By my count, I have presided over 17 different opera workshop productions at Carthage- everything from more or less complete performances of operas such as Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, The Beggar’s Opera, Cosi fan tutte, Il Trittico,  and The Elixir of Love … galas celebrating the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, Menotti and Offenbach ….  two original pastiches, “Happy Birthday, Herr Handel” and “Mozart is Dead” … a crossover production that combined operatic and music theater treatments of the same stories (e.g. an excerpt from Elton John’s musical Aida and an excerpt from Verdi’s opera Aida, a love duet from West Side Story and a love duet from Gounod’s Romeo & Juliet, etc.) …  and even an entirely original opera, Black September.

After all that, I guess it was time for a party -and that’s exactly what happened this past Saturday afternoon in Carthage’s recital hall.  And with it, Carthage’s opera workshop actually stepped away from the world of opera and into the realm of art song.   It sprang from an idea of a colleague of mine, Peg Cleveland, because of an exciting project she directs at the Interlochen Arts Camp in which young singers explore the songs of Franz Schubert and hone their expressive abilities in some truly spectacular ways.  Peg believed that this could be a richly rewarding experience for our opera students- particularly in a year when we were having to rebuild the program after losing some very important veterans from the program to graduation and other pursuits.  This could be a valuable stepping stone for the newcomers to our program with little or no experience on stage or in opera – while being a potentially rich experience for our upperclassmen as well.  And after some initial skepticism (I am, after all, the proverbial Old Dog who does not enjoy learning New Tricks) I was fully on board, especially knowing that I was going to be part of a new and impressive teaching team – Peg plus Allison Hull and Elena Batman, three of our marvelous adjunct voice teachers at Carthage.  That fact, in and of itself, was very exciting for me.

It was clear from our very first meeting that the eight students with whom we would be working this semester were a very intriguing group – ranging from fifth-year seniors who have been an indispensable part of opera workshop to younger students with no opera experience whatsoever.  They were also a fun and stimulating mix of personalities and gifts- and right from the start, they seemed eager and open to whatever this experience was going to offer them.  Even my grizzled veterans seemed excited at the prospect of tackling a very different sort of venture … an opera workshop production without any opera in it at all!

What we ended up creating was a theatrical re-creation of something called a Schubertiade. These were gatherings that occurred with some frequency in and around Vienna, Austria – part of a very tradition known as the ‘salon’ in which some of the most notable thinkers and artists in Vienna would come together for stimulating nights that included musical performances,  theatrical and poetic recitations, discussion and debate, games, dancing, food and drink.  The Schubertiades, as the name suggests, were salons that focused on the music of Franz Schubert and often featured the composer himself at the keyboard.  Those in attendance would include friends, colleagues, collaborators, and admirers.  The first known Schubertiade occurred in 1821 and they continued to occur right up until 1828, the year of Schubert’s untimely death at the age of just 31.

One thing I was anxious to do was to pattern this production as much as possible after our first pastiche, “Mozart is Dead,” in which an array of almost a dozen of Mozart’s colleagues and friends- including important singers of the day- gathered together one month after his death to mourn their loss and to celebrate his legacy.  Each student was entrusted with portraying a very specific person who actually was part of Mozart’s life- such as certain important singers for whom Mozart crafted his operas.  It really worked nicely- and part of the beauty of it was that we could craft the production around each student and their particular gifts.   Stage director Matt Boresi helped immeasurably with bringing the concept alive-  and I’m also grateful for the great help we had from Peg Cleveland, who had just begun teaching at Carthage.  She attended to all kinds of production details that otherwise would have almost certainly gone unaddressed.   The result was what I think was one of the most interesting and satisfying productions we ever mounted in opera workshop, which by the way we did as Immersive Theater, meaning that the audience and performers were pretty much seated in the same space – which can make for an especially exciting experience for everyone concerned!

We did something very similar with “To Schubert” – with each of our eight students portraying a different important figure from Schubert’s life.  (And I’m proud of the good job we did in matching up each student with a historic figure that melded nicely with their personality and gifts.)  There was Franz von Schober (Joey Belotti), Schubert’s charismatic and fun-loving best friend … Therese Grob (Sarah Jenkins),  who was believed to be Schubert’s first lady love, but who was not allowed by her family to marry him  … Baron Karl Schonstein (Cory Pollard),  a government official and amateur singer to whom Schubert dedicated his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin …  Josephine Fröhlich (Claire Stastny), one of three spirited sisters who were frequent guests at such gatherings … Anton Holzapfel (Matt Burton), a seminary classmate of Schubert and now one of Vienna’s leading attorneys … Pauline Anna Milder (Grace Riemer), a leading prima donna of the day, for whom Beethoven composed his one and only opera,  Fidelio ….   Sophie Muller (Rachel Watson),  a passionate and sensitive actress for whom Schubert composed his famous “Ave Maria” ….  and finally Johann Vogl (Austin Merschdorf), perhaps the most important singer of the day, who sang the world premieres of many important Schubert songs, including “Erlkönig” and the song cycle Winterreise.   My colleague Peg Cleveland portrayed the hostess of our gathering, Frau Karoline Pichler,  a learned and gifted woman who was a published novelist and actually studied music with none other than Mozart!  The real-life Frau Pichler and her husband hosted many Schubertiades.  My other two colleagues,  Allison Hull and Elena Batman, portrayed two fictional characters – Frau Allison Rumpf (which is German for ‘hull’) and Frau Elena Fledermaus (which is German for ‘bat’) – who were friends of Frau Pichler and helped out with evening’s festivities.  I portrayed David Hintz, the pianist for the evening.  (David is my first name and Hintz was my mother’s maiden name.)

