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Reviews
April 1, 2003
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SYMPHONY
Flawed Fun
By Michelle Dulak
San Francisco Symphony
Jean-Philippe Collard
Frans Brüggen
(3/27/03)
RECITAL
Big Power
By Olivia Stapp
Michelle DeYoung
(3/30/03)
EARLY MUSIC
Together, Yet Apart
By Joseph Sargent
Chanticleer
Capriccio Stravagante
(3/30/03)
RECITAL
By Any Other Name
By Jerry Kuderna
Frederic Chiu
(3/30/03)
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Millenary Outing
By Jules Langert
San Francisco Contemporary Music Players
(3/24/03)
CHAMBER MUSIC
Affinity For Our Time
By Nikki Buechler
Jupiter Trio
(3/30/03)
EARLY MUSIC
All Forces Excel
By Heuwell Tircuit
American Bach Soloists
(3/30/03)
CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Points of Disappointment
By Daniel Leeson
Master Sinfonia
(3/29/03)
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 3/25/03 Question of the Week
LISTENER'S BOX
Response to Patrick Summers'
WOT Essay in this issue
MUSIC NEWS
'Young Audiences' Matures
By Janos Gereben
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Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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I heard of the demise of Western Opera Theater last week and subsequently found myself flooded with memories of my years on the road. I must confess that I hadn’t consciously thought of WOT in quite some time, though I probably had been quietly waiting to hear of its inevitable passing. Western Opera Theater was not “edgy” or particularly intellectual; it had a mercifully low profile in the music business. It was only occasionally picturesque. It was unnaturally hard work. It cost more than it made. But WOT was mandated with Kurt Herbert Adler’s vision of bringing opera to the people while providing practical experience to young artists, and in that it had no peer. The Western Opera Theater tour was an effervescently youthful cultural treasure in the United States and an irreplaceable part of the fabric of the San Francisco Opera Center.
I have heard hundreds of platitudes related to the training of singers, particularly from those who’ve never done it: “The most important thing is knowing the literary background of characters!” vs. “Literary background is pointless; everything you need to know about a character is in the music!” “Singers simply MUST learn the great traditions from older, greater singers!” vs. “Master classes are pointless! The great singers made their own traditions!” “There must be daily aerobics classes!” “We should have more classes on the music business, on getting an agent!” “Singers can’t act! We must have more extensive stage training!” “We’ve got to teach these kids how to dress.” These well-intentioned opinions of how to spend a young singers’ time are confusing to young artists, the most gifted of whom instinctively know that they must transcend their training and find their own way.
What I loved about WOT as a training entity was that all of the opinions expressed in the Merola Opera Program, no matter how valid many of them might have been, were left behind when the bus left San Francisco. Western Opera Theater was about performance, and discovering yourself in relation to it. There was plenty of time on the road to explore every piece of advice you ever received and find out what made sense for you. WOT was the ultimate in practical training. In the days when the tour lasted for 4-5 months and offered multiple performances there was nothing like it in the United States. (Financial reality gradually reduced the performing schedule throughout the 90s.)
WOT did not employ a separate chorus: the principal singers sang something in every performance. If you were a tenor on the La Bohème tour you might sing Rodolfo one night, Parpignol the next, chorus the next, then back to Rodolfo. The depth of learning created by that kind of artistic democracy was immeasurable. Of course, those who believed singers should be kept under glass until they were ready to be launched on the world (fully formed of course!) didn’t agree with this approach. Being very hard work and offering little time for rest, WOT was uniquely dependent on the adrenaline of youth.
Gilda in WOT Rigoletto (1982)
Yes, it’s humbling to sing Cio-Cio-San one night and Kate Pinkerton the next but the program sent singers into the music business deeply informed about the terms “work ethic” and “ensemble”. It taught them to be collaborative and supportive of their colleagues. It taught them how to teach themselves. And most importantly it made performance a natural form of expression. When you moved up in the world and the pressures of performance became greater, you were ready and your nerves were intact. Milan, Paris, and London are undoubtedly more prestigious operatic destinations than Chico, Walla Walla or Great Falls, but once you’ve traveled the country in a bus, warmed up in the bathroom of the International House of Pancakes, applied your stage makeup in a moving vehicle, and performed an opera so many times that you have even the second bassoon part memorized, nothing you are called upon to do in Paris will seem very difficult.
