Of all that has been going on in my life over the last couple of months, nothing has absorbed such time, attention, energy, focus, and concern – or caused me more sleepless- ness – than Carthage’s production of The Marriage of Figaro. I should say first that when Carthage mounts full blown operas, it’s almost always during J-Term, when our students take one course and essentially devote pretty much all of their time and energy to it. They belong to us in a way that is simply not possible during the regular semesters, when they are typically busy with four different courses, plus lessons, plus ensembles, plus frat/sorority stuff, work, class trips, etc. Life is SO much simpler during J-Term, and so much more conducive to a challenge like mounting a full-length opera. But every three years, the Carthage Choir goes on a J-Term concert tour, and this year was their amazing trip to Ireland and Scotland. But that also means that the vast majority of our finest singers are not around to be in an opera production, which means that our only option for mounting a major opera production is the spring semester.
Which is fine and good, except that stage director Matt Boresi and I …. usually two relatively smart, stable guys not prone to bouts of temporary insanity ….. decided that opera workshop for the spring semester should be devoted to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, a 4-act opera consisting of nearly 3 and a half hours of delicious but often challenging music, including some of the most intricate and sophisticated opera ensembles ever written. Why Figaro? Because we had the singers to do it- and not just to do it, but to hit it out of the park. And even after one student had to relinquish a major role when they discovered an unbreakable calendar conflict, we were able to shift someone into that role who was absolutely spectacular. But just because we had splendid horses does not mean we had a rodeo. In the relatively brief time allotted to us (3 65- minute class periods per week) we would be trying to master and memorize a long and complex musical score and staging it. So this was an undertaking roughly akin to the mounting of the mainstage musical “The Drowsy Chaperone,” except that Team Figaro did not have the option of lengthy rehearsals night and night after night after night. We had to accomplish all we had to accomplish within the confines of workshop rehearsal – perfectly fine for a fairly modest work like Dido and Aeneas, but really not enough for an opera as massive and complex as Figaro. (I joked with Matt the other night that I’m good at music, he’s good at theater, we’re both good at opera, but we must both stink at math. Somehow the inescapable arithmetic of the situation managed to escape us both.)
Actually, we weren’t completely clueless. We both knew this was a huge undertaking, and said so to the cast from Day One- but I’m not sure any of them fully grasped what we were saying. (Maybe we should have done cartwheels accompanied by a laser light show.) Certainly right off the bat I had very little sense that any of the students were burning the midnight oil working on their roles on their own- or if they were working, they weren’t doing particularly effective work that was yielding much progress. So maybe 2 and a half weeks after we would first work on a given passage, we would finally get return to it in the rehearsal rotation only to find that they had made little if any progress on it. In some cases, they had lost ground…. forgetting everything we had worked on before. By no means was this true across the board, but it’s fair to say that the majority of the cast seemed to have the impression that this score was going to learn itself or that just by sheer repetition within workshop time, they would learn and memorize their roles. But this work was way too big for that – we didn’t have enough time for that – and we only started to make real and meaningful progress when the singers started to become as terrified as Matt and I were and much more committed to getting this score learned. But thanks to some extra coachings with me, work done in voice lessons, and a bit of old fashioned practice room practicing, the score started to get learned, slowly but surely.
But that’s only half of the operatic equation. The other half is the theatrical element, and we ended up with scarcely any time at all for anything beyond just staging the thing. I mean, the real fun of opera or any kind of stage work is when you get to delve into the complexity of characters and their relationships to one another – the subtle shades of who these people are and who they evolve into as the show proceeds. . . stuff that Matt is brilliant at exploring with singers. One thing Matt said towards the end of the rehearsal process, as our opening night loomed ever closer, is that he was so thrilled by what the students were doing on their own in terms of coming to grips with their respective characters, exploring their nuances, and disappearing inside of them more and more. In short, he had ended up with almost no time whatsoever to talk about actual acting with them – but there they were on the stage, acting! And maybe that was the hidden blessing of this unbelievably difficult gauntlet…. that the students ended up having to take responsibility like some of them had maybe never done before in a stage production, which was great to see. We knew we had a cast who cared deeply about this production.
Still, there was no escaping the tyranny of the ticking clock, and Matt and I held an emergency meeting at Einstein’s ten days before opening to wrestle with what to do. Although we never actually talked about it, there was a small part of me that was tempted to actually cancel the two performances outright so we could just keep working to the very end of the semester. There were other options hardly less radical, like switching over to a concert performance …. or cutting act four ….. or the option which we ultimately embraced: that we would allow them to hold scores as needed. But we decided not to tell them yet so they would continue working as hard as they possibly could.
