How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Walk, walk, walk!

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Sunday whilst Ian worshipped with St. Mattress, I made it up to midtown to the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral, reputed to be the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in North America. It's a stunningly beautiful place! The architecture is neogothic with great height and intricate tracery, designed by James Renwick.

I'd gotten to church early enough I was able to get a seat near the center aisle in the first archway just west of the crossing, usually a good place to hear the musical balance. At St. Patrick's, the choir sings from the loft in the balcony and the entire organ appears to be back there as well. In actuality, there is a chancel organ in the north side of the chancel, but the gallery and chancel organs are essentially unified into one huge instrument with five manuals, 177 ranks, and over 35,000 pipes, all by George Kilgen and Son, I believe.

Review: A Tale of Two Cities

The French have their Les Misèrables musical, now the English-speaking world has its A Tale of Two Cities. There's a big difference between Victor Hugo's enormously long novel of the French Revolution and Charles Dickens' long novel of the French Revolution, but the thing they both have in common is that they are both thick books with involved, convoluted plots; I don't see how either of them can be condensed into a Broadway musical.

I'm not sufficiently an expert on Broadway to predict what will and will not last. Personally, I've never seen the attraction either to Les Misèrables or to Cats, yet both of those dreadful musicals have had enormous financial success and longevity. What will happen to Tale? I don't know. Thus far, the New York reviews have been lukewarm to negative; yet what I saw last night in the house was an audience that seemed to particularly enjoy and appreciate the performance. And, strangely, I enjoyed it, too, it's rather uninspired and formulaic music notwithstanding, but I've always liked Dickens and I've still never been able to force myself to read a Hugo novel cover to cover.

A Tale of Two Cities formally held its opening night Thursday. Not having a tuxedo with me, I deferred my attendance to last night, thinking things would still be fresh and the cast would be in better voice, not having opening night jitters with which to contend. Playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, the musical is directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle and music is directed and conducted by Kevin Stites, using the new book, music, and lyrics by Jill Santoriello.

Many aspects of the production were very impressive. I loved the costume design (by David Zinn). So many times, I've sung operas where the characters were common peasants all dressed in dark, drab colors, but Zinn was able to find opportunity for color in their lives. "Prison clothes" even looked like they had at one time been colorful finery that now was faded, tattered, and filthy. And the happy wardrobes of the protagonists were particularly fine and beautiful. Tony Walton's scenic design fascinated me, as he used a series of three three-story iron structures, all on wheels, that were wheeled around the stage by cast members to change scenic locations, with props and the occasional flown signage helping to fill out the visual pictures. Richard Pilbrow's lighting design is particularly impressive. In addition to lighting the mass cast scenes, he also had to do pin lighting to show various tiny vignettes to draw attention from other areas of the stage during scene changes and he and the director concocted very creative ways of depicting guillotine scenes in a way that executes the aristocrat whilst leaving the actor alive for another show.

I would be remiss if I did not recognize the work of the casting agents, Barry Moss and Bob Kale. What really, really made this show was the second tier of performers, all strong character actors, and Moss and Kale did such an excellent job in casting it was as though they had plucked the very people off the streets of Dickensian London.

Now, it's unusual for a play review to mention these technical people first, before discussing the merits of the musical and the actors playing the roles, but in the case of A Tale of Two Cities, it's these technical aspects that make the show, and, hence, my rationale for their preliminary discussion.

I intentionally chose not to read any reviews until after I had seen the show. Then as I made my way home for the night, I started thinking about what to say. This morning, I read the reviews by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, plus a couple of others, and it's going to be very difficult to say much about the music and the singers without plagiarizing (and even saying that is close to plagiarizing!). They all make their comparisons to Les Misèrables. I also was reminded of recent semi-successful musicals Jeckyll and Hyde and Titanic, and those were mentioned, too. The WSJ reviewer even mentioned an opera I'd sung before called (in English) Dialogues of the Carmelites, a story of Carmelite nuns in the French revolution by Francis Poulenc, and much like him, I thought of the Poulenc during the final guillotine scene. I suppose this all goes to support my long-time assertions that there is very little that is original on Broadway these days, with practically everything falling in to the molds of the formulaic musicals of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Les Misèrables, Chicago, Rent, or the Disney productions.

