Tag Archives: Nicholas Carthy

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

March 12, 2025

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

1 Comment

Eklund Opera presents Gilbert & Sullivan

The perennially popular Pirates of Penzance puts in at Macky for the weekend

By Peter Alexander 10:40 p.m. March 12

CU’s Eklund Opera Program will present Gilbert and Sullivan’s hilarious Pirates of Penzance Friday through Sunday in Macky Auditorium (March 14–16; details below), and conductor Nicholas Carthy wants everyone to know what to expect.

“It’s a comedy,” he says. “This is not (Shakespeare’s) Henry V! It’s supposed to be ridiculous.”

Reese Phillips as Major-General Stanley. Photo by Andrew Konopak.

And ridiculous it is, in some ways. If you don’t know the story, the callow youth Frederic has been apprenticed to a band of soft-hearted pirates through a confusion between a “pirate” and a ship’s “pilot.” He is bound until his 21st birthday, but because he was born on Feb. 29, that won’t happen until he is in his 80s. 

Due to his exaggerated sense of duty, Frederic cheerfully agrees to remain with the pirate band for 60-plus more years, even though he has to postpone marriage to his true love Mabel, one of many wards of the pompous Major-General Stanley. After misadventures with the curiously ineffective pirates and the bumbling police, the day is saved when Frederic’s nursemaid Ruth reveals that the “pirates” are actually noblemen.

Davian Raggio (Frederic), Madison Falkenstine (Mabel). Photo by Andrew Konopak.

When they declare their loyalty to Queen Victoria, the way is cleared for Frederic and Mabel to marry.

The CU production is stage directed by Leigh Holman, director of the Eklund Opera Program, with choreography by Laura Malpass. The production uses the same sets as previous CU performances in 2014, but with new costumes by Holly Jenkins Evans and new lighting design by Jonathan Dunkle. 

“It will look different,” Holman says, “but in terms of interpretation, we took the same approach as last time. There are many different levels where the show can entertain. There are Gilbert & Sullivan fans that know all the intricacies, and there are people that will learn it as they’re sitting there. Other people will see the slapstick, and they’ll enjoy it too.”

The show must have wide appeal, since it has been selling exceptionally well. According to Holman, “the last show that reached this (many) ticket sales was West Side Story.”

There are several specific aspects of Pirates that Holman and Carthy hopes the audience will recognize. For one, there are clues that the pirates are really from the upper class. For one, “they’re drinking sherry at the beginning,” Carthy says. “If they were real pirates they would be drinking rum.”

At the same time, there is sharp satire of the upper classes. As Carthy puts it, the performers are “having a nod and a wink at the audience, saying, ‘we know what these people are like, and you do too, don’t you?’ Both the audience and the people onstage are in on the joke.”

That pointed satire explains why Gilbert’s text was not popular with the Queen and nobility, even though Sullivan’s music was. “These little barbs against royalty were what Queen Victoria disapproved of,” Carthy says, “which is why Sullivan got knighthood and Gilbert didn’t.”

In one example, the Pirate King, himself a noble, takes a particularly brutal jab at the rigidly “respectable” upper classes. Speaking of piracy, he says, “I don’t think much of our trade, but compared with respectability, it is relatively honest.”

James Robinson (Pirate King), Davian Raggio (Frederic), Carrina Macaluso (Ruth). Photo by Andrew Konopak.

Satire of the upper classes appears in all cultures. It is central to much British literature, but also dates from Roman and Greek theater into the 20th-century. “Gilbert and Sullivan’s policemen are exactly the same as Monty Python’s policemen,” Carthy says. “They are of a particular class and accent—that is a thread through the ages.”  

It is also important to know that Sullivan aimed higher than writing popular potboilers. “Sullivan wanted to be a serious composer and ended up hating Gilbert,” Carthy says. “He wanted to stop (working with Gilbert), but then he lost money in a market crash and had to sign on for another five years.”

Musical evidence of Sullivan’s aspirations is found in throughout the show. “There are little bits of Sullivan as a serious composer, and not just this sort of thing, that we remember him for,” Carthy says, singing an oom-pah accompaniment.

