Puccini’s La Bohème, opera’s ‘gateway drug,’ Friday through Sunday

By Peter Alexander Oct. 19 at 4:12 p.m.

“It’s the gateway drug for opera, because I think it’s the best first opera that anybody could ever see.”

Leigh Holman, the director of CU’s Eklund Opera, is talking about Puccini’s La Bohème, the current CU production that opens Friday at Macky Auditorium (7:30 p.m. Oct. 21). “It’s not only the story and the singing and the music, but the pacing of the piece is brilliant,” she says.

Other performances of the production will take place in Macky Saturday and Sunday (7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 and 2 p.m. Oct. 23; ticket information below). Holman is the stage director of the production, and Nicholas Carthy conducts. Guest artist Wei Wu, a 2013 graduate of CU who is building a professional career in the US, will appear in the bass role of Colline. Other parts and the orchestra will be filled with current CU music students.

If you don’t know the story, four young starving artists share a garret in Paris. They are poor, making money as they can, but at the start of the opera they are freezing and burning their work to keep warm. One of the four, the writer Rodolfo, meets Mimi, an equally impoverished seamstress, and they fall in love.

Rodolfo and Mimi join the other Bohemians for a Christmas eve dinner at the Café Momus. This scene, filled with families, children, street vendors, waiters and patrons of the café, is brilliant and spirited, introducing Musetta, the fiery girlfriend of Rodolfo’s roommate Marcello. The rest of the opera traces the passions and the breakups of the two couples, until Mimi returns to the garret deathly ill.

The characters’ emotional ups and downs always touch the hearts of audiences. “It’s a brilliant score,” Holman says. “The music’s great, in depicting what anybody’s feeling at any time. And the pacing’s brilliant— just when you think you can’t take any more heartache, somebody’s celebrating and you’re brought along in that.”

Another reason the characters touch people’s hearts is that they are relatable. Just like the Bohemians, most of us have passed through a stage of hopes and struggles at some point in our lives. And at CU the students in the cast are the same age as the characters.

Popular as it is, La Bohéme is not easy to produce. Carthy points out that unlike professional companies , CU can’t do whatever they want. “The difference between us and an opera company is that they look at what they want to do and go get the singers; we look at the singers and decide what we want to do,” he says.

The key to performing Bohéme is the role of Rodolfo, which vocally requires a slightly more mature singer than the others. “You have to build it around Rodolfo,” he says. “That’s going to be a slightly older voice.” 

When you have someone who can fit that role, then you put the others in place. In this case, all the parts were cast with students except Colline, one of the four sharing the garret. His role calls for a strong bass, particularly in the aria he sings in Act IV, a farewell to his overcoat. For Colline, CU invited Chinese bass and CU grad Wei Wu back to campus. (Watch here for a separate feature on Wei Wu.)

The score is also a challenge for the conductor. Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the premiere of Bohéme in 1896, once said if you can conduct Bohéme, you can conduct anything. “It’s a massive piece of organization,” Carthy explains, “especially the second act when you’ve got all sort of different chorus voices.

“You’ve got the kids’ chorus singing different things, you’ve got the chorus split into mothers and vendors and waiters, and all the people selling different foods. But it’s the most glorious, glorious thing you can conduct!”

On top of that, the conductor and the orchestra have to be very, very flexible, he says. The tempo keeps shifting throughout, to make the musical phrases expressive. “I told the orchestra, this is music that is so flexible that if you look down, if you’re not concentrating, when you look again I won’t be where you think I am.”

This is a mater of “rubato,” to use the musical term, which means slowing down to stretch one phrase or emphasize one word of the text, then resuming the former tempo. “Taking time isn’t the problem,” Carthy says. “Once you’ve taken the time, it’s getting the momentum back. They find that more difficult. Any orchestra—any professional orchestra would find that.”

Opera companies around the world, and university opera programs as well, include La Bohéme in their programs again and again. That is a tribute to Puccini’s success in communicating the emotions of the opera’s young characters. And once the emotions reach listener’s hearts, they stay there. “Many opera buffs have been going to operas since they were young,” Holman says. “And they keep coming back to Bohéme.

“Once you get hooked on La Bohéme, we keep those fans forever!”

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Giacomo Puccini: La Bohème
CU Eklund Opera, Leigh Holman, stage director
Nicholas Carthy, conductor

7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct.21, and Saturday, Oct. 22
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 23
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Performances Friday through Sunday at Macky Auditorium

By Peter Alexander March 9 at 5:07 p.m.

The Eklund Opera Theater at CU will transport audiences back seven decades this weekend.