We decided to place the action of our performance not on the stage of the recital hall, but right in the middle of where the audience sits – and Peg did an amazing job of securing furniture that allowed us to create a very warm, inviting and fairly realistic living room of the period-  and Elena and Allison worked tirelessly to find costumes that provided the final touch of authenticity.   There was even a costume for yours truly!

Once the four teachers had decided what songs would be sung and by whom,  I set about writing the script – in which I tried to capture the lively interplay that would have been part of such gatherings.   I even included a couple of spirited arguments, which I imagine would have been all but inevitable when you had such strong and creative personalities sharing an evening together.   And because I as the pianist did not want the responsible of portraying Schubert,  I came up with the scenario that Schubert was expected to be in attendance but had failed to appear- which set the worried guests on edge and made some of the erupting tension and conflict even more likely.  But the moments of tension were more the exception than the rule;  mostly this was a gathering marked by fun and good cheer- and of course,  lots of good music.   In fact, for as much as we labored over all of the theatrical matters – plus cookies and sparkling cider to make thing even more festive – what mattered most of all was the music and the deeply expressive performances given by our students.

We even included a parlor game into the proceedings (games were almost always played at these salons) and to make it even more fun,  we decided to invite a handful of audience members to join our students in what turned out to be a very energetic round of “The Minister’s Cat.”  The game involves filling in the blank of “The minster’s cat is a ___________ cat” – with an adjective, which might seem pretty easy.  However, as the game proceeds around the circle,  each person must supply an adjective that begins with the next letter of the alphabet – and a strict rhythmic pulse is maintained,  meaning that your answer has to be dropped in at the rhythmically correct moment.  It was great fun- especially when Matt Burton’s dad supplied KINKY as one of his words.  By the way, the winner of the game turned out to be the father of our own Austin Merschdorf.

It was after the game that things turned more dramatic with the singing of two of Schubert’s most famous songs –  “Death and the Maiden” and “Erlkönig” – with texts by the greatest German writer of them all, Goethe.   The former is a brief yet powerful song in which a terrified maiden senses death drawing near and begs death to pass her by – but then Death quietly replies that the maiden need not fear death and should calmly welcome it.   Although typically performed by a single singer,  we split it between two of our singers- Sarah Jenkins and Claire Stastny – in a way that proved quite effective.

Right after that,  the four male singers in our cast shared a performance of Schubert’s first masterpiece,  “Erlkönig” – in which a frantic father is riding through the night with his young son while pursued by a mysterious, sinister figure, the Erlkönig.  We split the roles of the narrator, father, son, and Erlkönig between Joey, Matt, Cory and Austin – in a way that was sometimes done in Schubert’s day and with his full approval.  (There were even occasions in which Schubert both played the accompaniment and sang one of the parts.)   The song takes the listener on an amazing ride …. from the sound of hoofbeats in the piano introduction to the stark, final phrase announcing that the child, despite his father’s best efforts to escape the clutches of the Erlkönig,  has died.

 

The final chords of this song had scarcely faded before the news arrived by messenger that Schubert had actually died earlier that day …. at the age of only 31,  leaving friends and admirers stunned and heartbroken.  There were certainly a few moments in the script that offered some foreshadowing of where all of this was headed- references to Schubert having been ill as well as to Schubert’s strange preoccupation with death,  to say nothing of the death-related songs that were sung in the second half. (And somebody well acquainted with the details of Schubert’s life might have known how it would end just from the date that was on the cover of our program- November 19th, 1828, the date in history that Schubert died.)  Still, one could tell from the gasps in the audience that at least most of the people there had no idea that our joyous Schubertiade would end on such a sorrowful note.  After a hushed performance of “Du bist die Ruh” (“You are the peace”) by Grace and Allison,  the entire cast came together for a heartfelt performance of “An die Musik,”  Schubert’s radiant paean to music, featuring a beautiful text by his friend Schober.   As I played the final measures of the song’s postlude,  our cast stood in a circle with heads bowed.   You could hear a pin drop.

I think all of us who were part of “To Schubert” knew we had put together something very special- but it wasn’t until the audience exploded in applause that we understood the impact of what we had just offered up.  And of all of the lavish compliments I heard from various people who were there, my very favorite was from a woman from Kenosha who was actually born and raised in Hamburg, Germany – and who loves classical music of all kinds.  She found herself almost speechless, so moved was she to see young people so excited about the songs of Schubert …. and singing those songs so beautifully and expressively.  I was so pleased to know that someone so deeply steeped in this tradition appreciated what we had done.  But it was perhaps even more gratifying to know that “To Schubert” had connected so powerfully with people who came that afternoon with absolutely no idea of who Schubert was or of what made him such an important and unique genius.   

And it was perhaps most gratifying of all to see these eight students come to such a rich, new understanding of Schubert as a flesh & blood human being and not just a stiff figure seen in 200-year-old oil paintings  to see them develop an appreciation for what made him such a genius and for what made his great songs great- and to see them grow as artists and musicians as they engaged with some of his finest songs. And due to the ill health of one of our students, they also ended up learning how to cope with some last minute changes and make the best of it.   I hope they will look back on this as perhaps the single most important party of their lives.  I know it was that was for me.  It opened my eyes to the importance of embracing great ideas other than my own.   It reminded me that the lines that we sometimes like to draw that set off opera from other kinds of music can be both artificial and counter-productive.  It deepened my appreciation for my colleagues Peg, Allison and Elena and all that they did to make this production all that it was.  And it reminded me of just how joyous and satisfying this crazy thing called opera can be … even when it’s ‘opera without opera’ and a ‘Schubertiade without Schubert.’

< here’s a few more photos from “To Schubert >