In some places, there are even traces of serious opera, including hints of Donizetti and Rossini. Holman finds these passages especially expressive. “The love duet (between Mabel and Frederic) is beautiful,” she says. “It’s the most sincere thing in the show. That piece is just gorgeous.”

She also hopes you will notice the choreography. “It’s a beast to choreograph, with so much movement,” she says. “Malpass has taken predominantly non-dancers and done amazing jobs with them. (In this show), there’s always something to see, lots of physicality (as well as) great singing!”

Carthy admits that Pirates does not always conform to modern sensibilities. “It’s a piece of its age,” he says.  But he believes its comedy is universal, transcending Victorian sensibilities. “It’s quirky but it works, and it suggests a little depth,” he says.

“Above all, it knows what its audience wants.”

# # # # #

University of Colorado Eklund Opera
Leigh Holman, stage director; Nicholas Carthy, conductor

  • W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 14, and Saturday, March 15
2 p.m. Sunday, March 16
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

NOTE: The spelling of Eklund Opera was corrected March 13. The original story incorrectly had the spelling as Ecklund.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 23, 2024

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

Eklund Opera presents renewed, colorful Hansel and Gretel

Fairytale opera takes the stage at Macky Friday and Sunday

By Peter Alexander Oct. 23 at 1:50 p.m.

In 1890, the German composer Englebert Humperdinck was asked by his sister, Adelheid Wette, to write some folk-style songs for a Christmas play she was creating for her children.

Their little family play was performed at Christmas, but over the next two years Humperdinck, with Wette’s help, turned those simple songs into one of the most popular full-scale German operas, one that is still produced annually at Christmas time at theaters across Germany. The subject of that opera—and of Wette’s original family entertainment—was the Brothers Grimm’s fairytale Hansel and Gretel.

L to R: Salleigh Harvey as Hänsel, Thomas Bocchi as the Witch, Kristina Butler as Gretel in the CU Eklund Opera production of Hansel and Gretel

Humperdinck’s Märchenoper (fairy-tale opera) will be the next production of CU-Boulder’s Eklund Opera Program. And even if it’s a little early to get out the Holiday decorations, it will be given a festive production over the coming weekend (7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25 and 27) in Macky Auditorium. (See ticket information below.)

The musical performance with full orchestra and student singers will be conducted by Nicholas Carthy and stage directed by Leigh Holman, director of the Eklund Opera Program. The sets by Peter Dean Beck, which CU Opera have used before, have been dressed up with new, colorful costume designs by Ann Piano and lighting effects by Jonathan Dunkle. It will be performed in German with English titles.

The story of Hansel and Gretel, which was originally a dark tale of malice and danger, was made milder over a series of transformations, through several editions of the Grimm story and then Wette’s libretto for Humperdinck’s opera. The original evil stepmother who sends the children into peril is turned into, as Carthy puts it, a beleaguered “mother with two children and a headache,” who simply sends the children out to gather strawberries. 

There are lighthearted moments in the opera—the children squabbling at the beginning of the first act, and their father cheerfully returning home after selling all of his brooms—and even in the forest the children are looked over by the Sandman, the Dew Fairy and the 14 angels of the beautiful Dream Pantomime. Even when accosted by the witch, Hansel and Gretel easily evade her evil designs. In the end, the witch is vanquished and all the gingerbread children are returned to life.

Musically, Humperdinck’s score has many folk-like tunes and simple melodies, but it is also full of musical challenges. As Carthy explains, the libretto uses “slightly archaic language, words that have fallen out of use and some of them are very difficult to pronounce. Hansel and Gretel are onstage for most of it, and the witch is a very big part. And then Act III suddenly gets more difficult—all of a sudden the music becomes more difficult to sing, much more difficult to play, much more difficult to conduct.”

The witch’s part can be a particular challenge, Holman says. “I think the Witch’s part is really, really difficult. The timing and the notes are kind of disjointed. It’s hard to find the pitches—seriously!”

Humperdinck worked as an assistant with Wagner, particularly on the late music drama Parsifal, and so his harmonic language and orchestration reflect late Wagner. That too can be a problem, Carthy says, especially when the orchestral sound becomes heavier and darker. “Balance (among the parts) is a problem, keeping it all together is a problem, keeping it transparent is a problem,” he says.

