Wolf Trap Opera

We just learned that there was a glitch in the ticketing system last week that showed that tickets for  Latin Days, American Nights and Invitation to the Dance were unavailable.  Happily for you, that is not true!  There are some seats available for both – and to tempt you, here’s a sampling of the musical menu:

July 18 at 3 pm – Latin Days, American Nights

GERSHWIN -Evening Star
KERN – Saturday Night
WAITS – Heart of a Saturday Night
PORTER – Dream Dancing
BARBER – Nocturne
MONK – ‘Round Midnight
GUSTAVINO – Las puertas de la mañana
LOPEZ-BUCHARDO – Frescas sombras de sauces
GRENET – Lamento Cubano

August 1 at 3 pm – Invitation to the Dance

RESPIGHI -Invito alla danza
SATIE – La diva de l’Empire
FAURÉ – Danseuse
SELLARS – Kissing Songs
PIAZZOLLA -  Milonga carrieguera
GERSHWIN -  Brother, Wake Up and Dance
RODGERS – Dancing on the Ceiling
WARREN – Shoes With Wings On
PREVIN – The Dance of Life Begins

This week’s lunchtime concert was graced by the presence of special guests.  Earle C. Williams, Director Emeritus of the Wolf Trap Foundation, was in attendance with his wife June.

The atrium area in which these concerts are presented is named the Earle C. Williams Learning Center, for Earle was a huge catalyst in the campaign that put us in this beautiful rehearsal and administrative facility (The Center for Education at Wolf Trap) in 2003.

Chad Sloan sings Tom's Aria from Ricky Ian Gordon's "Grapes of Wrath"

Angela Mannino sings "My Dear Marquis" from Die Fledermaus

Michael Anthony McGee: "These are my friends" from Sweeney Todd

Catherine Martin sings Octavian's "Wie du warst" from Der Rosenkavalier

Angela Mannino & David Portillo in "Sara Lee" ("I love your cheesecake, white as pearl, not to mention the chocolate swirl, from the kitchen of the one I love: wonderful Sara, beautiful Sara Lee!")

Each of our four Zaide audiences chose their own ending to Mozart’s unfinished opera.

By the Numbers

For the statisticians out there, overall voter turnout was 90%.  And of the three available endings, audiences chose:

• ENLIGHTENMENT (simple, happy ending) won twice and received 35% of the total vote over all performances.
• FINALITY (tragic ending) won once and received 34% of the total vote over all performances.
• DISCOVERY (“complicated” ending) won once and received 31% of the total vote over all performances.

Audience Psychology?

It seems that the weekend audiences preferred happy endings with their opera.  The opening night crowd was more adventurous than the others.  And the Tuesday night audience (who fought their way here through a nasty rush hour and sold-out traffic for the Harry Connick show down the road) -well, let’s just say they were a little more bloodthirsty.

The Takeaway

There are many real things here to be learned about audience engagement, but I don’t really know what they all are.  Suffice to say that this little experiment bore far more fruit than we ever expected when we backed into it.

Thanks to all who came along for the ride. with a special shout-out to Club 66 at Wolf Trap, members of which attended the closing night show with young professionals from Washington National Opera’s Generation O.

Over the last week I’ve had more honest and provocative conversations with our patrons than I’ve had in years.  Some are intrigued and others are outraged.  Although I’d prefer to avoid the latter, it’s the flip side of the same coin as the excitement that’s been present in the theatre during Zaide.

We debate the usual differences of opinion over setting the opera in a time and place outside of the 18th century.  Then I listen to personal and heartfelt responses to the violence that we’ve chosen to embrace in this story.  And I find myself in an unaccustomed and somewhat surprisingly position as I defend and clarify our choice.

I am an unlikely poster child for sanctioning violence in the theatre, for I am as lily-livered as they come.  I can’t watch scary movies, and I am an enthusiastic reader who studiously avoids any literature that graphically describes the horror of war.  Do I cringe every night when I’m thrust into the inhuman environment of this Zaide?  You’d better believe it.

Left to my own devices, I would probably choose an artistic and emotional life that is skewed completely toward beauty.  I don’t easily embrace any art that seeks to amplify and detail the darker aspects of our human condition. Too often I don’t want to be reminded that evil exists.  But when producing an opera with a story that doesn’t flinch when it approaches the subjects of slavery, death, and anger, it felt like a betrayal to soft-pedal the difficult parts.

“Tiger!  Sharpen your claws and rejoice in your stolen prey.
Kill us both and suck the warm blood of innocence.
Rip the heart out of my body and satisfy your rage.” (Zaide)

A reverential approach might limit this opera to colorful harem pants, an escape by ladder, and a Sultan with a  fez.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  But it’s tough to reconcile that picture with the vividness of the text, and it’s hard to look deep inside the soul of this intensely personal music of Mozart’s and not take it to heart.

