This weekend was when Carthage finally got to unveil its production of Puccini’s delightful one-act comedy Gianni Schicchi and there’s no question but that this experience has been among the most gratifying of my entire career – at least in part because the opera itself means a lot to me, personally. My very first experience singing in a full opera was thirty years ago when the University of Nebraska-Lincoln mounted a production of Puccini’s trio of one-act operas titled Il Trittico. I got to sing the incredibly meaty role of Michel in the dark, sorrowful tragedy Il Tabarro (“The Cloak”) in which I actually got to strangle tenor John De Haan, whose character of Luigi was having an affair with my wife. Pretty dramatic stuff for a kid from a small town in Iowa who had basically never set foot on an opera stage. As much as I relished the challenge of bringing such a bitter, tragic character to life (and loved the experience of singing Puccini’s lush, passionate music to the accompaniment of full orchestra!) I must admit that I also envied those singers who were singing in the one comedy in Il Trittico …. Gianni Schicchi. My friend and classmate Brian Leeper performed the title role and did an absolutely fantastic job, moving around that stage so nimbly and portraying that character so assuredly – and having a ball. Those of us in the much more tragic operas (Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica), were having fun of our own ….. but not nearly as much fun as the folks who got to frolic in Gianni Schicchi!
Fast forward nine years ….. to January 1992 ….. just after I began teaching at Carthage. For that J-term, the opera workshop was Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi – and the production’s director, Dr. Richard Sjoerdsma, asked me to sing the title role. It was a chance to finally taste the fun of this comedy for myself, and I was thrilled at the opportunity. But when I opened the score, I quickly realized that just because this was a comedy did not mean that this was going to be a playful walk through the park. This music was very difficult- even more difficult than the music I had sung in Il Tabarro – and it gave me a new appreciation for the seeming ease with which Brian and his cast mates had sung this score. I still remember our first read-through of Schicchi on the first day of J-term. The students had all been given scores at the end of first semester and charged with working on their respective roles. (But remember that this was back before the age of the internet. There was no such thing as iTunes or YouTube or any of the other on-line resources to which singers readily turn. You would have to somehow procure an actual recording of the opera – or sit down at the piano and try to make sense of Puccini’s music on your own.) So that very first rehearsal down in the choir room was a pretty rough experience, and when it was all done, Dr. Sjoerdsma sent me home for the rest of the week so he could pound that complicated score into the ears of those students, most of whom I’m sure had never sung Puccini before. And lo and behold, when I returned that following Monday, they knew the music and we went on to deliver a fine performance! But that experience only heightened my sense that this music – for as it fun as it sounds to sing – is treacherously difficult and cannot be taken lightly.
Fast forward 22 years …. January 2014 …. (which means that no one in our current cast of Gianni Schicchi was even born yet when I sang the role at Carthage) ….. and I could not help but worry that we might have bitten off more than we could chew in taking on this particular opera. True, our opera productions have been dramatically improving in quality over the last several years (our Elixir of Love last January was quite a triumph) and on paper, this seemed like a sensible next step. But I had never taught a music score this complicated before, at least not from square one. I did, however, step in several summers ago to play for the Gianni Schicchi production of the Southeast Wisconsin Performing Arts group (SEWPA) as part of their Opera A La Carte program. That had gone well, but someone else had taken care of the first week of rehearsals (I think I was gone with the Carthage Choir on their thrilling trip to Carnegie Hall) so it hadn’t been up to me to actually teach them the score. Moreover, that cast was a mix of amateurs (many of them high school students) in the smaller roles with young professionals in most of the larger roles – and having solid, experienced musicians anchoring the cast made a big difference in how it came together so very well. I worried that this would be a different story, with a cast comprised entirely of students, and several of them freshmen who had never sung in an opera before, let alone one as complex and sophisticated as this one.
Well, I wish there was a way to somehow siphon off the wasted energy of needless worry, because one could probably fuel a rocket to the moon with all the worry that I expended when anticipating this undertaking. In fact our cast proved to be spectacularly equal to the task. Music coach Peg Cleveland and I could not have been happier with how readily they mastered this score or with how nicely it suited their particular gifts. It wasn’t exactly easy but it was much more painless than either of us were expecting it to be. And I think we made a wise decision when we chose not to teach the whole score first and then figure out the staging. We decided to teach relatively small sections of the score and then stage them, believing that the stage action would help cement the music in their minds. And it really did; in fact, it almost felt like the score memorized itself. (Not quite, but close.) And with Matt Boresi, one of the funniest human beings I know, on hand once again as our stage director, the students were working with someone who is pretty much a Comedic Genius … who could probably write sketches for Saturday Night Live if opera weren’t his first love and highest passion. Matt is so good at taking something already funny and finding all kinds of additional layers of comedy that the rest of us would miss (but not in a cheap way.) His other amazing gift is for discerning the unique gifts of the performers in his charge and finding ways to draw the very best out of each of them. That’s never been truer than with Gianni Schicchi, which is an ensemble piece in every sense of the word – and by the time we opened, there was no question that you were seeing richly distinctive individual characters on that stage. And that was true even of the neophytes in our cast.
