COC launches 2011-12 season with Gluck masterpiece

Susan Graham (centre) as Iphigenia in the Lyric Opera of Chicago production, 2006. Photo: Robert Kusel

From the same creative team that brought Toronto audiences the Dora Award-winning production of Orfeo ed Euridice comes the COC’s 2011/2012 season opening production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris.

Iphigenia marks its company premiere with director Robert Carsen at the helm and featuring Susan Graham, who makes her COC debut in the title role.  Leading the COC Orchestra and Chorus is Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado,who conducted last season’s Nixon in China.

“This is why we go to the opera,” said the Globe and Mail of the COC’s Orfeo ed Euridice, May 2011.

A scene from the Lyric Opera of Chicago production, 2006. Photo: Robert Kusel

Iphigenia in Tauris was Gluck’s greatest triumph, telling of how the heroine Iphigenia is rescued from imminent death only to confront the tragic twist of fate of being required to kill her long-lost brother.  Composed in 1779, Gluck created a score of refined, classical beauty that lays bare the emotional intensity of this Greek tragedy. Carsen’s directorial vision for the COC’s Iphigenia in Tauris takes the ancient Greek myth into a timeless present, with a staging that strips away  distraction and highlights the opera’s emotions and music drama.

Renowned mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is a leader in the international revival of Gluck’s operas.  Recent performances as Iphigenia include Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Teatro Real de Madrid, for which her “molten tone and vivid acting” (Financial Times) as well as “nobility and vibrant vocal beauty” (Chicago Tribune), has been praised in performances described as “poignant and majestic” (Opera News) and “riveting” (New York Times).  Rising Canadian soprano Katherine Whyte, “a compelling vocal and dramatic presence” (Opera Canada) who has made impressive debuts with English National Opera, Atlanta Opera and l’Opéra national de Bordeaux in recent years, will also debut in the title role,  sings Iphigenia on October15.

Graham and Whyte are joined by Canadian lyric baritone Russell Braun is Iphigenia’s brother Orestes. Braun is a regular presence at the Metropolitan Opera, l’Opéra national de Paris, Vienna State Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, LA Opera, La Scala and the Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals.  Returning  to the COC in the role of Orestes’ best friend, Pylades, is Met regular and COC Ensemble Studio graduate tenor Joseph Kaiser, who has performed in opera, oratorio and concerts throughout North America and Europe, as well as in film, having starred as Tamino in the Kenneth Branagh film adaptation of The Magic Flute in 2007.

In returning to direct Iphigenia in Tauris, Robert Carsen brings with him other members of the Orfeo ed Euridice creative team: set and costume designer Tobias Hoheisel and co-lighting designer Peter Van Praet.  Choreography for the 20 dancers in Iphigenia in Tauris is by Philippe Giraudeau, who makes his COC debut.

A co-production of Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Carsen’s Iphigenia in Tauris that has already played to acclaim in Chicago, San Francisco, London and Madrid.

Sung in French with English SURTITLES™, Iphigenia in Tauris runs for eight performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Sept. 22, 25, 28 and Oct. 1, 4, 7, 12, 15, 2011.

Individual tickets go on sale tomorrow. For more information, see the COC website at http://www.coc.ca.

American tenor wins Operalia 2011

René Barbera, 2011 Operalia winner

Congratulations to René Barbera, US tenor, Texas native, winner of three prizes at Placido Domingo’s Operalia!

• First Prize for Opera
• First Prize for Zarzuela
• Audience Prize

He is the first artist to be the sole recipient of all three awards since the competition began in 1993.

Here is his prize-winning aria from the competition. “Pour mon ame” from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment. Listen to him nail his top C’s–all nine of them. Laser sharp. Ping, bam, ring. WOW!

stop picking on NYC Opera!

New York City Opera faces will try to meet their grave financial challenges head-on with a new business model.

You  manage an opera company. Your expenses exceed your income. That is the scenario you inherited when you stepped in as general manager and is expected to be the scenario moving forward.