And “it’s a great challenge for the players, because it’s a massive piece,” he adds. “It never stops, as far as the players are concerned, (so it’s) quite an exercise in concentration and stamina. Three fourths of them have never played in a pit, so they are coming in without the experience of playing a long piece and concentrating for that amount of time. It’s invaluable for (the students), but as the conductor you have to know the piece backwards.”

The production uses sets that were designed by Peter Dean Beck and that have been used in previous CU productions of Hansel and Gretel. But this time there will be new costumes by Piano and other touches to bring more color to the stage. 

Kristina Butler as Gretel, Thomas Bocchi as the Witch, Salleigh Harvey as Hänsel (on the ground)

“I asked for a change in this production,” Holman says. “I asked that it not be so literal, a little bit more fantastical. And so we have lots of colors in it, in the costumes but also in other little elements. Even the brooms are colored, red ones and blue ones, so it kind of takes us out of reality and goes back to a storybook.

“We have a new lighting designer, Johnathan Dunkle, and we’re doing some new and interesting things with that. With the witch’s ride we have some lighting effects that we’re working on.”

Another new feature of this production that Holman is excited about is choreography for the 14 angels. “Laura Malpass is the choreographer, and she’s fantastic,” she says. “She teaches in the dance department, and she pulled together 14 trained ballet dancers to portray the 14 angels. It’s less than six minutes and it’s gorgeous.”

In fact, she and Carthy are looking forward to the entire opera. “We’re so excited about this piece,” Holman says. “The music is gorgeous, the orchestra is rich and full and the look of it—the visuals and brand new costumes and what you’re going to see onstage—is beautiful. 

“And it’s short! People are going to get out in two hours and 15 minutes.”

# # # # #

Eklund Opera Theater, Leigh Holman, director
Nicholas Carthy, music director

  • Hansel und Gretel by Englebert Humperdinck
    Libretto by Adelheid Wette

Performed in German with English titles

7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 23, 2024

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

CU Eklund Opera presents “American Stories by American Women”

Two short, supernatural operas by Amy Beach and Missy Mazzoli

By Peter Alexander April 23 at 6:30 p.m.

The CU Eklund Opera Program offers American history this weekend, seen through a surreal and supernatural lens.

Two striking operas by American women, both based on important moments in history, form a double bill that will be performed Thursday through Sunday at the Music Theatre in the Imig Music Building (April 25–28; details below). Presented together under the title “American Stories by American Women,” they are Cabildo by Amy Beach (1867–1944) and Proving Up by the living composer Missy Mazzoli. In addition to their historical basis, both operas are ghost stories, but the similarities end there. 

Cabildo is located in New Orleans during the War of 1812 and features the pirate Pierre Lafitte (brother of Jean) and his true love, Lady Valerie, both of whom appear in a dream. In a totally different vein, Proving Up takes place on the harsh Nebraska frontier shortly after the homestead act of 1862, where the fictional Zegner family is struggling to survive while haunted by their dead daughters.

Guest stage director Sara E. Widzer

The operas will be directed by guest director Sara E. Widzer, a member of the faculty at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and intimacy director and consent consultant for Los Angeles Opera. She has directed opera throughout the United States as well as for companies in Asia. CU faculty member Nicholas Carthy will conduct.

The program originated when Carthy discovered that Amy Beach—a composer that he admires—had written an opera. It was only in manuscript, but he  eventually got a copy. A printed edition has now been published, which Carthy is editing based on the manuscript.

“Beach always wanted to write an opera, but she was afraid of it never being performed because (operatic) forces are too big,” Carthy says. “So she wrote a deliberately small opera, seven people (in the orchestra). And it still didn’t get performed.”

The first performance took place in 1949, four years after Beach’s death. After another 40 years, it finally became known and was produced by Central City Opera in 2017. 

Amy Beach. Photographer: Bachrach

“She was such a fascinating creature,” Carthy says of Beach. “She was an absolute feminist and a suffragette, and she was a member of the Boston Six (a group of composers around the turn of the 20th century), but her husband said she had to be a Boston matriarch and so she couldn’t teach, and she only performed twice a year.”

At that time she was known as “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.” After her husband died in 1910, she began performing and publishing as “Amy Beach,” and had a substantial career as a pianist. Among her better known works are her Piano Concerto and her “Gaelic” Symphony. 