Their production of Frank Loesser’s Tony Award-winning 1950 Broadway hit Guys and Dolls, certainly one of the greatest of the era’s classic musical shows, runs Friday through Sunday at Macky Auditorium (details below). Performances, featuring students in the opera and music theater programs, have been stage directed by Leigh Holman, with choreography by Tracy Doty. Nicholas Carthy conducts.

Based on stories by Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls features characters from prohibition-era New York, including gamblers and their henchmen, nightclub “girls,” tough cops and Salvation Army missionaries. The main plot revolves around two pairs of potential lovers: the gambler Nathan Detroit and his long-waiting fiancée, nightclub singer Miss Adelaide; and the even flashier gambler Sky Masterson and the pious Salvation Army sergeant Sarah Brown.

Other Runyon-esque characters surrounding the leads include such colorful personalities as “Nicely-Nicely” Johnson, “Harry the Horse,” “Big Jule,” police lieutenant Brannigan, who is always one step behind the gamblers, and an ensemble of Hotbox Club dancers.

The Eklund production is set not in the prohibition times of Runyon’s stories, but in the 1950s of the show’s premiere—when alcohol was not illegal as in the ‘30s, but gambling still was: illegal and a little bit glamorous. Spoiler alert: this being golden-age Broadway, “it is a feel-good story,” Carthy says. At the end, the two couples get married and the leading men renounce their shady habits to adopt respectable lives.

As far as the 1950s are from today’s college students, Holman says the cast members were eager to do the show. “Students came out in droves to audition for this piece,” she says. “We were able to choose really good singers and dancers.”

Not only were students eager to audition, they have really immersed themselves in the show. “They are so absolutely committed to it,” Carthy says. “They put in the work, and it’s incredibly gratifying—they love it.”

Holman says they have also been doing their research into the time period. “They’re teaching us!” she says. “They’ve got the accents down, the way to walk—it’s made our job super easy. And there are so many references to things that don’t exist today: Brooks Brothers, Ovaltine, A&P, Whitney Colors”—the last being the livery colors for racehorses owned by the prominent and wealthy Whitney family.

As for the style of the classical Broadway musical, “they love it,” Holman says. “They really get the timing and the style of this type of musical.”

One thing Holman did have to teach was how to use a pay phone—something that was new and strange for the young people in the cast. “They said, ‘I’ve heard of it,’ Holman recalls. “I said, ‘You pick up the receiver, and then you put the coin in, and then you dial,’ and they’re doing it with me like it’s choreography. ‘You dial, and then you listen, those four steps: receiver, coin, dial, listen.’

“Nick and I are the caretakers of all the 20th century. We’re teaching whatever from the 20th century that these folks don’t know.”

Such details of life in the 1950s as forgotten brand names and pay phones are quaint, but it was also an era when social conventions were very different than they are today. It was a largely patriarchal society, and the women are looking for traditional 1950s marriages, but both Carthy and Holman are adamant that the show is not inherently sexist.

“I don’t see it,” Holman says. “Are there examples of men objectifying women? Of course there are. But the women don’t take it! They’re strong women! Adelaide is doing exactly what she wants to do, and Sarah is on a mission. But I don’t think any one of those women put up with much.”

“I do not think it’s a sexist piece in any way,” Carthy says. “It is a child of its time, and child of its time means it’s got fantastically witty dialog and amazing show tunes. It needs to be enjoyed for what it is: an intelligent, non-sexist story with fabulous music and dance.”

Holman is especially pumped about the dance. “The dance is not like anything you’ve seen at Eklund Opera before,” she says. “It’s worth the price of admission on its own! Tracy Doty, who did the choreography, has done wonders with them.”

In fact Holman is, as always during the rehearsal process, pumped about the whole show. “This is one of the strongest books I’ve ever been involved with,” she says. “There’s a lot of dialog, but it’s so brilliantly written, and it really does carry the story forward. We’ve had a lot of fun with that. We’re really excited to be doing this piece!”

For his part, Carthy summarizes the show’s longstanding popularity, saying, “It’s full of big tunes and witty text, (so) how could you not love it, really?”

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Guys and Dolls
Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser
CU Eklund Opera Theater

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 11, and Saturday, March 12
2 p.m. Sunday, March 13

Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Correction: The original version of this post incorrectly listed the photos as by Collin Ring. They were taken by Lily Valdez. We apologize for the error. Correction posted 3/10.

Following strict health protocols, CU stages Hansel and Gretel for streaming

By Peter Alexander Dec. 9 at 4:15 p.m.

Putting on a staged opera during a pandemic is challenge.