If you don’t come up with a new business model that allows you to operate with the funds you can expect to have, you’ll have to close your doors.

(By the way, you don’t have a goose that lays golden eggs or a big fat money tree in your backyard last time you checked.)

What do you do? One option is to do what managers are paid to do. You manage. You manage so that you can continue programming in fulfillment of a company’s mission. Or you fold your cards, pick up your hat, and say, “Sayonara, suckers. Let all this big mess be someone else’s problem.”

George Steel, General Manager and Artistic Director of the New York City Opera, hasn’t folded his cards or hung his head. He’s managing an organization just as he’s been charged to do. What should have been or might have been didn’t pan out to be, so he’s trying to move forward with a new business model that allows New York City Opera to continue to do what it was established to do.

“But they won’t be paying union chorus and orchestra wages any longer?” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could? I’ve certainly enjoyed those aspects of seeing shows at presented by New York City Opera that add immeasurably to the production values of each show.

But who’s going to pay the professional musicians? New York City Opera can no longer afford their Lincoln Center home, but people are expecting them somehow to continue to shell out union wages for musicians? That’s like a homeless person keeping a building contractor on retainer because that’s what he used do when he had that good job and that beautiful house that everyone admired and loved to visit.

I live in Central Pennsylvania where many businesses are still trying to recover from the economic downturn that began in the last decade. Historically, even in the past 10-15 years, these family- and closely-held businesses might have been very successful, generating x-amount of revenue.  Because of the recession or market forces or changes in their industry, many business leaders are having to define a new normal. That means they’ve realized they no longer run a company that generates x-amount per year,  but 1/2  x-amount. In fact, they might never generate x-amount again–ever.

These business owners have come up with new business models to stay in business. Because they would be irresponsible–no, not just irresponsible–stupid business people if they failed to search for and then put in place ways to keep the business afloat that their father or grandfather founded decades ago, under different market conditions, which is now entrusted to them.

New York City Opera is trying to cope with a new normal. I’m sure they’d love to stay in their beautiful, newly refurbished Lincoln Center home and retain their accomplished union singers and highly skilled orchestra members, but they can’t afford to do so and also remain solvent.

And please don’t start with the argument that they did unpopular, esoteric shows and that’s why they are in trouble. Under Steel they produced Don Giovanni, for pity’s sake, an opera potboiler if ever there was one. Oh, and Elixir of Love, and the very entertaining new musical by Stephen Schwartz, Seance on a Wet Afternoon. And they paid tribute to Leonard Bernstein with the New York premiere of A Quiet Place. Imagine that! Honoring Leonard Bernstein at Lincoln Center.

New York City Opera has come up with a new business plan that allows them to continue doing what they were founded to do–produce opera for the citizens of New York. It’s just that they are producing opera all across New York City instead of making New York (and the rest of the world) come to them. It’s a brave, interesting model that might just work. I’m very much looking forward to traveling to different parts of New York to see their 2011-12 season and hope I get the chance to do so.

Unless you have any better ideas or can lay a golden egg for them, then it’s time to give Steel and his organization a chance to move forward with a new New York City Opera.

chattin’ up David Lomeli: Mexican tenor, toast of NYC!

Tenor David Lomeli

He’s an Operalia winner. He’s a recent graduate of San Francisco Opera‘s prestigious Adler Fellows program for the most advanced young singers.

As Nemorino in Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love presented by New York City Opera this past spring, tenor David Lomeli was the rising star New York critics raved about and audiences gushed over:

“Mr. Lomelí captured the opera’s potent combination of hilarity and pathos. He certainly deserved all the applause and bravos. He was, in a word, delightful.”
–The New York Times (full review here)

After David sang “Una Furtiva Lagrima” on opening night (his first Elixir ever, by the way), the audience applauded for a solid minute and a half. “The choristers backstage timed it,” David said in a recent phone interview.