“The proud lion roars with a terrible voice
He throws his shattered chains to the earth in rage.
All who oppose him are destroyed by his deadly beatings…
When someone angers me, I have weapons that demand blood.” (Sultan Soliman)

As we moved toward being brutally honest with the violent content of the story, at the same time we chose not to allow this violence play itself out in the original Middle Eastern setting of the libretto.  The frightening spectre of falling into slavery and imprisonment in the Middle East meant something different in the 18th century than it does today, and there’s no way to raise the stakes without simultaneously raising unrelated political and cultural issues.

So here we are, in the middle of important conversations about the nature of theatre, the vibrancy of opera, and the always-amazing diversity of opinion.  I’m non-confrontational by nature, but these days I embrace raw controversy.  Because the opposite is unquestioning acceptance, and more than anything else, I want people to care.  Disagree if you will, and by all means, tell me about it.

Zaide is the first step in our summer journey.  Its raw emotion will be followed in short order by the laughter embedded in Rossini’s Turk in Italy, then by the shimmering magic of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Thanks for riding along with us.

Anne Midgette previews Zaide in today’s Washington Post: Wolf Trap Lets Audience Choose the Ending to Mozart’s Unfinished Opera Zaide.  Completely with amazing photo by WTOC conductor and Wolf Trap Opera Studio Manager Eric Melear!

4 shows, starting tomorrow night.  Sunday 6/13 is sold out, but some tickets are available for tomorrow’s opening night, and for Tuesday 6/15 and Saturday 6/19.

Gallery of dress rehearsal photos coming shortly.

Washington Performing Arts Society is offering WTOC blog readers a special opportunity to save 20% on tickets to Denyce Graves’ recital at the Music Center at Strathmore this Sunday (6/13) at 7pm.  Visit WPAS.org or call (202) 785-WPAS and use the code ‘save20‘.

There are also $10 student tickets available: Call (202) 785-WPAS and use the code ‘student‘.

Both offers end June 11 at 10am.

“Remember, this is the curse of being alive: Every man has his own pain.  Let us sing, let us laugh, for no one can change this.” The Slave Chorus in Zaide

The Serenity Prayer was so much a part of coming of age in the 60’s and 70’s that it now runs the risk of being considered trite.  Fact is, I come back to it again and again, and I wish never to underestimate its power.

The chorus near the beginning of Zaide lasts less than a minute, but it lays bare the “accept the things I cannot change” part of the prayer.  The music Mozart wrote to carry these words is a little perfunctory, rather cheery, in D major, with bouncy articulation and rhythm.  Was he serious, or was the cheeriness of the setting a warning that things are not as they seem?

There’s a naïve hopefulness in this music that is somehow touching.  (It doesn’t help that two phrases from this chorus are identical to the refrain of the Christmas carol “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” The latter was written two decades after Mozart died, and I’m sure the resemblance is completely random, but it plays games with my mind.  Argh.)  This tiny musical moment is a kaleidoscope of bravado, irony, hope, determination, and desperation.

I’m usually not hot on the way historians project the situations and emotions from works of art back onto their creators, but it’s really tempting to apply just a little of that approach to this situation.  In spite of the fact that Mozart was an amazing prodigy, and that he put in his requisite 10,000 hours by the time he was in his teens, the adult transition he faced in his early 20’s – right around the time of the composition of Zaide – is achingly familiar.

The young Mozart was wildly successful by many standards.  But he and his gifted-musician-and-mentor father were stuck in what was then a provincial, small-town situation.  He, like many young adults, wanted more, and was being thwarted at every turn.  The Archbishop wouldn’t give his father a leave of absence to travel with his son in a search for a career boost in a larger city.  So the young Mozart set out across Europe with his mother.  All of his attempts in work and love led to failure, and his mother died suddenly while they were in Paris.  At the age of 21 he was forced back home, because the Archbishop said that if he didn’t return, he would also fire his father.

It is against the background of this failed attempt at independence that Mozart wrote Zaide.  Did he echo his own sense of frustration in these two young people?  Is, as some scholars believe, “Gomatz” a near anagram of “Mozart?”  (He actually used “Romatz” to sign some of his letters from this period.)  Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that the yearning for freedom that pervades this opera is something that is bred into all of us, and Mozart had the gift to remind us of it.

“Be brave, my heart, and try your luck! Create a better future for yourself. You must not lose heart! Through brave daring, the weak often strike back at the strong.” (Allazim, in Zaide)

Postscript:  Mozart did get out, of course.  Two years later, the Archbishop forced his hand, and the composer took the plunge and quit.

There’s a spoiler coming, but if you read these rambling blog posts, you probably want all of the facts anyway.  Proceed at your own risk.

Amid the dehumanizing and frightening world of her captivity, Zaide sees Gomatz, and her immediate love for him gives her new hope.  When Gomatz finds her, he is instantly drawn to her, and the two young people find love in the unlikeliest of places.