Two days before we opened, when it was clear that nobody outside of the chorus had the piece fully memorized, Matt and I told the cast of our decision about holding the score whenever they felt like it was necessary. Our feeling was that we would rather have them singing well, acting confidently, and delivering the best performance they possibly could – and we knew that for just about everyone with a major role, this was the only way we could see all they had to give. Otherwise they would be limping along, scared out of their minds, hesitant …. a recipe for disaster when it comes to comedy. And because Matt’s theatrical concept was of a group of maintenance workers coming across the costumes and props of an opera company doing “Figaro” and deciding to do it themselves, the production itself lent itself to the occasional holding of scores. But much to the credit of our singers, they did not interpret that decision to mean Whew! Now We Can Relax. If anything they worked still harder from that point on, and by yesterday’s performance there was actually very little holding of scores at all. But I also have to say that I was proud of the singers for being willing to hold scores when they deemed it necessary…. even though I know it galled them in some ways. But in our pre-curtain announcement we made it clear to the audience that this was a concession of sorts about which we felt no need to apologize. And ultimately, it only helped rathe rather hindered people’s enjoyment of Figaro. So while I was delighted at those lead performers who went score-less, I am equally proud of those who set aside any mild embarrassment about holding score from time to time, knowing it was for the best.
And most of all, I can’t even say how pleased I was at the level of commitment which the students demonstrated in these last few days. One of the best examples was Saturday. I called the members of the ensemble at 5:00 to work on a neat little pre-curtain introduction for which they sang some excerpts- with the rest of the cast called at 5:30: a full two hours before curtain. Imagine my delight when I walked into Siebert at 5:00, expecting to see the ensemble, and instead seeing our Figaro, Susannah, Count, Countess, and at least one or two other leads already there, in the midst of a rehearsal they had organized entirely on their own. That was the moment when I said to myself, “this might just work!”
And ultimately how did it go? Amazingly well! Saturday night certainly had some rough stretches, plus ten minutes of act four was done to the unwanted accompaniment of the Siebert Chapel carillon playing its 10-minute medley of hymns. . . regrettably during some of the quietest and most beautiful music in the whole score! But the singers carried on amazingly well – earning yet another gold star. The audience who was there enjoyed themselves thoroughly, and I think for our cast it was extraordinary to finally have an audience to play off of and be so enthusiastic about what they were doing. And then came Sunday, when the cast took it up to an entirely different level . . . far beyond my hopes and expectations. And well before the performance was over – before even act one had finished – I was already feeling tremendous regret that I hadn’t done everything within my power to encourage people to come. Those few who braved the afternoon downpours to come were treated to a delightful performance of one of history’s finest masterworks. . . but it was only those of us on the other end of the footlights, so to speak, who could possibly know just what an astonishing accomplishment this was.
I’ve never been part of anything that was quite so terrifying… nor quite so satisfying… as this production of The Marriage of Figaro. And while it would have been great to have had it be a bit less harrowing – and great to have had time to polish the many rough edges that remained – I’m actually not sure that I would rewrite history if given a chance by switching the opera to something more doable or adding extensive rehearsal time or anything else that would have made this easier. An essential element in the glory of this was exactly because it was so difficult. How else would our students have learned such essential lessons about their own limitations …. or, more importantly, their spectacular potential? No, I think what was supposed to happen did happen, and I’m not sure Matt and I would change a thing.
Hmmm…. Maybe we are a little insane. 🙂
pictured above: This is most of the cast of Figaro, towards the end of the Sunday afternoon performance. Our gifted cast was: Bob Petts (Figaro), Becky Ryan (Susannah), Mike Anderle (Count), Katie Schmidt (Countess), Amanda Soos (Cherubino), Nick Huff (Basilio, Don Curzio), Josh Hamm (Bartolo), Gaby Heim (Marcellina), Megan Sterzinger (Barbarina), Bryan Chung (Antonio), with Stephanie Mikuzis, Erika Hermann, Trina Pachan, Liz Tindall and Kevin Gussel in the ensemble, and Rachel Lee and Julia Stampfl undertaking the crucial roles of Zelda and Imelda, the two kitchen servants whose gossiping about recent events serves as the narrative thread for our production (filling in those points in the story that are lost by the many cuts we had to take to make the work even remotely doable.)