I saw David sing the role for New York City Opera. In my review for Backtrack, I cited his second-act aria as one the most magical moments I’d experienced as an operagoer, the kind we all pray to be in the audience for and are  fortunate to witness.

Without equivocation, David Lomeli was la estrella de Nueva York. As The New York Observer said in their feature “Who Matters Now,” David Lomeli brings “Latin ardor to the stage.”

In case you didn’t know, his first name David (which he pronounces daVEED) means beloved. How fitting! This is one performer who is simply adored — whenever he sings, wherever he goes.

It seems that this love fest for David Lomeli began 29 years ago when he was born in Mexico City into a musically talented family. As a small child, he had blonde hair and pink skin, and the thirteen women he grew up with fussed over him to no end because of his fair coloring. And it seems as though all the fussing over David Lomeli has never stopped. 

(Or maybe it’s only just begun.)

Since winning Plácido Domingo’s Operalia in 2006, to this day Maestro Domingo mentors him, regarding David not only as a protege but also embracing him like family. David has been generously encouraged by many big names in opera including Luciano Pavarotti who once told David that being a next generation opera star would be much harder than the challenges he himself faced because of the acting and staging demands opera performance requires these days. He considers another very famous Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón his generational idol.

David is currently playing Rodolfo in 'La Bohème' at Santa Fe Opera / photo by Ken Howard

David Lomeli is talented and  hard-working, putting everything he has (mind, body, soul) into each of his performances. He is uber-friendly, utterly charming, and yet very down-t0-earth, having agreed to be profiled on Operatoonity though he and I had never met prior to this interview.

His is fluent in English — he attended a British school in Mexico — and so his answers are his own. (No translation required).

Bienvenido, David! Since your performance in ‘Elixir’ so gladdened my heart (porque cantando se alegran, los corazones), it is such a pleasure to have this chance to talk with you.

Can you tell me a little about your childhood (besides being a native of Mexico City)–how you grew up and how it affected your decision to sing opera?
Well, in my family there was always music.  My grandmother and my mother were singers — my mom a mezzo and grandma a soprano. I was raised by them my first years. My dad plays the guitar. You can tell by the quantity and quality of the Mexican tenors, that we are surrounded my music all the time — between salsa, mariachi, corrido, cumbia and boleros we always singing. The opera path opened in college where I finished an engineer career in computer systems. The beautiful way of Mexicans to do things happened in college.

My university had a theater of 2,500 seats with  a concert series featuring artists like Pavarotti, Ramon Vargas and Gustavo Dudamel coming every year, a musical theater company that made many Spanish world premieres of Broadway shows and a full orchestra. But there was no music degree offered, so we did operas and musical with whatever student of other degrees wanted to do it as an extra credit. The opera company of the university offered to pay my tuition as an engineer if I dedicated my extra time to sing with them and that’s how it happened. They sent me to Barcelona and Milan to study my degree in evening with  musical training in the mornings. I learned a lot by doing performances, graduating with more than 300 performances in the school theater productions. It was a great period of my life.

David won Operalia in 2006, a competition open to all voice categories for singers ages 18 to 30 years who are ready to for the world’s great opera stages.

You were invited to compete in Operalia in 2006, representing the United States (according to the website). How did that come about?
You are right – the site says that I represented the US.  But, I am not sure why, because  when I won they said, “David Lomeli, tenor from MEXICO.”   I do owe a lot to my US  training and support, but my green Mexican passport does not lie.  Ha ha ha!  I am still proud to be Mexican! (The citation has since been corrected to reflect his real country of origin.)

What are your memories of that experience—being named a finalist and then winning 1^st prize and zarzuela?
It was a dream come true. It was my first real competition, and  my career was starting so fast. In February 2006, I just was sneaked up by my teacher Cesar Ulloa for an audition with Plácido Domingo. By August of 2006 I had a legal working visa and I had my first musical rehearsal ever! And it was next to Ferruccio Furlanetto, Salvatore Licitra, Eric Halverson, the dear Dolora Zajick (she gave me multiple suggestions on voice and career) — all conducted my maestro James Conlon. It was wild! I was surrounded by new friends and idols like Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko and then — kaboom! Two months later I won Operalia. I really appreciate so much the judges that trusted me that I could represent the label of an Operalia winner, when I think they saw a green raw potential and they offered the help needed to really jump start my career.

