Opera Parallèle: Dead Man Walking

Friday night I was at the opening performance of Opera Parallèle's production of Dead Man Walking. Baritone Michael Mayes as death row inmate De Rocher looked, acted & sounded the part. His singing was sinewy & clean & particularly beautiful in his reverie about "A warm night" in his 1st scene with Sister Helen. He was both obdurate & vulnerable, & his character's final redemption felt well-earned. Mezzo Jennifer Rivera as Sister Helen was consistently sturdy & conveyed a hard strength throughout. As De Rocher's mother, mezzo Catherine Cook made a big impact & was emotionally powerful in all her scenes. Her voice was steady, grounded & gripping, & she switched seamlessly from speech to song in her address to the pardoning commission.

Baritone Robert Orth as the father of one of the murder victims sang urgently, & the ensemble of the victims' parents in act 1 had focused intensity. The high, concentrated voice of tenor John Duykers as Father Grenville & the effortlessly large sound of bass-baritone Philip Skinner as the warden were distinctive. I also enjoyed hearing soprano Talise Trevigne's swooping, full-throated sound as Sister Rose. The production's adult & child choruses were both solid.

At the start of the show, conductor Nicole Paiement stealthily entered the pit with her head lowered so that we would not applaud her. She got an amazingly lush, sweeping sound from an orchestra of only 30 musicians. They played crisply, & I enjoyed listening to the woodwinds & the 2 charged-up violists.

Director Brian Staufenbiel left the stage as a large empty space. To indicate the various locations, the cast positioned chairs, beds & large metal frames that hung from the flies. I was unclear about the meaning of the bare light bulbs that sometimes descended in front of the chorus of inmates. Videos were projected on an overhanging, beamed structure at the back of the stage. The videos unobtrusively indicated scene changes & sometimes augmented the action.

The teenagers who are murdered in the opening scene are retained as mute characters, often appearing at the side of De Rocher or Sister Helen like ghosts. In the final scene, their gestures of forgiveness toward their killer are both surprising & satisfying. Though the performance was over 3 hours long, the audience was engrossed throughout. People laughed heartily at the libretto's jokes & witnessed the execution scene in taut silence. It felt inappropriate to be clapping after that, but there was warm applause for the cast & for composer Jake Heggie, who came out for a bow. On our way out of the theater, we saw an after-party being set up on the stage.


§ Dead Man Walking: An Opera in Two Acts
Music by Jake Heggie
Libretto by Terrence McNally

Opera Parallèle
Conductor: Nicole Paiement
Director: Brian Staufenbiel

Sister Helen: Jennifer Rivera
Sister Rose: Talise Trevigne
Sister Catherine: Crystal Kim
Sister Lilianne: Krista Wigle
Mrs. Charlton: Rachel Rush
Mother: Ellen Presley
Cop: Mark Hernandez
Father Grenville: John Duykers
George Benton: Philip Skinner
Guard 1: Igor Vieira
Guard 2: Anders Froehlich
Inmate 1: Mark Hernandez
Inmate 2: Andres Ramirez
Inmate 3: Lorne Barfield
Inmate 4: Roy Eikleberry
Inmate 5: Patrick Hage
Inmate 6: Chris Coyne
Joseph De Rocher: Michael Mayes
Older Brother: Jonathan Smucker
Younger Brother: Baxter Spark
Mrs. De Rocher: Catherine Cook
Owen Hart: Robert Orth
Kitty Hart: Kristin Clayton
Howard Boucher: Joseph Meyers
Jade Boucher: Michelle Rice

Actors:
Brandon Blum
Amitis Rossoukh

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
8 p.m. February 20, 2015

Opera Parallèle: An Evening with Sister Helen Prejean

Last month, as part of the run-up to Opera Parallèle's performances of Dead Man Walking this weekend, Temple Emanu-El hosted an evening of discussion & music with Sister Helen Prejean & composer Jake Heggie. The event did a good job priming audiences for the themes of the opera.

Mezzo Frederica von Stade set a solemn, introspective mood with a song by Mr. Heggie on a text by Sister Prejean, accompanied by Mr. Heggie on the piano & flutist Julie McKenzie. In the 1st discussion panel, lawyer Elisabeth Semel brought up the link between race & the death penalty, specifically regarding the race of the victim versus the perpetrator. Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin who oversaw 4 executions, questioned the effectiveness of the death penalty & brought up the high cost of pursing death penalty cases.

Sister Prejean might have an unassuming appearance, but she is an eloquent speaker & a determined personality. She is very supportive of art & literature taking social issues to the public & immediately welcomed the idea of turning Dead Man Walking into an opera. We heard that in her 1st phone call to Jake Heggie, she told the composer, "I don't know boo-skat about opera!" She also wanted to be sure that he didn't write "any of that twelve-tone stuff." She sees the opera ultimately as a story of redemption.