The other thing that proved remarkable about this production is something that I hadn’t even thought about in so many words until my colleague Amy Haines mentioned it to me after opening night. This opera is full of complicated bits of business requiring precise timing – and because it’s a story revolving around a somewhat dysfunctional set of relatives, you need chemistry between your cast members to make that seem fully authentic. Amy was amazed not only that our cast achieved that, but that they did so within the brief time frame of J-Term. In other words, when you watched our cast do their thing, it was hard to believe that they did so with 20 rehearsals over the course of four weeks when it looked like they had been working together for months. That was one of the biggest blessings of all- that this cast had such a wonderful working relationship with each other. They were kind and supportive of each other, light-hearted yet focused, patient and diligent, respectful to Matt, Peg and me, and a whole lot of other Boy Scout and Girl Scout qualities that I don’t need to go into. 🙂 In short, they were an exceptionally cohesive group right from the start – like a loving family – and worked so hard that it stopped feeling like work and felt so much more like play. And that’s the essence of the magic which this cast achieved- gifted people working together to achieve a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts – inspiring each other and urging each other on to give their very best. Can anything feel better than that?!?!
And the chemistry was not just amongst our cast – but also between the team that lead them. Matt Boresi and I have been an operatic team at Carthage for five years or so (time flies when you’re having fun, and I tend not to keep track of such things) and I count it among my most cherished blessings that I have been able to collaborate with him. This guy knows and loves opera as much as anyone I know, yet you would never in a million years think of him as your standard Opera Nerd. He is young, vibrant, incredibly funny, daringly creative, unfailingly positive – and the students adore him.
I hate his guts.
No, not really – but I must confess that there are plenty of times when I feel like a sputtering jalopy to Matt’s Jaguar. He speaks the students’ language – he knows what makes them tick – he is on their wavelength in a way that is simply impossible for me. (Last night after strike was completed, he and a couple of cast members were engaged in an animated conversation about Twitter and other cyber matters that left me feeling like a Cro Magnon caveman by comparison.) But by working side by side with Matt, I feel like I get to ride his coattails in a really fun way. And beyond that – and much more importantly – Matt and I have an exceptional working chemistry right from the start, where we just have a knack for working together- for seeing things in very similar ways- for striving for the same goals but doing so with our own particular gifts. In no way are we Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the House. We are very different people in many different ways (no one has ever suggested, for instance, that we must be twins who somehow got separated at birth … an implausible scenario especially given that I’m probably fifteen years older than Matt) but when it comes to working together, I couldn’t imagine a better or easier collaborator.
And this time around, we had the added pleasure of working side by side with Peg Cleveland, an incredibly able musician and voice teacher – and marvelous human being. She has a heart that’s so warm and a spirit that is so kind, but she can also be an exacting taskmaster, and I really learn a lot just from watching her work with that kind of relentlessness. I am certain that a big reason why our cast managed to learn this difficult score as well as they did is because they didn’t just have me to teach it to them, with my tendency to throw them into the deep end and have them flail. She loves to take things apart and take things slowly – two things I don’t like to do – and it’s been really great to have her steadying, methodical presence through the process. And towards the end of J-term, before a family situation took her away, she began offering up dramatic/theatrical notes to the cast that were spot-on …. and uncompromisingly blunt in some cases. She knows the theatrical side of opera very well indeed, and next semester – when Matt has to be away from us – I know she will be a superb stage director when we tackle Mozart’s comic gem Cosi fan Tutte.
Just as Gianni Schicchi finishes up, I am in the throes of what is actually a far great undertaking …. Les Miserables at the Racine Theater Guild. Stage director Doug Instenes and I heard 163 people audition for what will ultimately be a cast of about 30. I’m certain that in the long history of the RTG, there has never been that kind of spectacular turnout for one production – an indication of the intense feelings which people have about this work. Doug and I are right in the middle of the mind-boggling challenge of choosing our cast. I know that it’s so hard for the people auditioning to see it from our perspective …. all they know is that they stood on that stage and delivered a fantastic audition. But we aren’t just reacting to what they did. We’re reacting to the auditions of 163 people (most of whom sang superb auditions) and trying to figure out what array of performers are best suited to these challenging roles …. and beyond that, who will work well together and look right together. We are looking for the kind of chemistry that Carthage just achieved with Gianni Schicchi. I wish there was a surefire recipe for achieving it, but there isn’t. And I must say that I am grateful that if I have to undergo something this wrenching, I am doing so with Doug – whom I like and admire and deeply respect, and with whom I have a comfortable working relationship very akin to what I have with Matt and Peg. Not that Doug and I always agree or easily agree when it comes to tough casting choices- but we both want the same thing, and we’re also acutely aware of what a painful process this ultimately is for the many people we end up disappointing. All we can do is be as compassionate and sensitive and professional as we possibly can, and I really appreciate the fact that Doug and I are comrades in this regard. And my hope – and indeed my expectation – is that when the curtain comes down on that last Les Mis performance in May, I will feel as pleased and grateful as I did last night during the final bows of Gianni Schicchi . . . when the chemistry, both onstage and offstage, was absolutely perfect.
pictured above: Our happy Gianni Schicchi cast, right before our Friday night performance. (Minus our Saturday night Zita, Clare Reinholt, and our Saturday night Buoso Donati, Eduardo Garcia-Novelli, who were already sitting in the audience, ready to cheer on their cast mates. By the way, Buoso Donati is the wealthy Italian who death sets the main events of the opera in motion. He dies before the music even begins, so it’s obviously a mute role- but it still matters a lot. We were all delighted that both Dr. G-N and Dimitri Shapovalov were willing to be part of our opera – and they threw themselves into it with full enthusiasm. That’s Dimitri at the far right of the photo, looking like death is imminent!