I remember clearly the system —  I was last in the operatic round and also last in the zarzuela one. I didn’t have any rehearsal with the orchestra and I had never sang those pieces with orchestra ever. “O souverain” from Massenet’s Le Cid was my operatic piece, and it was a different version!!! And the zarzuela piece was very complicated. Thank God  Maestro Domingo was there to take care of me on the pit. An angel intervened that day for sure.  I was so nervous.

How has Operalia impacted your career since winning the contest?
It gives you a label that never goes away.  It is like being number one in a tennis rank or golf list.  It is an accomplishment that gives certain validation to your work.  And it is a very different kind of competition. Most of the competitions are judged by singers now retired or in their way to retirement. This is a competition judged by impresarios and general managers. Also there are more than 40 other scouts for management, PR and companies there. If you score high with the people that hire, then I think is a very good sign of your possible potential. Another positive difference  is that this is a world competition — you have to compete against the Latin tenors, the Russian beauties, the Korean baritones, the American superlatively trained musicians.

I think there are very few in the world that give so much money in prizes and accept singers from over the world. I was never a viable candidate because of my immigration status to compete in most of the famous competitions held at the US, so when I won this competition, certainly my career got a boost. Most importantly, it brought together my team.

Operalia and the L.A Opera Young Artist Program brought to my life my coach Anthony Manoli and my guru and agent Matthew Epstein. These men,  together with my teacher, have helped me shape every aspect of my singing nowadays. They are constantly pushing for vocal excellence, correct preparation of the roles, appropriate rest time, the suggestion of  having a little project every performance to improve something each time, and they ask me to retain a sense of every performance being better than the last. Also, of course, the help find me a lot of singing debuts. Ha ha!

What has been the greatest thrill in your career thus far? Greatest challenge?
The greatest challenge has been to understand that I was not yet ready. When I won Operalia, I was suddenly around the globe in operatic publications and magazines. I was mentioned in lists next to Ana María Martínez, Rolando Villazón, or Joseph Calleja. But I was really only an engineer. I needed high class training and on the speed of lightning. Thank God, Maestro Domingo and their family, the guys at CAMI (Columbia Artists Management, Inc.), and the people at the Merola Opera Program and Adler Fellowship Program at San Francisco Opera were there to calm me down. I needed help  to understand that this career is not of speed but of continuous improvement.

David as Nemorino in 'Elixir' at New York City Opera / photo (c) Carol Rosegg.

In truth, the greatest thrill of my career so far was the three previous bars to start “Una furtiva lagrima” on stage at NYCO for my premiere. I sensed it was the make-it-or-break-it moment for me. It was just a phenomenal rush of adrenaline and the moment that every tenor dreams about.  When I finished the aria,  it was a very big moment for me.  It made up  for years of sacrifice, lonely times when you lose yourself and then later find you in a different corner of a different city, wearing the same clothes, but speaking another language and a different composer.  It justified so many moments of tears. I was laughing and crying at the same time and I couldn’t stop for a long time after. It was at that moment that I had the sense of my OWN satisfaction with my own voice.

Do you have any favorites? Composer? Opera? Role? Venue?
I love Donizetti, and I am dying to sing more of it. Favorite operas:  Dom Sébastien, La Fille du Regiment. Favorite role: Duca d’alba. It is like Donizetti wrote for voices like mine. I adore his lines and the extension. My personality is a combination of Nemorino, Rodolfo, and Werther. So each three roles are a treat for my soul when I have the opportunity to voice them.