There are many restrictions: distancing of performers, at least 12 feet because of the spread of aerosols by singers; no orchestra in the pit; rehearsal and performance space having to be aired out every 30 minutes; and of course no audience.

All of those challenges and more have been met by CU Eklund Opera director Leigh Holman and music director Nicholas Carthy. Fully staged, streamed performances of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel will be available online starting at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, through 11 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15, 2021.

The pandemic has had a major effect on the CU opera program. But the students depend on their experiences at CU to prepare for their careers, and Holman and Carthy were not willing to lose a full year of students’ educations.

The pandemic arrived in March just as the opera program was preparing Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. “When we got in dress rehearsal for Figaro and that turned into nothing, the outpouring of both grief and love was enormous,” Carthy says.

The opera planned for the late spring was Beatrice and Benedict by Hector Berlioz. Unwilling to let it drop, Carthy and Holman found a way to record individual musical numbers with singers performing separately. Holman worked over the summer with a videographer to make those numbers available online (see the final product here.) 

After that, they turned their attention to the fall production. As it turns out, Hansel and Gretel is the ideal opera to produce at this time: the cast is small, the opera is fairly short, which made it easier to observe time limits singing together, and it is a Christmas tradition in many opera houses. And another benefit: CU produces the opera every few years, so there was a complete set and costumes in storage.

But obstacles remained, including the orchestra. “We were told by the College of Music in no uncertain terms that we could not have the orchestral members to do it,” Carthy says. But rather than deny the students the opportunity of singing with an orchestra, he entered the entire score into a music writing program and sampled the score through a symphonic sound library. The result is a sampled orchestra, using real players and instruments.

Carthy set the tempos throughout. The performance tempos are not rigid—there are ritardandos and accelerandos—but they will be the same each time. “My role changed from somebody whose sole object in the pit is to be with the singers, to somebody who has to force the singers to be with me,” Carthy explains.

Holman had her own obstacles. “We had quite a list of protocols that we needed to follow (to stay safe),” she says. “When we practiced the staging all of the singers wore masks.”

They had to limit the singing in rehearsals, Holman says, because “even if you sing through the mask it starts the clock, and you can only sing for 30 minutes before you have to leave the room for 15 minutes.”

For the early staging rehearsals, no one sang—a rehearsal pianist would play the score while the singers spoke their lines in rhythm. “Once we had a scene ready to sing through, they would take their masks off,” Holman says. “We sang for 30 minutes and then left the room.”

The staging too had to observe the protocols. The singers had to stay 12 feet apart. ”Our technical director Ron Mueller was so helpful in marking out the stage so that we knew exactly where 12 feet was,” Holman says.

“We tried to make it as active as possible but stay 12 feet apart——a lot of circles around the stage. There’s a sword fight with brooms but the brooms are six feet long, and we used little bandanas that they could use when they weren’t singing, or when (Hansel and Gretel) were asleep under the trees.”

The stored sets for Hansel and Gretel were designed for Macky Auditorium, but the rehearsals and recordings took place in the much smaller Music Theater. This meant individual set pieces had to be combined on the small stage; scenic artist Jennifer Melcher Galvin hand painted a backdrop that other set elements could fit into. “It is one of the stars of the show!” Holman says. “It really brings it all together.”

The performances will feature three different casts, two singing the original German and one singing an abridged version of the opera in English, designed for school outreach, that lasts about an hour. Purely orchestra material—the overture and the Witch’s Ride—are cut from both versions. All the performances were taped the weekend of Oct. 24–25.

You will notice that in all three casts, the witch is sung by a male tenor. This is often done in opera houses, to give the witch an additional bit of humor and to add a man’s voice to a cast dominated by women. In CU’s case, there is another reason: a male witch gives more male students the opportunity to be cast. 

Although the origin of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale is quite dark, Carthy and Holman point out that the opera is more humorous than scary. In the opera, Carthy says, “It wasn’t an evil stepmother, it was a mother with two boisterous children and a headache. And the witch has to be so funny!”

Holman agrees. “This is a story about a real family who love each other but they are going through hard times,” she says.

It is overcoming the challenges of presenting opera at all that Holman keeps coming back to. “We really paid attention and stressed the protocols that our epidemiologist gave to us,” she says.

“Our singers were very, very serious about these protocols. I did want to make that point, because when people see the video of people on stage together, that can make them nervous. Everybody did take it so seriously. And we’re really proud of them about that.”

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Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck
CU Eklund Opera
Nick Carthy, conductor
Leigh Holman, stage director

Stream available from 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, through 11 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15

Detailed program information and stream access available here.

NOTE: Edited for clarity 12/9/20