The plot of Cabildo revolves around the pirate Pierre Lafitte and his participation in the Battle of New Orleans. Lafitte fought on the side of major general (later President) Andrew Jackson, for which Lafitte was pardoned. In the opera, Lafitte is mysteriously freed from prison, perhaps by Valerie’s ghost who appears in a dream, making their love the central theme of the story.

As Widzer explains, “at the end of the opera, Mary (the character who dreams of Lafitte and Valerie) says, ‘We don’t have America because of the War of 1812 and General Jackson. We have America because of the importance of love’.”

Switching from New Orleans to the Nebraska frontier of the 1860s, Mazzoli’s opera is the bleak tale of a family trying to establish a homestead under a law that required a sod house, five years of successful harvests and a glass window in order to claim their land. Based on a short story by  Karen Russell, the opera dramatizes the struggles of the Zegner family to “prove up” and receive their land grant. 

Missy Mazzoli at the Kennedy Center for the premiere of Proving Up. Photo by Ser Amantio di Nicolao.

In the opera, the glass window is both a powerful symbol and a central dramatic element. In reality, the homestead act resulted in many people being displaced from the land. “Mazzoli wrote the opera in repose to the housing crisis of 2008,” Widzer explains. 

“When you look at it through the sense of loss and uncertainty—it’s not just a housing crisis. It’s the crisis of 2008 because we lost so many arts organizations and so many people trying to figure out how to save their lives.”

“The music is absolutely fantastic,” Carthy says. “What the music really succeeds in doing is creating a past, a present and a future at the same time. The music has a timelessness, and it has episodes where it comes into focus.”

In her director’s role Widzer sees characters in the music beyond the singers. “We have weather,” she says. “Mazzoli composes weather, Mazzoli composes time. Mazzoli composes the supernatural, loss, excitement.”

While Cabildo has a set that refers to a specific place—New Orleans—the set and staging for Proving Up are abstract. “(The opera) travels through so many locations, to do a traditional set wouldn’t make sense. It blurs reality past, present, supernatural. And the family is so disconnected in their attempt to be whole it just pulls farther and farther apart.”

A common element that ties the production to the Nebraska frontier, where pioneers lived in sod houses, is dirt. “We’re dealing with dirt,” Widzer says. “Sometimes, it’s dust in our show, sometimes it’s the grave of the daughters, sometimes it’s on people’s faces.”

The obvious differences in the two operas give the student singers opportunities to explore different kinds of music and drama. “One of the most important things that we’re always doing, is that you see how the students develop, and how they take on incredibly difficult things,” Carthy says.

“They change the drama and the drama changes them—which is the way it should be.”

# # # # #

“American Stories by American Women”
CU College of Music Eklund Opera Program
Nicholas Carthy, music director, and Sara E. Widzer, guest stage director

  • Amy Beach: Cabildo
  • Missy Mazzoli: Proving Up

7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25, Friday, April 26 and Saturday, April 27
2 p.m. Sunday, April 28
Music Theater, Imig Music Building

TICKETS

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 25, 2023

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

Eklund Opera presents Verdi’s madcap Falstaff

‘One of the greatest Italian ensemble operas’ Friday and Sunday

By Peter Alexander Oct. 25 at 5:40 p.m.

“Reverenza!”

That extravagant one-word greeting delivered by Mistress Quickly to the corpulent Sir John Falstaff (“Your reverence!”) sets off all the madcap action of Verdi’s final opera, the comedy Falstaff. A series of hilarious escapades follow, leaving Falstaff dumped in the river at the end of the second act and the butt of a comedic thrashing in the third. In spite of the abuse, it all ends with Falstaff cheerfully proclaiming “All the world’s a jest.” The entire cast joins him for, of all things, a rollicking 10-part fugue.

Melissa Lubecke (Alice Ford) and Andrew Hiers (Falstaff) in Eklund Opera’s Falstaff. Photo by Leigh Holman.

Falstaff will be the fall production of the CU College of Music’s Eklund Opera Company, with performances this coming Friday and Sunday in Macky Auditorium (Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 29 at 2 p.m.; tickets available HERE). Performances are stage directed by Leigh Holman and conducted by Nicholas Carthy.