You got rave reviews in all the NY press after your debut as Nemorino for NYC Opera. How does it feel to know NYC is dying to have you back to sing? Are you coming back–soon (fingers crossed)?
As you know, the opera world is very booked in advance but there have been talks for me to come back.  It’s not yet possible for me to schedule a return, but I hope so in the future.

What is something most people don’t know about you, something not on your professional bio?
No one really understands how passionate I am about soccer. I have traveled the world for the experience of soccer in a stadium. I am a huge supporter of Manchester United and also my home team Barcelona. Just yesterday my country became champion of the world in the under 17 cup hosted in my birthplace, Mexico City.  To see more than 100,000  voices singing “Cielito Lindo” brought tears to my eyes so far away.

Where can we see you in 2011-12?
I start my season with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto doing the Duke in Rigoletto, then I go to Germany to sing Edgardo in Lucia at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and again the Duke in Karlsruhe with my dear Stefania Dovhan as Gilda.  I am looking forward to my debut  in Houston Grand Opera with Maestro Patrick Summers as Alfredo  in La Traviata and also to my first major solo recital to be held in Birmingham, Alabama.  My season concludes with Bohème in the magnificent summer festival at Glyndebourne.

* * *

David  is performing at Santa Fe Opera Festival through August 26, and is excited about Santa Fe’s upcoming Press Week (early August). He has a new website soon to launch, designed by the talented Catherine Pisaroni, who has created outstanding websites for many of today’s most renowned opera stars. You can also follow him on Twitter @davidlomelink, where he Tweets, con gusto, in Spanish and English.

COC nabs three Dora Awards

The Canadian Opera Company (COC) swept the Opera Division Monday evening during the The Dora Mavor Moore Awards, an annual ceremony honoring the best in Toronto Theatre. All totaled, the COC won three awards that evening:

• Orfeo ed Euridice, directed by the Toronto-born Robert Carsen, won the award for Outstanding Production (Opera Division).
• 

  Alan Oke, front, as Gustav von Aschenbach

  Alan Oke, who played Gustav von Aschenbach in October 2010’s Death in Venice, won the award for Outstanding Performance (Opera Division).

“Scottish tenor Alan Oke sang the role superbly, with a flexible lyrical sound, wonderful pitch and clear words, conveying all of Aschenbach’s tortured speculations and desires within the very specific reaches of Britten’s melodic limning of his character.” — Globe and Mail

• Harry Bicket, who conducted Orfeo ed Euridice, won the award for Outstanding Musical Direction (General Theatre Division).

Hearty congratulations to everyone at the COC on their successful season.

less is more in COC’s ‘Orfeo’

“In Robert Carsen’s haunting production of Gluck’s Orfeo Ed Euridice, less is more,” according to NOW Magazine.

And production photos tell the tale. The COC, Carsen, and his team have been lauded for creating a work with simple but by no means stark design.     

And the accolades keep coming:  Superb performances, especially by American countertenor Lawrence Zazzo whose  “powerful, plangent voice,” especially in the aria following Euridice’s second death, is heart-wrenching.       

“A magically memorable emotional and esthetic whole,” said the Toronto Star.     

“This is why we go to music theatre; this is why it exists,” reported The Globe and Mail.     

Lawrence Zazzo (lit) as Orfeo in a scene from the Canadian Opera Company production of 'Orfeo ed Euridice', 2011.

 

Lawrence Zazzo as Orfeo and Isabel Bayrakdarian as Euridice

 

Zazzo (foreground) in COC's 'Orfeo'

up close and personal with Stephen Llewellyn, aka Operaman, two-time #Operaplot winner

Opera blogger extraordinaire Stephen Llewellyn

It would be absolutely insufficient to call Stephen Llewellyn, aka “Operaman,” merely an opera blogger. Stephen is an Internet luminary, barely contained by the cyber-seams constraining you and me. His posts as the longtime blogger of record for Portland Opera bristle with good humor, unparalleled opera savvy, and compassion. He is the picture of joie de vivre–just look it up in the Glossary of French Expressions Most Americans Butcher,  and you will see his photograph there.     