Jill Santoriello is either a genius or a hack. I'm not sure yet which. She packed in a huge amount of plot into the musical, so much so that it was almost but not quite overwhelming. She did a great job fleshing out the secondary characters, and she really developed the leading man, Carton, but the other leads Lucie, Charles, and Dr. Monette were poorly developed. But, she got through the book, she developed the elaborate plot, she told the story, and she told Dickens's story, not a story of her own reimagining.

James Barbour, playing the English barrister Sydney Carton and the main character of the story, completely wowwed me. As I told him at the stage door after the performance, it's not often that I (as a baritone performer myself) like the work of other basses and baritones, but he really impressed me. I predict at least a Tony nomination for him for this role. He was witty and sarcastic, and one could see his character's development over the course of the musical. While in some of the scenes, he sang in the Broadway-stereotypical falsetto for soft, high passages, when the music demanded it, he had a full, powerful bass voice with a good top that I could hear (remembering that I was on the front row just to the left of the conductor) over the amplification system.

The other strong voice in the ensemble is Brandi Burkhardt as Lucie Manette. She has a nice, pure, spinto soprano and she was able to sing operatically and properly most of the show. She is also a very beautiful woman! I blew her a kiss during the curtain call and she not only smiled back at me, she remembered me afterwards at the stage door.

The other soprano did very well, although in a very small part, with Mackenzie Mauzy singing the Seamstress. She reminded me of Kristin Chenoweth, both physically and vocally. The mezzo is Natalie Toro, who sings the angry role of Madame Defarge. She did well but really only had one song with which to show off her talents; in other spots, though, I did not find the score kind to her.

The other two leading men were both tenors, with Aaron Lazar as the fated lover Charles Darnay, and Gregg Edelman as Dr. Alexandre Manette. Edelman did what he could with the role, trying to show that after seventeen years of unjust imprisonment in the Bastille, he'd suffered psychological damage, but I was just left feeling that Manette's role was tentative. Lazar, on the other hand, enjoyed the camp of his role and sang well, though he's sung Broadway too long—he is both too dependent upon the microphones and he's allowed his top to be a bit strangled and tight. He and Burkhardt, though, made an excellent couple and had a great chemistry between them.

And thus was my observation of the new A Tale of Two Cities. What will happen to it, I don't know. If the show lasts until the Tony Awards, it could well be around for a long time. I certainly found it entertaining, though with tickets at $110, I'm not sure how many times I would be willing to see it again (or any Broadway show, since this is pretty much the going rate these days). I actually would like to see the show at least one more time, because I want to see if any of the tunes are going to become popular tunes—a couple of Carton's ditties I'd like to sing myself. Santoriello didn't write any of the songs with repeating themes or with reprises, so the hit songs are going to take a little longer to emerge.

Tonight's show

Tonight's show, based on the Dickens novel of the same name. Opening night was last night.....I didn't go then cause I didn't bring a tuxedo to town. I'm looking forward to seeing it.....my seat is front row center, about four seats to the left of the conductor.

Opera photos

More pictures? See them in my Flickr Album.

Opening Night at the Opera

The opera season started tonight with Washington National Opera's new production of the Verdi opera, La Traviata, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It was a glittering, black tie evening at the Kennedy Center, but the more exciting crowd wasn't the 2,400 at the Opera House, it was the estimated 15,000 at Nationals Park, the new baseball stadium in southeast Washington, where operaphiles watched the show as a simulcast on the enormous flat panel HD TV in the scoreboard as they sat in the stands or out on the grass. The ball park was where Matt, Robert, and I went.

This is the fourth year that WNO has done an outdoor simulcast, though the previous three were out on the national Mall.

Now, there are pros and cons to the two locations. What I miss about the Mall is that we were able to take our gourmet picnic baskets and eat our own foods. The nice thing about the ball park was real seating and real restrooms. Of course, we would have been better off financially had we gone to the Kennedy Center, since concessions at the ball park are exorbitantly expensive (and "exorbitant" is not a strong enough word to convey their pricing plans), even more expensive than going to a big city movie theater. Robert spent nearly $7 a piece for his chili half smokes, something one can buy from a street vendor in town for $1.75. Right before the performance, I bought a little cup of faux champagne (which I had to ask the seller to top off twice, and she still didn't completely fill the cup) and a small bottle of water, and it cost me $17.50! I also saw them using tiny little cups for still wine drinkers, and they were using those little individual serving bottles of wine, but only giving people about half of one of those little bottles!