The opera is derived from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. Verdi had already retired twice when his publisher passed him the libretto, crafted by the Italian composer Arrigo Boito who also wrote the libretto for Verdi’s Otello. Verdi couldn’t resist, and Falstaff had its premiere in February 1893, when the composer was nearly 80.

The opera has two intertwining plots: Falstaff is trying to woo two wealthy wives in order to get at their fortunes; and one of their husbands, Ford, wants to marry his young daughter Nanetta to his friend Dr. Caius. She, however—in typical comic-opera fashion—is in love with someone her own age, Fenton. And also in comic-opera fashion, the women are far cleverer than the men and hilariously foil both plots.

Falstaff is seldom performed by student opera companies. For one thing, the role of Falstaff requires an experienced singer. As Carthy explains, this is an opera “where, if we get one person in, we can cast around them. So you bring a Falstaff in and it allows you to do one of the greatest Italian ensemble operas there is. Bringing in that one person is a fantastic opportunity to do something (the students) wouldn’t normally do.”

Andrew Hiers. Photo by Anthony Perez.

Eklund Opera has engaged Andrew Hiers (pronounced “hires”), who has performed with the San Francisco Opera Merola program, Opera Colorado, and the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Opera, to sing Falstaff. “He’s really good,” Holman says. “It ups everything a level, both in that it allows the students to do an opera that they might not otherwise be able to do. But also in what he brings, the experience that he has.

“He’s a really great actor, and the students are learning a lot working beside him. Every rehearsal, he’s just going, going, going, never complains, he’s just going. And it’s great for (the students) to see that.”

Other than Falstaff, Holman says, “We had all the other forces, including Quickly, who’s an artist diploma student”—Jenna Clark. That could be a difficult role to cast with students, but Holman says, “she’s really got the gravitas and the voice to pull that off.”

Another challenge is the breakneck pace of the music. “It’s a massive challenge for everybody,” Carthy says. “You don’t have time to do anything before something else comes along. It’s very tough, and we rarely have that sort of pacing in an opera. We’ve done Bohème and Traviata, but even Bohème doesn’t have that wickedness of pace that Falstaff does.”

“I would say the same thing,” Holman says. “It’s a difficult piece. As the director there’s just a lot coming at you.”

Nicholas Carthy

Carthy points out that the same is true for the orchestra and conductor. “Getting a mostly undergraduate orchestra, many (of whom) have never been in a pit before, to play Verdi or anything approaching Falstaff, is always going to be a challenge,” he says. “It’s this massive challenge to coordinate, but that‘s what I love doing that’s what I’ve spent my life doing.”

After all of Verdi’s dramatic, tragic operas, the speed and lightness of Falstaff is surprising. “It’s got more words, more notes, more melodies than anything else he ever wrote. It’s unlike his other operas in that it’s through-composed—it’s not arias and set pieces,” Carthy says. That lack of arias meant that Falstaff was not an immediate success, but the overall richness of Verdi’s invention has won over critics and musicians alike.

A good example is the love music between Nanetta and Fenton. He has one aria, but otherwise their scenes together are brief, made up of highly distilled lyrical expressions of love that are gorgeous but only last a minute or two. “It’s as if Verdi decided that he had trunks full of melodies to get rid of,” Carthy says. “And so he just threw them all at this thing.”

In Holman’s opinion, this is a do-not-miss performance. “We have wonderful singers with an amazing sense of humor and an amazing sense of comic and dramatic timing,“ she says.

“You’ll laugh the whole time!”

# # # # #

CU Eklund Opera Program
Leigh Holman, director
Nicholas Carthy, music director

  • Verdi: Falstaff

7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29
Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

March 16, 2023

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

A stronger Cinderella takes the stage at the Eklund Opera

Massenet’s Cendrillon offers more than a fairy tale, Friday and Sunday at Macky

By Peter Alexander March 16 at 4 p.m.

“She is a sweet girl with a lot of backbone.”

Leigh Holman, director of CU’s Eklund Opera Program, is talking about Cendrillon—real name Lucette—who is the Cinderella character in Jules Massenet’s opera based on the familiar Charles Perrault fairy tale. But if you only know the Disney version of Cinderella, you will meet some deeper characters in Massanet’s opera.