For all of the splash and excitement of the Merola Opera Program, with its high-styled boot camp atmosphere (which I loved and still miss), its celebrity Master classes, and far too many parties, it was in Western Opera Theater that the informative bombardment of Merola started to coalesce. Usually about two weeks into the tour, sometime in October, as we watched autumn arrive in the Pacific Northwest (we generally went north first to avoid dangerous weather too late in the year), I would hear someone say “Oh, That’s what Regine Crespin meant!”
The Merola Program is fantastic and unique in the world of training and I owe a great debt to it myself, but the pressure there is constant, and reflection time is very incompatible with the depth of information that needs to be digested in the Merola summer. The WOT tour was the perfect time to put it all together, learn to process information, learn to listen, and learn how to teach yourself (which should always be the goal of anyone entrusted with training artists).
There is a saying that the best teachers are not the ones with the most students; the best teachers are the ones who create the most teachers. By that standard, WOT could not be topped. The long list of professional singers, conductors and voice teachers, directors and theatrical technicians who worked for WOT in its nearly 40 year history is fascinating and undeniably impressive. I think of Stephen Smith (Rigoletto 1982-83) who, as a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School, has become one the most renowned voice teachers in the United States. And there is Kathy Kelly (La Traviata 1991-92 and La Bohème 1992-93) who is now a valued member of the Metropolitan Opera’s music staff. Naturally, not everyone who traveled with WOT stayed in the music business but if you needed to find out if you were suited to a life in music, no class or lecture could show you so clearly as a day in the WOT company. I’m hesitant to even begin to recall singers. How do I mention Deborah Voigt (Don Giovanni 1985-86) and not Dolora Zajick (Madama Butterfly 1983-84)? Can I bring up Ruth Ann Swenson (Rigoletto 1982-83) and not Patricia Racette (Madama Butterfly 1989-90)? Space prohibits mentioning scores of worthy artists and, to them, my apologies.
To choose a single example, Patricia Racette was a singer particularly affected by the tour. Assigned with the awesome task of singing Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, there was some initial concern that the task was too much for a relatively inexperienced 22 year-old, no matter how talented. During the Merola Program of 1988, Patricia was quickly identified as a very gifted young talent destined for the career she is now enjoying. But Christine Bullin (the extraordinary founder of the Opera Center and its director until 1992) and I came under considerable criticism from various pundits for asking this young girl to sing such a huge role. In one of her many remarkable Master classes, Regine Crespin asked Patricia what she was working on. She meekly replied “Madama Butterfly”, at which point Regine pointed to me and screamed “ASSASSIN!” When I gently reminded Madame Crespin that she herself had performed Elsa in Lohengrin at age 23 at no less than the Paris Opera, she said, “Patrick! That was only Elsa! This is Butterfly!”
It became a young artist’s program mantra in the 80s, and it continues to this day, that young voices are “pushed too far too soon”, but like most mantras, the truth is not quite so dogmatic. What works for one doesn’t automatically work for another: Maria Callas sang Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana at age 15 and didn’t do too badly for herself. Roberta Peters sang at the top of the profession for more than 40 years even though she had a very young start in starring parts. After getting to know Patricia and the depth of her talent and drive, we thought Butterfly would actually be healthy for her. She was blessed with a very sturdy voice of remarkable beauty, with great reserves of energy and a natural talent for protecting her own vocal gifts. Christine agreed with me but, just to be safe, we made a secret pact that if Ms. Racette showed any signs of vocal strain we would remove her from the role of Cio-Cio-San (to my knowledge Patricia never knew about this).
We also did something rather radical at the time: we asked Patricia what she thought. “No problem; it’s easy” was her reply (the blessing of being 23 and inexperienced), so we proceeded. We were all very aware that she would be singing Madama Butterfly performances in small theatres around the US with either a small orchestra or with two pianos; it was not “the big time”. That was the brilliance of WOT: you could test yourself and the stakes were only as high as you personally made them. This made for exciting, youthful performances and audiences across the country responded positively. Obviously, Ms. Racette did no harm to her vocal apparatus by singing Cio-Cio-San with Western Opera Theater; 15 years later she is sought after by every opera house in the world, commands an enormous repertoire, and is a performer of great depth and unique personality. I am proud to be conducting her first “grown-up” Madama Butterfly that will open Houston Grand Opera’s 50th Anniversary Season in 2004.
The tour itself had a marvelous sense of old world adventure about it. I always imagined us leaving the carriage entrance of the War Memorial in stagecoaches (OK, our stage coach was an air conditioned Greyhound Bus but allow me a bit of romance here). My first WOT tour was La Bohème in 1986-87. I was 23, just out of Indiana University, brimming with dreams of a conducting career and Western Opera Theater was my first professional engagement. The following two years I was WOT’s Music Director before becoming the Music Director of the San Francisco Opera Center until 1994. I was happily associated in various forms with eight of the National Tours. With a certain pleasurable melancholy, I have enjoyed recalling a number of WOT memories over the last few days and remembering the great debt of gratitude I owe to my years on tour.