He also happens to be a two-time #Operaplot winner–my hero!–who very graciously gave his hard-won grand prize to a D. C. schoolteacher the first time he won the Twitter competition, which you can read all about here.       

In case you are wondering whether you have the talent to compete with the best plotters in #Operaplot 2011, which begins next week by the by, take a look at Stephen’s two prize-winning Tweets:     

2009 #Operaplot Grand Prize winner:
There was a young lady called Fricka
Who…who…*snore*
“Wake up & it’s over.”
It’s good, I just wish it were quicka.
[The Ring Cycle.  Yep, all of it!]

Note from Stephen: “It sounds rather better than it reads, I think.”  So the sound file of Stephen reading his winning entry is below (just click on the download link to hear his rendition):
fricka

2010 #Operaplot Honorable Mention
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
Stabbed one’s dad and watched him die.
Offered chances to repent,he opted to be Hades sent.
Men!
(Don Giovanni)     

Oy! I guess I have my work cut out for me this weekend: revising my entries to have a prayer of a chance of competing with the likes of “Operaman.”     

So, Stephen! So nice to have you join us. A hearty “Operatoonity” welcome and all that.     

Operaman in his younger days, a dead ringer for Paul Newman

When you began blogging in 2007, how did you get the job? You were a barrister and formerly sang opera. How was it decided you were the man (Operaman) for the job?
I am English and I spent my professional life as a barrister: the whole wig and gown thing.  Think “Rumpole of The Bailey,” but I’m not as good looking as Leo McKern. From 1978 until 1996 I ran my practice from Hong Kong but in 1996, shortly before the hand-over of Hong Kong to the Chinese government I left Asia and settled in Northern California. I had decided that after 32 years, my legal career had run its course, and I had my mind set on drinking a lot of Californian chardonnays and watching birds from my beach house on Bodega Bay. Divorce put the kibosh on those plans, but that’s another story your readers really can do without hearing.     

I moved up here to Portland in 2004.  Some friends of mine who had lived here for many years had waxed lyrical to me about it’s sub-tropical climate; Portland is a city, they said, where every garden had a mango tree and the traditional cocktail is the Mai Tai. Like Rick who had gone to Casablanca for the waters, it transpired that I was “mis-informed.”  Portland’s only similarity to the tropics is that it rains all the damn time. And forget Mai Tais — the traditional cocktail here is Double Bastard Ale from the Stone Brewing Company!      

Now, after seven years of living here, like every other long-time resident of the Pacific North West my tailor is The North Face, and I am developing webbed feet. In 2004, I got a job with Portland Opera, in their Patron Services department. I have a long background in opera, so I was delighted to be able to swap the legal milieu for a job in the performing arts. On paper I was really just a telemarketer, selling subscriptions and garnering donations but in reality it was a wonderful job for me.  I got to spend all day chatting with patrons about opera — not just our productions but singers of the past, great recordings, whereever our conversation took us.  And because this translated into great sales figures, I was given very free rein.      

Publicity shot for the TV Times in England (June 1971) when Stephen had his own special on BBC2

One day, the General Director brought the Board of Directors into the room and said, “I want you to meet Stephen Llewellyn. He knows more about opera than anyone else in this building.”  I thought, Um, shouldn’t that person be  you, dude? But I smiled in an aw-shucks kind of way and carried on with what I was doing. A few days later, the Director of Marketing came to me and said they were thinking of trying an experiment with “this new blogging thing” (well, it was new to him!) and would I be interested in scribbling a few words for a week or two.     

This week will be my 223rd consecutive weekly blog under the soubriquet Operaman. I left Portland Opera in 2007, but the blogging continues. Somehow they have never got around to firing my ass!     