The interesting thing about Traviata as a popular opera is the matter of familiar tunes. There's really only one tune—the famous "Libiamo" duet and chorus—with wide recognition, and then amongst hard core operaphiles there are maybe one or two well-known arias, but those arias aren't really recognized by the general public. I was prepared, though, for the "Libiamo" chorus with my glass of champagne so I could drink along with the cast!

Speaking of drinking champagne, the ball park is trying to be "green" now, so they were using some of the same biodegradable cups made from corn that Nancy Pelosi forced upon the House of Representatives and its cafeterias. Unfortunately, those cups have a rather disconcerting tongue "feel" that distracts from the enjoyment of the wine. I'm also of the opinion that these supplies have a taste, or at least the flatware does, since I've experimented with chewing a spoon before and it definitely was not taste-neutral to me. If the ball park is going to charge triple the cost of a bottle for a little cup of wine, they need to provide a decent glass or cup from which to drink.

We went, though, to see the opera, not eat the ball park food. La Traviata is one of the "old war horse," very popular, and commonly done operas, and those of you who recall the Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie Pretty Woman will remember their trip to the opera to see Traviata. Some people have also compared elements of the opera to the Nicole Kidman/Ewan MacGregor movie Moulin Rouge.

After opening with the national anthem (which surprised me), they moved straight into the overture for the opera. The Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra was under the baton of Dan Ettinger, a new conductor I'd never seen who Robert said reminded him of Perez Hilton. I don't know about that, but I was absolutely appalled by the get-up he was wearing; it looked like an old, black, '70s leisure suit with a long, long tail, rounded in back, and some kind of black shirt underneath we never could really clearly see.

The fabulous Elizabeth Futral stars as Violetta. She was in magnificent voice. I thought she looked tired during much of the show, though, and I couldn't tell if that was "real life" tired or an attempt to portray the terminal illness of the character. Co-starring with her as Alfredo is Arturo Chacón-Cruz, a young Mexican tenor who was wonderfully youthful, earnest and energetic, and I really liked his voice. He's definitely a singer to watch. While the two of them sounded good together, I didn't sense a lot of chemistry between them, and with the telecast close-ups, their hugs and love scenes were not convincing from just the visual perspective.

Lado Ataneli as Germont père and Margaret Thompson as Flora both offered strong supporting roles.

During the scene change in the middle of act two, they projected on the ball park screens that it was the "seventh aria stretch."

Marta Domingo, wife of the artistic director and general manager Plácido Domingo, was the stage director and put together some impressive crowd scenes and kept the action going. In fact, she chose to chop off the last two pages of the score, ending the opera as soon as Violetta dies.

Costumes and sets are beautiful and lavish. I was particularly impressed with the lighting design by Joan Sullivan-Genthe, who kept the action areas of the stage illuminated without harsh spotlighting and who allowed Violetta's bed at the end of the opera seemingly to glow, rather than being directly lit.

There are another six or seven performances of La Traviata between now and October 5. This would be a great show for people looking for their "first opera" or who just like Verdian grand opera.

From what I was hearing from WNO staff, they are planning on doing this again next year at the ball park. I suppose that's okay (I miss the picnics on the Mall!); certainly the television screen in the scoreboard is far superior to the temporary screens they've put up in the past. I'm not sure what I feel about the amplification of sound, though, since the sound came from behind us, not from in front in the area of the screen. And, they've got two major problems to address. First is the concessions cost. It's totally out of hand, especially given the very long lines. Second, they've got to deal with noise from the concessions area. Throughout the opera, we could hear noise from the vendors drifting down into the stands, and it was most especially noticeable and distracting during the final act as Violetta was dying. The vendors were yelling at one another, playing their own music, and moving loud, noisy carts up and down the walk ways.

Opera does attract a different element from the usual baseball crowd. Generally at baseball performances, people leave their concessions trash and refuse laying on the floor by their seats, but tonight I saw countless people carrying out their trash to put in trash cans that quickly and unexpectedly filled.

Robert brought his camera tonight and he and I took about five dozen photos. Once he sends them to me, I'll edit a few and put them up. Robert was cranky after the show because there was no place in the area to go for a post-performance cocktail or even a nice place to grab a bite to eat. We ended up at a McDonald's a few blocks away from the ball park. If anybody wants to try a new business venture, setting up a bar with food really near the stadium with the capability of handling big crowds before and after ball performances and other events could be an extremely profitable venture.