The Eklund Opera’s production of Cendrillon will be performed Friday and Sunday (March 17 and 19; details below) at Macky Auditorium. The cast of CU students will be stage directed by Holman; CU faculty member Nicholas Carthy will conduct the performances. Set deign is by Peter Dean Beck, costumes by Ann Piano.

Eklund Opera production of Massenet’s Cendrillon. Stage design by Peter Dean Beck. Nicholas Carthy conducts. Photo by Glenn Asakawa.

In general outline, the story is the same that everyone is familiar with: after her mother’s death, Cinderella’s father remarried, and her stepmother and two stepsisters mistreat her. There is a fairy godmother, a Prince, and a ball, and Cinderella has to leave at midnight. She and the Prince fall in love and are eventually reunited. That much is familiar.

But there are important differences, too. “This is not our usual fluffy fairy story,” Carthy says. “There is great depth in what happens.” For one thing, Cinderella is a stronger character; when she comes home from the ball and hears her stepsisters gossiping about the mysterious girl at the ball, she resolves to run away and she contemplates suicide. That of course raises the emotional stakes well above the Disney version with its cartoon birds and mice.

The Prince is introduced before the ball. Like Cinderella, he is morose and depressed. Life at court is boring and he’s not interested in his father’s insistence that he select a mate. He also thinks about ending it all to escape his situation. And it does not take a glass slipper for Cinderella to be found; when she and the Prince meet again, they realistically recognize each other right away

Another critical difference is the character of Cinderella’s father. He overhears the stepsisters and realizes how badly they are treating his daughter. “He decides we’re not going to put up with this any more, and I’m going to take you away,” Holman explains. “We’re gong to go back to our farm [where they lived before he remarried], and they have a beautiful duet about that. It’s really gorgeous music.”

Prince (Jenna Clark), Cendrillon (Anna McMahon) and Fairy Godmother (Alice Del Simone). Photo by Leigh Holman.

For Holman the critical point in the Perrault version of the story, and one that resonates with her personally, is that fact that Cinderella has lost her mother. “Something a lot of productions bring out, and I do, is the fact that Cinderella misses her mom so much. She sings some beautiful music about her mom and how much she misses her.

“And the Prince grew up alone—his mom’s gone, too. So the first time they meet, it’s more than physical attraction; they see themselves in each other. I don’t know if they got married nor not [since that’s not explicitly in the opera], but the great thing that Cinderella gets out of this is that they find each other. So I see Cinderella going from being very lonely, the Prince going from very lonely, to being surrounded by people that love them.”

Holman says that the two students cast in the role of Lucette/Cinderella both embraced the notion of a stronger character than they had known before. “We talked about it from the very beginning,” she says. “We had a long talk about that, and both women have addressed it in different ways, but they carried that into their character.”

Holman sees Cinderella’s dilemma in stark terms. “She’s living in a horrible, violent house, she misses her mother, she misses her former life, and so when she runs away in the woods, it’s not just because she overheard [the stepsisters]. It’s just one thing piled on top of another, and that’s what broke the camel’s back.”

The music is in the lush, romantic style of the late 19th century, with some Wagner influences thrown in. “There are lots of little Wagnerian moments,” Carthy says. “But they are lightened up. They don’t have the same sort of grimness that Wagner tends to have.”

We don’t remember him so much today, but in his time Massenet was massively popular. Carthy sees him as “the Andrew Lloyd Weber of his day,” but in a good way. “Andrew Lloyd Weber steals from everybody, and so did Massenet,” he says. “But the idea of saying that is just the importance that he had. People were all whistling his tunes and there were great Massenet aficionados who went to all of his performances.”

One final important point Holman stresses is that there is more than the usual “happily ever after” in the ending. It’s two people discovering each other in a world that has been hostile. As she explains, “all the women who were trying to get the prince to marry them see the love that they have for each other, and they all become joyful.

“There is a ‘happily every after’ in that, and not just because she found a prince.”