The most rewarding time on the WOT bus was the morning after a performance, driving off to our next destination. Over the course of the day the singers would generally wander by my seat and discuss what went on the night before. Often we would go over the score or just talk about certain phrases and what they meant. Early in the tour the discussion tended to be about the basic semantics of music and acting, i.e. pitch, rhythm, the text, the blocking. As the tour progressed the discussions moved to the bigger architecture of the work. There was a sense of leisure about these sessions because the professional stakes were not actually high; there would be another opportunity to try it a different way at the next performance, or there would be a chance to watch a colleague try it.
Over time, I saw the most gifted of the singers start to train themselves; their own observations about the performances became deeper and more honest, and their performances inevitably started to blossom. I witnessed many singers board the bus shy and inexperienced at the beginning of the tour. By the end, near March in those years, with scores of performances behind them and an extensive view of the United States in their memory, they ended the tour seasoned and confident, though usually quite tired. I have heard criticism from various quarters that singers shouldn’t “train in front of an audience”. But this elitist view belies the very practical nature of the performing arts. Until the media age, performers had a period of their lives during which they were allowed to learn their craft, fall down and get back up again, and not be under the constant scrutiny of the major musical press. WOT singers were, after all, the best of their generation and, even in an embryonic stage, they were quite capable of giving a worthy performance. In a very real way, Western Opera Theater was the last such place in the United States that provided such a depth of experience.
In 1987 there was the celebrated and well-documented tour of Western Opera Theater to China. The effect of that visit on the operatic landscape of China is immeasurable: in 1987 no “western” opera company had ever visited the People’s Republic of China. Now Shanghai has a glittering opera house of its own, and dozens of brilliant singers from China, several of whom entered the business via San Francisco Opera, are enjoying careers on the world stage. While many factors have contributed to China’s emerging musical talents, there is no doubt that the 1987 WOT tour was a major contributor.
After the 1987 tour, the San Francisco Opera Center had an annual presence in Shanghai until 1992’s “Pacific Voices.” Pacific Voices (another brilliant creation of Christine Bullin) was a quasi grandchild of Western Opera Theater; it was a program focused on the young operatic artists of the Pacific Rim gathered together at the San Francisco Opera, for a “mini Merola Program” and concert. Parallel to WOT’s vision in the United States, Pacific Voices acknowledged and celebrated the parent company’s geographic position, but on a more worldly and politically prescient level. It was a visionary program that the parent company has sadly not repeated.
Western Opera Theater offered a wide variety of experiences to its audiences. While it is true that a larger number of regional opera companies exist now than when WOT was founded, my experience was that our presence in large urban centers was greatly anticipated by the local regular operatic patrons due to our connection to the San Francisco Opera. In smaller towns, where the arrival of Western Opera Theater was often the year’s major cultural event, it was the presence of an opera company at all that was unique and exciting.
Though Western Opera Theater employed its own wonderful orchestra, based out of San Francisco, the company occasionally utilized regional orchestras. We toured with the Inland Empire Symphony (based in San Bernardino, California), the Denver Chamber Orchestra and many others through the years. WOT was an important part of their yearly schedule and they joined in the fun of touring. The members of the Denver Chamber Orchestra got so friendly with the singers of the company that, at a party in beautiful Cheyenne, Wyoming, they managed to dump several singers into a pool as payment for a poker game gone wrong. As soon as I realized what was going on I fled; conductors should never be around when people are randomly getting thrown into water.
Even now, when I abstractly think of the entity of the “United States,” I’m sure I view it through the eyes of my years with WOT. For all the benefits of training at WOT, the most treasured memories I have of those years involve the audiences and sponsors of the company. Many small colleges and civic leaders found the money each year to present WOT because they thought it was important for their communities. During the 1980s, thanks to the endlessly fertile mind of Christine Bullin, WOT even had a spin-off: The San Francisco Opera Center Singers offered shortened versions of operas and small concerts with piano. It was an inexpensive way to take opera to communities who could not even afford WOT. It played small hotels, private parties, community centers, prisons, and nursing homes. Several communities booked the bigger company in subsequent years after an engagement of the SFOCS.
