LAST STOP ON THE STREETCAR

Curtain call at the last production of Opera Theatre of St. Louis' season, Andre Previn's interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire. It was stunning, a story by itself tight to the breaking point intensified by perfectly matched music. Stella!                             

THE SHOW IS ABOUT TO START

 

Almost curtain time at Opera Theatre. This is the lobby of the Loretto Hilton Theater on the campus of Webster University, a smaller local school less than 10 minutes from our home. (No one remembers why it's called that.) It is just under a thousand seats if all the back and side bays are open, with an unusual thrust stage. The opera shares the venue with the St. Louis Repertory Theatre. The acoustics are excellent.                     

LE DINER SUR L'HERBE

Apologies to Manet. Lots of people bring picnic dinners or order catered meals to have on the lawn outside the theater before our opera performances. There are many tables under the tent. We always go early to get a place there out of the sun or rain, but the tables extend much beyond the view in this photo. It makes for the start of a very civilized evening.               

OPERA GOERS

 

One of the nice, unusual things about our Opera Theatre is that it takes place on the leafy campus of a small university. There are broad lawns and gardens. Many people come early and have dinner al fresco. The crowd can be interesting. These two look like a mismatch. She was looking for attention. What you can't see here is that she was wearing just-under-the-knee black leather boots with three inch chunky heels. She made her point.                

OPENING NIGHT

 

Yesterday was opening night of the 51st season of Opera Theatre of St. Louis. We've been subscribers for somewhere in the mid-upper 40s. They do four productions in rotating repertory in May and June, all in English with super titles. This year kicked off with a wacky and hilarious production of Pirates of Penzance. The man who played Major General Stanley may hold the record for the fastest comprehensible speeech in the English language.         

A MODERN MAJOR GENERAL

Several performing arts organizations put on half hour presentations at the symphony open house, including Opera Theatre of St. Louis. The season is in May and June, and first up next year is Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Robert Mellon, seen here, will sing Major General Stanley, including the famous patter song I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General. The frantic pace is notoriously difficult. Mellon led the audience through a series of exercises, learning how to sing it faster and faster.                  

A 50TH OPENING NIGHT

Curtain calls at the opening night of the 50th season of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, arguably the best regional opera company in the U.S. The production of Die Fledermaus was spectacular, top singing throughout the cast, witty staging and laugh out loud comedy. Looks like a great season.                  

STL DPB BACK HOME - OPENING NIGHT

It's not to everyone's taste, but last night was a big deal to me and Mrs. C, and one of the jewels of this town - opening night of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. It runs in May and June with four productions in repertory, always getting national attention. We started with an old chestnut, Rossini's The Barber of Seville. I've been going to operas for a long time, seen a lot of Figaros, but I've never been to a production as good as this. Just sparkling, surrealistic, brilliantly sung and staged. It was like Rossini set sail on the Yellow Submarine.               

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

It's the last week of the season for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which runs in May and June. They have four productions in repertory, always in English. We've been subscribers for 44 years, I think. (Must be pretty old.)  

It takes place in a theater with just under a thousand seats on a nearby college campus. The first picture shows the crowd coming in last Saturday night for Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, one of my very favorites (and it was fabulous). The second one is about a beloved tradition. People come early and have a picnic dinner under a large tent or out on the lawn. We'll be back next year.   

I'm really low on material - limited mobility with a back flare-up - but traveling this week anyway. Maybe I'll find something at beautiful O'Hare International Airport.                  

Dinner And Opera

Last night was a big one in our annual calendar, opening night of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis season. This is our 40th or 41st - we've lost track. One of the delightful features is that it takes place on a suburban university campus, set up for picnic dinners before the performance. We usually do that and leave a bottle of wine on the table for intermission.

The first production was La Traviata. It's an old chestnut but we've never heard a better performance. Violetta was sung by the spectacular young soprano Sydney Mancasola. She worked her way up from the chorus to the foot lights, giving the role an emotional intensity that's hard to match.

Afterwards, the company invites the audience for a glass or two of prosecco under the picnic tent. I got a shot of General Director Timothy O'Leary, who will leave us after this season. He's been here for 10 years and has brought OTSL to ever greater heights.                

Philip Glass

Last night at the American premier of Philip Glass' opera The Trial, based on Franz Kafka's discomfiting novel. At a reception after the performance, the composer was flanked by Opera Theatre of St. Louis' General Director, Timothy O'Leary, and librettist Cristopher Hampton. Not the greatest picture but I was using my little Olympus under a tent with ordinary light bulbs. 