# # # # #

Massenet: Cendrillon
Libretto by Henri Caïn
CU Eklund Opera
Sung in French with English supertitles
Nicholas Carthy, conductor, and Leigh Holman, stage director

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 17
2 p.m. Sunday, March 19

Macky Auditorium

TICKETS

Correction (7 p.m. 3/16): In the original version of the story, the composer Massenet was misspelled as Massanet. Massenet is the correct spelling.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 19, 2022

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

1 Comment

Eklund Opera brings 19th-century Paris to Macky

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

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

Leigh Holman

“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.

Miguel Ángel Ortega Bañales as Rodolfo, Sarah Cain as Mimi

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.

Conductor Nicholas Carthy

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.”

Sarah Cain as Mimi and Miguel Ángel Ortega Bañales as Rodolfo in the opera’s final scene

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!”

# # # # #

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

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 18, 2022

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

CU Eklund Opera presents colorful ‘Postcard from Morocco’

Surrealistic opera by Dominick Argento Friday through Sunday in the Music Theatre

By Peter Alexander April 18 at 5:35 p.m.

Dominick Argento and John Donahue’s one-act opera Postcard from Morocco definitely doesn’t feature a postcard, it may not take place in Morocco, and it does not really have a plot.

Colorful characters in the CU Eklund Opera’s Postcard from Morocco by Dominick Argento

What it does have is seven curious and colorful characters who collide and interact while waiting for a train that may, or may not—shades of Waiting for Godot—ever arrive. The next production of CU’s Eklund Opera Program, this unique opera will be presented Thursday through Sunday in the Music Theater space of the Imig Music Building (see details and ticket information below).

The student performances are stage directed by Leigh Holman and conducted by Nicholas Carthy. Stage design is by Ron Mueller, with costumes by Ann Piano based on drawings by Maya Hairston-Brown.

If you think this does not sound like any other opera you’ve seen, you might be right. “In a normal opera, we get a plot and hints of a character,” Carthy says. “And in this one we get the character and hints of a plot.”

“We wanted to dig into this piece because it was different,” Holman says. “It’s a way for our singers to dig into a whole genre of opera that’s completely different from other things they’ve done. They have the freedom to really search for the characters they want to develop.”

The CU Eklund Opera’s set for Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco

In many ways, it is an ideal piece for a university opera program. “As an educational project it is perfect,” Carthy says. “Everybody’s onstage all the time. Everybody has an aria. People sing alone, people sing together, people sing in ensemble—basically it’s all there, and [the opera] is so astonishingly well put together.”

Beyond the educational advantages, Holman emphasizes the sheer fun of the piece. “There is a ton of humor in it,” she says. “There are many really funny moments. [During rehearsals] we are just guffawing. There are some very serious moments too, but it’s a nice ride for the audience.”

For Holman one of the pleasures of performing Postcard from Morocco is the fact that it is not often done. “There are no traditions to adhere to,” she says. “That opens up the students and the direction and the music to just do what you would like to do with it. It gives [the singers] space to dig in and find things” in each character.

The central conceit of the opera is that each character is carrying some kind of luggage or box with them. These vary from a cornet case to a paint box to a cake box, but none of the characters is willing to show the others what’s in their luggage. “Everyone has their little secret,” Carthy says. 

The seven characters of Postcard from Morocco with their luggage

This is a clear metaphor for the “baggage” that we all carry with us through life, which is one of the covert subjects of the opera. “We put on a facade of who we are and what we do, but very few people know what’s really going on inside,” Holman says. 

The characters—three women and four men—are deliberately kept mysterious, and only one of them has a name. “An eclectic bunch of characters demands an eclectic score,” Carthy says, and the score features a kaleidoscope of musical styles, from tap dancing to Richard Wagner. The latter appears several times, including a vaudeville scene ironically titled “Souvenirs de Bayreuth.”

Postcards is scored for a chamber ensemble of eight players, who will be costumed and placed onstage. In addition to the singing characters, there are two mimes, and “the maestro is one of the characters onstage, too,” Holman says. “He’s interacting [with the others].”

Carthy points out the many literary references in the libretto—everything from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, to James Joyce’s Ulysses, to The Odyssey, to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. “You could spend a lifetime deconstructing it,” Carthy says. As for Stevenson’s poetry, “There’s little quotes, but [the opera] has nothing to do with that,” he says. “It’s far away from that.”