WOT stories encompass a whole kaleidoscope of experiences. Many of us have dined out on “small town” tales from the WOT tour: I recall a lovely little restaurant in a town somewhere (I honestly couldn’t tell you where) whose menu said it offered a “fine selection of wines and beers.” Someone in the company inquired about a wine list and the waitress rather indignantly announced, “Honey, all our wine is fresh!” But the very best WOT memories are not patronizing “country vs. city” tales. WOT audiences and presenters had enormous hearts and generosity and our presence in their community was important to them.
I can never forget the particularly frigid Don Pasquale performance in Morden, Manitoba in 1987. The only place in Morden big enough for a performance was the local ice rink. They spread a huge tarpaulin over the ice and we played Donizetti with gloves on and visible breath. Naturally Manitoba in November is not the warmest place you can imagine so at the end of the performance we were hoping for a nice warm party. We got one: a huge bonfire outside. (The presenter in Morden told me the audience that night was bigger than the local population; something he had never seen before.)
There was the Madama Butterfly performance in Butte, Montana (a regular WOT presenter) where our lighting instruments put so much strain on the electrical system that the theater blacked out. The presenters ran to the local hardware store and stocked up the audience with flashlights. I was actually looking forward to the beautiful love duet at the end of act one powered by scores of flashlights and was almost disappointed when the power came back just before it. There was a sweetly naïve moment in another Butterfly performance when several members of the audience rose, presumably out of patriotic habit, at Puccini’s quote of the Star Spangled Banner near the beginning of the opera.
Prescott, Arizona presented Western Opera Theater every season from the beginning, and their beautiful city was a favorite of the WOT company. It was in Prescott in 1988 that I asked the audience to rise for a moment of silence for Kurt Herbert Adler, San Francisco Opera’s second General Director and WOT’s founder, who had died that afternoon. Near the end of the moment of silence a gentleman in the audience said, “Kurt Herbert Adler brought opera to us and I think we owe him a round of applause”. We proceeded through a particularly spirited performance of Don Pasquale, with the audience laughing and even clapping along to the great third act duet between Don Pasquale and Malatesta. I have always hoped that Mr. Adler would have approved of his send-off that day.
I remember attending a WOT performance of Lucia di Lammermoor in the early 90s in Boulder City Nevada, near Hoover Dam. I was seated next to an elderly gentleman and shortly after the performance began he began to weep. Even though Lucia is a very sad opera his reaction seemed curiously out of context. At the intermission I offered him a tissue and asked if he needed anything. He apologized for his overt emotion during the performance but explained to me that his grandson was fighting in the Persian Gulf. This man’s tears had nothing directly to do with the sad plight of Lucia: the sight of all of these children (as he described them) from different nations and backgrounds merely singing together struck him as very moving. He said to me, “imagine what kind of world we could have if we all did more singing.”
I took him back to meet the cast, which thrilled him, and I received regular Christmas cards from him until his death a few years ago. His grandson, by the way, came home safely and is now a father and avid opera lover. I realize that this tale is very sentimental by the standards of the sophisticated 21st Century music business (and no doubt the gentleman would have been quite embarrassed by my sharing it with you), but I think for me it was WOT’s finest moment. How many other such moments were there that we never realized?
Sentiment cannot pay for scenery and buses and orchestras and hotel rooms. As the Music Director of a large opera company I am very well acquainted with the financial realities of 2003. So I know that the decision to end Western Opera Theater was an inevitable but doubtless very difficult one. We all knew it couldn’t last forever but still I feel a lingering sadness and nagging sense of loss. I experienced it at that unique and brief time in one’s youth when you first discover that it’s good and useful to dream. Watching gifted young singers find confidence and discover themselves through the opportunities afforded by WOT was a quieter and more private reward than the applause of an audience, but it was a deeply satisfying thing to witness nevertheless. There is something portentous, though I’m not sure exactly what, that the very first National Endowment for the Arts grant went to the now departed Western Opera Theater. I offer no criticism of the decision to end it, nor can I offer a solution of how to pay for it. But when it’s curtain time tonight in Prescott, Billings, Lakeland, Yreka, Shanghai or any one of hundreds of other cities, I hope at least a few people will give WOT a quiet goodbye.
(Patrick Summers is the Music Director of Houston Grand Opera and Principal Guest Conductor of San Francisco Opera. He is the former Music Director of Western Opera Theater and San Francisco Opera Center.)
Editor's Note: See also today's Listeners' Box for a response to Mr. Summers' article and in today's Music News, the news story AGMA Objects to Western Opera Cancellations.
©2003 Patrick Summers, all rights reserved
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