They enlist the help of a sympathetic and brave overseer, and all three escape.  Unfortunately, they are recaptured and face death upon their return.  Only then is it discovered (and this eventuality is incorporated into some of the ending choices* for our production) that the three are actually family.  Blood relatives.

Although a taboo subject in our culture, incest isn’t exactly unknown in theatre and myth.  Opera has its Siegmund and Sieglinde, and mythology has an endless parade of brothers, sisters, husbands and wives.  Is this plot twist in Zaide too much to take?  Too far-fetched?  Too creepy-crawly?

Mistaken identities and sudden family discoveries are common in opera (think about Mozart’s Figaro learning that Marcellina and Bartolo are his parents) – almost so much that the moment of discovery near the end of Zaide is a dangerous one in the theatre.  Will nervous laughter greet the revelation, no matter how it’s delivered?  Are we really meant to believe that this is possible?  And even if it is, does the 21^st-century American “eww” factor kick in so quickly that we can’t get past it?

I’m hardly qualified to delve into this topic, but I am left with one overriding gut reaction to seeing this story played out again and again in rehearsal.  If Zaide and Gomatz are siblings separated in childhood, is it so surprising that upon seeing one another in captivity, they would make an immediate and palpable connection?  And that as young adults/teenagers, they would immediately translate that connection into romantic love?  Family is a complicated thing, and love is a spectrum.  What these two young people would do with this knowledge if they were to escape from slavery is unknown and somewhat unfathomable.

Mozart stopped writing at the point where this dilemma would’ve been addressed.  We’ll never know if he meant to tackle it or sidestep it.  One of the endings we’ve chosen to offer for Zaide allows the family a brief chance to grapple with it before the curtain falls.  If you take this journey with us and are in the theatre when that ending is chosen, you’ll probably wrestle with it longer than that.

*On June 11, 13, 15 & 19, each Zaide audience will have the chance to choose from among three possible endings for this fascinating but unfinished Mozart opera.

“That is the terrible hour where my poor mind awakes from the short anesthesia induced by manual labor.” (Gomatz, in Zaide)

As I’ve learned in these few weeks of studying and preparing Zaide, punishment was once primarily corporal – of the body. Then it became temporal – separating offenders from the rest of the world for longer periods of time depending on the severity of the crime. Then punishment expanded into the psychological.  Our hero Gomatz, as quoted above, feels such desperation that he craves physical punishment in order to silence the terror in his mind.

We’ve just added a “mature content advisory” to our description of Zaide.  It was a complicated decision, for in comparison to the violent images in much of our culture – both in entertainment and in hard news – our performances are not extreme.  But some people come to the opera expected all-gentility-all-the-time, and there are moments in Zaide that are designed to make us uncomfortable.

Art has the ability to comfort, and it’s this attribute that speaks to us most potently.  We turn to music often in our hours of need for solace, calm, and perspective, and that is certainly not wrong.  But we shouldn’t forget that art amplifies and intensifies every aspect of our human experience, and sometimes that means that it opens our eyes to things that challenge us.

There’s a love story at the heart of this opera.  Actually, a few different kinds of love stories.  And the urgency of the deep connections that these characters make to one another can only be understood if we have context.  In this case, that context includes the harsh and sometimes brutal reality of the captivity that is these characters’ lives.  It includes punishment in all its guises, and these performances of Zaide struggle to help us understand how difficult yet essential it is that human affection thrive in such an environment.  Only when we travel with Zaide, Gomatz and Allazim to the soul-crushing reality of their lives do we realize the power and potency of the beauty in the depths of their souls.

We know that Mozart yearned to write a serious German opera at the time he was working on Zaide.  Perhaps one of the reasons he abandoned it is that the new German Singspiel theater aesthetic was tooled for comedy, and the ways in which he’d have to adjust and finish this opera were at odds with the reason he started it.  We’ll never know.  But we’ve chosen to take it at face value and create a theatrical environment that is cold, frightening, and confusing.  So that when the music soars, it takes our breath away to be reminded that beauty can prevail in such a place.

As we barrel into a summer filled with young artists making their way into a demanding and complicated profession, I was pleased to see today’s entry on Seth Godin’s blog.  Link to the original version here. Read on for customization.

Here, my revised list of questions you should ask yourself if you’re considering or embarking on a career in the performing arts.  With tweaks to reflect our business, and listed in rough order (mine, completely subjective) of increasing importance.

• Who are you trying to please?
• Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
• Where is your team – the people you trust?
• What does busy look like?
• Choose: challenge your colleagues, or just do what they ask.
• Are you prepared to actively sell yourself?
• Which: to invent a category or to be just like [insert name of famous singer here], but better?
• How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
• Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
• How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?
• Are you done personally growing, or are you willing to change and develop?

Otherwise, we’re single-mindedly focused on this fascinating Mozart opera that hits the stage next Friday.  Tomorrow, the first in a series of posts I’m calling “Meditations on Zaide.“   Both a promise and a threat.