How has your blog grown or changed in past four years, assuming it has?
I would like to tell you that during the four and a bit years I have been Operaman, I have grown and matured as a writer and that there is now a witty sophistication to my blog that was not evident originally; a result that only hours of tireless self-editing can successfully produce. Yes, I really would like to be able to tell you that….but it wouldn’t bear a scintilla of truth, which is that from the beginning, Operaman’s Blog has been a mish-mash of gossip from the opera world, personal recollections, and a heavy reliance on YouTube.     

How have you changed as a result of your blogging?
Changed? I’ve not. It has been of the utmost importance to me that fame and fortune on a scale you quotidian scribes can only dream of, should not in any way change my inherent narcissism, arrogance and ability to bore the pants off anyone who I can get to listen to my endless recounting of my memories of Benjamin Britten. Speaking of which, did I tell you about that time we were doing Noye’s Fludde and …What?  Another time?  Oh, very well. I would certainly be open to change if I thought there was any room in my life for personal growth or character improvement and, you may believe it or not, people are for ever making suggestions to me on this very topic but somehow those suggestions never manage to quite resonate with me. No, I think I am a very good example of  “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”      

Since you began blogging before Facebook and Twitter caught fire, how has social media impacting your ability to grow the audience for your blog? For opera?
Well, obviously, if, as I am lucky enough to have,  you have a few hundred followers or more on Twitter, then posting a link to my blog each week means that there is a reasonable chance that a decent proportion of those followers will click on the link and take a look. Similarly with Facebook friends.  Both on Facebook and Twitter my friends are nearly all connected with music in one way or another so that helps grow the blog readership. Over four years my readership has increased almost tenfold and we expect to be in double figures before the decade’s out.     

Who is your audience for Operaman today?
It is no surprise that when Operaman was first sprung on an unsuspecting public, the readership was largely local to Portland and the surrounding area.  Now, I have readers throughout the United States and quite a few in Europe – even some in Australia. I try to see that each week there is something that will appeal to opera lovers whereever they may be.  Obviously, if there is something going on in the opera world in Portland I write about that but, by and large, Portland Opera is pretty good about letting me write about what ever I think will interest  the readers. It need not even be about opera, though I try to see there is some connection there, however tenuous. I think the readership falls into a number of categories: those who are Portland Opera attenders who like to keep in touch, general opera fans, whereever they may be, who like a blog that’s not too heavy on queenly criticism, written by someone who doesn’t think the continuum of opera came to a grinding halt in 1960 when Jussi Björling handed in his dinner pail. And, of course, my Mum — who doesn’t have a computer but likes to read the blog in hard copy when I think to send it to her.      

Operaman making pasta and singing 'Ah, mes amis' from La Fille du Regiment. Can't you just hear those nine top C's

How has your blogging impacted Portland Opera visibility and audiences?
Let’s not get carried away here. When people hear the words Portland Opera, they think “Ah, a terrific regional opera company that manages to get some first-rate talent!” and not “Oh, they’re the ones who have Operaman!”  That having been said, I think the press ink that Priscilla’s Great Adventure got throughout the United States, did bring Portland Opera to the attention of many people who had never heard of it before.  Do I think it has grown the audience?  I very much doubt it, but I think those who do read Operaman’s Blog as well as attend our performances feel a little closer to the action.  Certainly, that is what they tell me.     

Why don’t more companies host a blog the caliber of Portland’s?
Oh, that’s an easy one, Gale.  It’s because writers who manage to combine  the lack of literary talent and depth of ignorance I display on a weekly basis are hard to come by. Most companies are happy to be producing blogs of a much higher calibre than mine.     

Believe me, if any of Portland Opera management were ever to read another opera company’s blog my gig would be over in a heart-beat! Fortunately, thus far, I have been able to persuade them that they are on the cutting edge of the social media scene and that we are the only opera company in the land to host a blog.  You and I know different.  I would ask you to keep this to yourself.  I have a really good deal going here!     

