York State Theater) will consist of one concert.

The songwriter Rufus Wainwright, possibly thinking about Puccini.
Photo from his official site.

This show, entitled Who Are You New York: The Songs of Rufus Wainwright will be performed at the medium-sized Rose Theater in the Time Warner Center on Nov. 17. The concert will feature Mr. Wainwright and a collection of young City Opera singers. They will perform his song cycle All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu, followed by selections from Mr. Wainwright's song-book.

"Who are you, New York?" is an apt question for this company, as it forges ahead into strange new territory under the guiding hand of general manager George Steel. The City Opera's Spring opera season will start in February of 2012, with two works performed in repertory at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's historic Howard Gilman Opera House.

The first of these is Verdi's La Traviata, presented in a Jonathan Miller staging imported from the City Opera's old friends at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY. Tenor David Pomeroy makes his company debut as Alfredo. Brooklyn native Laquita Mitchell is Violetta. Steven White, who led this opera at the Met in 2009, will conduct.

La Traviata will play in repertory with the New York premiere of Mr. Wainwright's opera Prima Donna. Melody Moore will sing the lead in this French-language opera, which was originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera until Met general manager Peter Gelb insisted that Mr. Wainwright write his libretto in English.

March sees the City Opera migrate to the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, just two blocks away from their old digs at 20 Lincoln Center. The opera: Mozart's Così fan tutte in an eagerly anticipated new staging from director Christopher Alden. Mr. Alden's version of Don Giovanni (set in a funeral parlor) was the first success of Mr. Steel's term as general manager, and the company is hoping for a repeat of that success in this smaller theater.

In May, the City Opera packs its bags again and moves to El Museo del Barrio on the Upper East Side. They will perform Orpheus, another version of the myth about the legendary musician from Greek mythology. This one is by German baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann, and may prove to be an intriguing way to end this abbreviated season. Baritone Daniel Teadt makes his company debut in the title role.

City Opera: With Real Elephants?

An Artistic Intitiative at the Barclay Center Prompts Blogger Speculation

Wouldn't you want to see an opera here? With free popcorn?
Image © 2011 NJ.com/New Jersey Nets Basketball

A little over a month ago, Superconductor ran an article about the New York City Opera and its possible choices for a new home. Among the serious possibilities (City Center, BAM) were a number of tongue-in-cheek suggestions including the Barclay Center.

Now let me make this clear:

I...was...kidding!

The Barclay seemed as likely a candidate for City Opera relocation as Crif Dogs in the East Village or (my personal favorite) the Owl's Head Water Reclamation Plant. But that twisted vision of the future may come to pass.

Built at the corner of Atlantic Avenue, the Flatbush Avenue Extension and Fourth Avenue, the Barclay Center is the new basketball arena currently under construction as part of the multijillion-dollar Atlantic Yards development. It is scheduled to open as home of the transplanted (and soon to be renamed) New Jersey Nets next year. But according to an article in the New York Times this sarcastic scenario is a possibility, albeit a dim one.

The Times ran a story chronicling the recent deal between the Barclay Center and the neighboring Brooklyn Academy of Music, to use the white elephant arena as a large scale stage for performing arts events of an undisclosed nature. The performances would begin in the Spring of 2013, but no specific reference was made to any artists or possible choice of repertory.

Hey Bob! I think there might be a job for us at City Opera!
Photo © 2006 African Wildlife Foundation

One cannot help but speculate if that includes large-scale performances by New York City Opera, assuming that the beleagured (and currently indigent) opera company can cobble together enough donations to put on any kind of season in 2013. Of course, turning a shiny new b-ball arena into a Brooklynite Baths of Caracalla for giant productions of Aida and Turandot is a cool idea, but it seems like this would be more the Metropolitan Opera's bag.

In other City Opera news, the company's recent preview performance of Rufus Wainwright's opera-to-be Prima Donna was met with a swarm of company protestors outside the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center. The merry musicians played excerpts from La bohème and Carmen, popular, beloved operas that the company used to mount before general manager George Steel took over and moved the city's second-biggest opera company out of its Lincoln Center digs.

Glimmers of Hope for Troubled City Opera

Can this man save the City Opera?
Rufus Wainwright, composer of Prima Donna

The long-term future of the New York City Opera is anyone's guess, but indications exist that the hard-pressed opera company, which recently evicted itself from its home at Lincoln Center of four decades, is gearing up for some kind of season, probably starting in the Spring of 2012.

An e-mail sent this morning from the NYCO marketing department states that the United States premiere of the opera Prima Donna, the first opera from the pen of singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, is planned for next spring. Audiences will have their first chance to hear excerpts from the work in a free concert planned for June 28, 2011, as part of the ongoing River to River Festival.

Mr. Wainwright's opera had its world premiere in Manchester, England in 2009. The work was originally planned for the Metropolitan Opera, but a dispute between the composer and Met general manager Peter Gelb led to those plans being scrapped. Mr. Gelb wanted the opera to have an English libretto, but Mr. Wainwright insisted on setting the text in French. City Opera was quick to seize the opportunity to mount Mr. Wainwright's work.


The premiere of Prima Donna would mark the City Opera's second offering of an opera by a composer known for their work in another musical field in two years. The company's 2011 spring schedule was dominated by the New York premiere of Séance on a Wet Afternoon by Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz, which earned scathing critical notices and played to half-empty houses.

A reliable source has told Superconductor that the City Opera has entered into contract negotiations with the singers for the performances of Prima Donna. The same source also mentioned that the company has picked a performance space for their skeletal 2012 season. No further information is available.

According to this source, the City Opera will follow Prima Donna with a new production of Cosí fan tutte, the Mozart/da Ponte comedy centered around partner-swapping. Cosí is not the most popular of Mozart's operas, but at least it has the benefit of familiarity to what's left of City Opera's core audience.