Glass is something of a hero to me. I wrote recently about encountering the early Stravinsky ballets. A few years later, I read about Glass and heard Music In Fifths, Music In Changing Parts, North Star and the Dances. It smashed my concept of what music could be as throughly as did The Rite of Spring. Then Mrs. C and I attended the performances of Einstein On The Beach and The Photographer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And then the trilogy of movies with Godfrey Reggio, the searing Koyanaasqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. And others operas, including Akhenaten, about the ancient Egyptian monothesist, and Satyagraha,  set in the time the young Gandhi lived in South Africa. It's a minority opinion, but I think the latter is the greatest opera of the 20th Century.

So it was a pleasure to hear his newer work and to see him again. He recently turned 80 and looked a little frail. I hope he keeps writing and writing.

The Neighborhood Sitar Virtuoso

Yeah, we got 'em on every other street corner around here.

Last night Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Missouri History Museum co-hosted a panel discussion about OTSL's upcoming production of Shalimar the Clown, based on Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name. We had a post about it a couple of months ago when Rushdie was in town.  The panel included Opera Theatre's general director, the composer, librettist, stage director and a scholar of South Asian history and culture.

The featured guest was the sitar virtuoso Arjun Verna, who was a consultant on the score and will play with members of the St. Louis Symphony during the performance. The sitar is a very complex, difficult and subtle instrument. Verna explained the concept or ragas and played excerpts from the opera score. We'll be at opening night on June 11.

I still have some material from the People's Joy Parade and haven't even started the Cinco de Mayo festival yet.           

Salman Rushdie In St. Louis

The first of Salman Rushdie's novels to get attention, Midnight's Children, didn't catch me. When it was published in 1981 to enormous acclaim, I had one and five year old children and a growing law practice. When The Satanic Verses was published seven years later, everyone heard about the fatwā calling for Rushdie's death issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran. I bought a copy of the book and was completely sucked in.

By that time I had only a passing acquaintance with magical realism through the work of Gabriel García Márquez. As I started reading The Satanic Verses I was astonished by the victim of a high-altitude airliner bombing floating safely to earth, arriving without a bruise in Ellowen Deeowen. It  took me the longest time to understand that. Sound it out, slowly.

I became a Rushdie fan for life and have read almost all his books. On June 11, our glorious Opera Theatre of St. Louis will present the world premier of a work based on Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown, a tale of love, betrayal and revenge. We've been subscribers for at least 35 years. As an out-of-town newspaper review said a couple of years ago, if you want to see the future of opera, go to St. Louis. Rushdie, the composer Jack Pirla and Opera Theatre's general director Timothy O'Leary discussed the work yesterday at The Sheldon Concert Hall. What an afternoon. Rushdie has gotten older, balder and broader of beam but you couldn't miss the discussion about whether 50 shades of something could be turned into an opera.  

Mrs. C and I will be at opening night.

Date Night (And Day)

My wife is brilliant. There was something she wanted to go to yesterday that she thought I might enjoy. She asked me if I had anything on my calendar. Well, no, just the usual work stuff. Would I like to skip the office and join her? Yes.

And so we went off on an afternoon and evening together, on a weekday. That itself felt a little decadent. We had lunch at sophisticated restaurant near our home. Yum. Then down the street to Webster University, home of Opera Theater of St. Louis. We've been subscribers for 30 years. They have a Young Artists program, giving outstanding young singers a hand up to the pros. Yesterday there was a master class conducted by Christine Brewer, an international A List soprano who got her start at OTSL. Five of the young artists sang arias and received personal coaching from Brewer (who could have a second career as a stand-up comic if her voice fails). It taught us how to listen as much as it taught the students to sing.

Then off to the St. Louis Art Museum to see a special exhibition, Bare Witness: The Photographs of Gordon Parks. I knew just a little about Parks' work. He was the first black staff photographer for Life magazine and had many freelance projects. Some people remember him as a movie director, particularly of Shaft. His work blew us away. I highly recommend the book containing the photos in this show.

The art museum is open late on Friday and we went to dinner in its restaurant, which overlooks a sculpture garden. Thus the picture above. Nice that we like to do things like this together after 34 years. We're pretty good friends.

TOMORROW: The flood crest.