What are some of your greatest challenges to regular blogging?
Again, let’s not get carried away. ‘Operaman’s Blog’ and ‘greatest challenges’ are not phrases that really belong in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.  Each week I sit at my computer, pull up the notes or links to articles I have gathered over the past seven days and cobble together a few paragraphs.  Recently, I heard Philip Glass talking about Bach. Glass said “I think Bach just wrote what was in his head.  I don’t believe he ever composed anything in his life!”  So, it would seem that JSB and I share this creational technique — just write what’s in your head.  The difference between us is that in my case, it bloody shows! I suspect that, like many bloggers, my biggest challenge is getting people to comment.  I wish there were something I could say or do that would make the readers understand how much better the experience would be if it were a conversation and not the sound of one hand clapping.  I am interested — does your reader ever comment?     

Any other intangible perks (besides the wonderful #Operaplot prize story)?
Yes, there is one and I am going to be wholly serious while I tell you what it is. With some regularity, at Portland Opera performances and at the Met HD movie shows, people come up to me with broad smiles and exclaim “Operaman!” and go on to tell me how much they enjoy reading my blog.  That, naturally, is a delightful thing to hear.  But then they will go on to say how a particular blog or a part of the blog, has made them see opera in a different light, or has made them go to listen to an opera they had never before considered – that kind of thing. And then I take a huge pride in knowing that, if in only a limited way, I have done something to increase an individual’s pleasure in an art form I truly love. I am not being flippant when I tell you that moments like that make me feel it is a real privilege for me to have the avenue I do to express that love.     

Has blogging helped you realize any personal or professional goals?
If you mean did I grow up saying to myself “One day I want to write largely inconsequential nonsense in exchange for almost no monetary gain,” then, no, not really. Sometimes my blog has realised a personal goal I didn’t know I had.  For instance, just this week a nice lady emailed me saying “I just peaked at your blog…” I emailed back “Seriously? Either a) you meant ‘peeked’ or b) Brava!”  I mean, how many opera blogs are going to give you that kind of bang for your buck? (That was wholly true. You can’t make this stuff up.)     

What would be your dream opera experience — work/cast/venue, etc.?
Back in about 1972 I sang in a performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Snape Maltings with Janet Baker and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Ben Britten.  I’m not sure that, for me, dream opera experiences get any better than that.     

Paul Potts and Rebecca Black in Turandot might run it a close second.     

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Follow Stephen on Twitter @leboyfriend and on Facebook. And, of course, you’ll want to check out his blog “Operaman” on the Portland Opera website.

COC’s contest entries all dolled up

Cinderella at the COC

The Canadian Opera Company (COC) sponsored a dress design contest to promote their upcoming production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (opening April 23) called the “Cinderella Outfit Challenge: Send your Doll to the Ball!” The only catch was that the dress had to fit a Barbie doll. 

Entrants were required to submit a photo of their homemade doll costume, inspired by Cinderella, all to win a prize package including four tickets (plus lounge pass and drink tickets) to the opening night La Cenerentola, an overnight stay at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Toronto, a gift basket from Cheese Boutique valued at $200, and a chance to meet the members of the cast after the performance. 

Well, the entries poured in–sixty of them–according to contest organizers.  

The general public can still vote on the entries today, April 6, 2011, at the COC’s Facebook page. The five entries with the most votes will become contest finalists. A panel of celebrity judges, including Jeanne Beker (Host of CTV’s FashionTelevision), Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman (hosts of Steven & Chris on CBC TV), David McCaffrey (creative director and designer of McCaffrey Haute Couture) and COC General Director Alexander Neef, will select the grand-prize winner from the top five finalists on April 15. 

Here are a few of the Cinderella designs submitted (and as someone who adored her dolls as a kid, I am so jazzed): 

Golden Cinderella

Paperella

Off To The Ball

Fashionably Late Cinderella

What a fantastic group of entrants! Only 56 more to review. (Glad I’m not a judge!) 

Congratulations to the Canadian Opera Company on a vibrant promotion for your upcoming production of La Cenerentola!