Took him long enough

You know, if Fred Thompson had spoken as well as he is tonight back when he was actually supposed to be running for president, he might actually have been a serious candidate and possible nominee. I guess having a script makes a big difference for an actor!

Outdoor concert

Every year for Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, the National Symphony Orchestra, in conjunction with the National Park Service, performs an outdoor concert on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol. It's a fun evening of socializing and picnicking on the lawn while listening to orchestral pops music.

Neighbor Joel and I decided sort of at the last minute to go last night (the Memorial and Labor Day concerts are always on Sunday night of the weekend), so we quickly dressed and headed down to the Capitol. Once there, we waded through the throngs of picnickers spread out on the lawn and found us a little patch of grass down towards the bottom of the seating area, giving us prime seats as close to the orchestra as we might have been in the concert hall at the Kennedy Center. Since we hadn't planned this trip, we were without food, so we were tortured by all of the sights and smells of the foods around us. There was a full array of food choices, too, from people who had simply picked up a few bags of chips to those who brought complex and elaborate gourmet suppers.

It was a beautiful evening, with lovely weather and clear blue skies. As the sun went down, we could see first orange and then deep red skies on the horizon through the back of the stage backdrop. And, actually, by the time the concert was over about 10 p.m., it was actually cold! I should have brought a summer sweater.

After the national anthem, the orchestra, under the baton of principal pops conductor Emil de Cou, opened with a suite of pieces in honor of the 100th birthday of composer Leroy Anderson, including his most famous work, the Christmas song, "Sleigh Ride." De Cou explained to the audience that it was included since Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, is the official start of the Christmas shopping season!

Next they played a series of works used as the sound track for lots of the old Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, including "Merrie Melodies" and "Powerhouse" ("Powerhouse" is the jazzy work excerpts of which were often used for chase scenes and for mass production/manufacturing scenes), then doing Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," which was used in Fantasia, and the concluding the first half of the concert with "Kill the Wabbit" from What's Opera, Doc?, a/k/a "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Die Walküre.

After intermission, they opened with an arrangement of "Seventy-Six Trombones" from The Music Man that was interspersed with themes from Sousa marches. In honor of the start of the fall school semester, they next played Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Military March No. 1 in D" (the "graduation" march) and then Robert Planquette’s "Le régiment de Sambre et Meuse," also known as the "Script Ohio March" that is traditionally played before Ohio State football games. That was followed by Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave, which includes the hymn tune Russia, a melody that always reminds me of Boy Scout summer camp and the Order of the Arrow official song, "Firm bound in brotherhood."

Next we went to Hollywood and the sea and heard Korngold's "Overture to The Seahawk," an old pirate movie (I've never seen the movie, but this piece gets played a lot at various pops concerts), and then, in honor of all the Washingtonians who are at Rehoboth Beach this weekend, they played John Williams's "Main Theme from Jaws." The Hollywood section continued with more John Williams music, a suite from Harry Potter and the "March from Raiders of the Lost Ark."

They concluded the concert with "America the Beautiful," asking everyone to stand and sing along in solidarity with the Gulf Coast residents preparing for the hurricane. It amused me; the arrangement they played had essentially two "verses" of the song, so when the melody first came up, people started to sing, yet when we heard the melody the second time, the conductor turned around to lead the audience in singing. Some people didn't know what to do and stood silent. Some sang the first verse again, but I went ahead and (though I can't guarantee the accuracy of the words) sang the second verse.

As the audience left the lawn (or stood and listened, as was the case with many of us), they played Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."

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Something I noticed at the concert bothered me a bit. There was a decided lack of diversity. Now, this was a free concert, completely open to the public as it has been for years. One of the park rangers we talked to as we were leaving said there were probably between six and eight thousand people there at the concert. Since some 600,000 people live in the District, that meant over 1% of the population came to the concert. Yet, if you don't count the police and security people, I didn't see a single black person sitting in the audience. There were lots of white people, of course; we were sitting near Spanish-speaking Hispanics, east Indians, and Asians; Joel and I represented the American Indian element; yet, there weren't any black people. The audience was young and old, with elderly, middle aged, young, and little children, and it looked to have the full socio-economic spectrum. The concert was all pops, with familiar tunes from cartoons, musicals and major movies that all Americans should recognize.

So, why didn't the black people come?