Ann Piano’s costumes feature drawings by Maya Hairston-Brown and a distinctive color for each character

The CU production aims for a kind of timelessness and placelessness that is neither Morocco nor not  Morocco. The sets and costumes will be as colorful as the characters, literally. Early in the design process, Holman studied the characters and assigned a color to each. “I had someone sketch little picture of the various things they supposedly hold in their containers, so you’ve got hats, shoes, a cornet,” she explains.

That artist, Maya Hairston-Brown, sent the sketches to a company that printed them on fabric, a different color for each character, and then costume designer Ann Piano turned the fabric into costumes. “This is really amazing,” Holman says. “We never loose sight of who’s who and who is connected to what.”

At the end of the opera, either a train arrives, or it doesn’t, depending on your interpretation. Everyone leaves the waiting room to go onto the outside platform, but, Holman says, “We don’t know if this is a fantasy, or what it is.”

You also get a small hint of what everyone has been hiding, but like so much else in the opera, it’s enigmatic. “It’s really up to the audience to figure out what it means,” Holman says.

“It’s Dadaist, it’s surrealist, it’s fun,” Carthy says, referring to artistic movements from the mid-20th century when the opera was written. “And it is such an incredible ride to go and see!”

# # # # #

Postcard from Morocco by Dominick Argento and John Donahue

CU Eklund Opera Program
Leigh Holman, director, and Nicholas Carthy, conductor

7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21
7:30 p.m. Friday, April 22
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 23
2 p.m. Sunday, April 24
Music Theatre, CU Imig Music Building

TICKETS

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

March 9, 2022

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

1 Comment

Eklund Opera travels to 1950s with Guys and Dolls

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.

Sky Masterson (Ian Saverin)in Eklund Opera’s Guys and Dolls. Photo by Lily Valdez.

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.

Miss Adelaide (Annie Carpenter) and the Hotbox dancers. Photo by Lily Valdez.

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.’

Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Sam Bruckner) at the Save-A-Soul Mission. Photo by Lily Valdez.

“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?”

# # # # #

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.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 22, 2021

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

Eklund Opera presents ‘the perfect Verdi Opera’

CU production of La traviata will be in Macky Auditorium Oct. 22–24

By Peter Alexander Oct. 22 at 11:43 a.m.

Nicholas Carthy describes La traviata as “the perfect Verdi opera.”

Certainly one of the best known and most loved operas, La traviata is a production of the CU Eklund Opera, to be presented in Macky Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 22-23 and 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 24. As music director, Carthy will conduct the performances by student singers and the CU orchestra. Leigh Holman, director of Eklund Opera, is the stage director. 

The performances will be sung in Italian with projected titles in English. Tickets for all performances are available from the CU Presents Web page. Masks are required in all public indoor spaces on the CU Boulder campus, regardless of vaccination status.

The performances will be sung in Italian with projected titles in English. Tickets for all performances are available from cupresents.org/performances. Masks are required in all public indoor spaces on the CU Boulder campus, regardless of vaccination status.

Photo courtesy of Eklund Opera

Based on the 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas the younger La Dame aux camélias (The lady of the camelias), La traviata tells the tragic story of Violetta, a high-society courtesan who falls in love with Alfredo, a young man from a respectable family. Alfredo and Violetta move together to the country in search of a quiet life together. 

Because of Violetta’s status as a social outcast, Alfredo’s father demands that she leave Alfredo, to clear the way for his younger daughter to have a respectable marriage. Under pressure, Violetta returns to her prior life in Paris, but she is suffering from tuberculosis, which took the lives of a quarter of the adult population of Europe in the 19th century.

The social issues of 19th-century Paris may seem remote, but Carthy says they are easy for today’s students to understand. “The idea of a disease that kills, and a family that disapproves is not terribly far away,” he says. 

Read more in Boulder Weekly.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

December 9, 2020

Posted under

Performance Previews

Comments

Leave a comment

Opera in a time of pandemic

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.

Leigh Homan

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.

Nicholas Carthy

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.”

Linsey Duca, Tommy Bocchi and Kely Riordan observing social distancing in CU’s Hansel and Gretel

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.

Tenor Tommy Bocchi as the Witch

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.”

# # # # #

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