The event had a large turn out, & the audience was especially still & quiet for the "Forgiveness" duet from the opera performed by sopranos Kristin Clayton & Nicolle Foland, who both communicated the text clearly. We also heard mezzo Catherine Cook's earthy, grounded sound in another short excerpt. The 90-minute event concluded with Cantor Roslyn Barak performing Ravel's "Kaddish." She sang with control & colored her voice nicely. I wished there could have been more music.

§ Dead Man Walking: Art & Social Justice

Welcome: Cantor Roslyn Barak

Heggie/Prejean "Primary Colors" from The Deepest Desire
Frederica von Stade, Mezzo-Soprano; Julie Mckenzie, flute,
Jake Heggie, piano

PART ONE: Dead Man Walking and the death penalty
Speakers: Sister Helen Prejean, Elisabeth Semel, Jeanne Woodford

Heggie/McNally "Forgiveness" from Dead Man Walking
Kristin Clayton, Nicolle Foland, Sopranos; Jake Heggie, piano

PART TWO: Dead Man Walking and the arts community
Moderated by Brian Staufenbiel
Sister Helen Prejean, Frederica Von Stade, Catherine Cook, Jake Heggie, Nicole Paiement

Heggie/McNally "Don't Say A Word" from Dead Man Walking
Catherine Cook, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano

PART THREE: Questions from the Audience
Moderated by Brian Staufenbiel  

Closing: Rabbi Jonathan Singer
Ravel "Kaddish" from Deux Melodies Hebraiques
Roslyn Barak, soprano; Jake Heggie, piano

Temple Emmanu-El, San Francisco
7 p.m. January 21, 2015

Opera Parallèle: Open Rehearsal

Last Saturday afternoon I attended the open rehearsal for Opera Parallèle's production of Dead Man Walking, which has 3 performances starting Friday night at the YBCA Theater, then 2 more in Santa Monica in March. We got to hear some of the most important scenes in the opera, including the big ensemble with the murder victims' parents in act 1.

Baritone Michael Mayes, with his bushy sideburns & loping movements, looks convincing in the role of the condemned murderer De Rocher. He can sing while doing push-ups, & his sinewy, unfussy voice sounds just right for the character.

Mezzo Jennifer Rivera as Sister Helen communicates her character's inner strength & did a great job swinging her hips like Elvis. The male chorus sounded focused & much greater than its small size.

The excerpts ended with the painful farewell between De Rocher & his mother, played with an undemonstrative realism by mezzo Catherine Cook. The scene worked well with the performers & audience so close to one another, & some audience members were crying.

Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi accompanied the singers, playing so brilliantly that I did not miss having an orchestra.

The event concluded with a Q & A with all the participants. We learned that several cast members have been in other productions of the opera, including baritone Robert Orth, who was in the original San Francisco Opera premiere. Opera Parallèle is using a reduced orchestration, which conductor Nicole Paiement has revised to include more strings. She also observed that "There is a fine line in this music. If you do it too slowly, it becomes sentimental, & you don't want that."

§ Dead Man Walking: An Opera in Two Acts
Music by Jake Heggie
Libretto by Terrence McNally

Opera Parallèle
Conductor: Nicole Paiement
Director: Brian Staufenbiel

Sister Helen: Jennifer Rivera
Sister Rose: Talise Trevigne
Sister Catherine: Crystal Kim
Sister Lilianne: Krista Wigle
Mrs. Charlton: Rachel Rush
Mother: Ellen Presley
Cop: Mark Hernandez
Father Grenville: John Duykers
George Benton: Philip Skinner
Guard 1: Igor Vieira
Guard 2: Anders Froehlich
Inmate 1: Mark Hernandez
Inmate 2: Andres Ramirez
Inmate 3: Lorne Barfield
Inmate 4: Roy Eikleberry
Inmate 5: Patrick Hage
Inmate 6: Chris Coyne
Joseph De Rocher: Michael Mayes
Older Brother: Jonathan Smucker
Younger Brother: Baxter Spark
Mrs. De Rocher: Catherine Cook
Owen Hart: Robert Orth
Kitty Hart: Kristin Clayton
Howard Boucher: Joseph Meyers
Jade Boucher: Michelle Rice

§ Open Rehearsal
First Baptist Church, 22 Waller Street, San Francisco
3 p.m. February 14, 2015

§ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
8 p.m. February 20, 21, 2015
2 p.m. February 22, 2015

§ Broad Stage, Santa Monica
7:30 p.m., March 7, 2015
2 p.m., March 8, 2015

Anya17

Last weekend I saw the last of 3 performances by Opera Parallèle of Anya17, a British opera written explicitly to raise awareness of human sex trafficking. The dismayingly bald libretto by Ben Kaye tells the story of a young woman, presumably from Eastern Europe, who is smuggled into a western country where she is brutalized & forced into prostitution. Adam Gorb's music, for a band of about a dozen musicians, ranges from ugly modernism to seductive jazz. The uniformly fine cast all give admirably sincere & committed performances, but I wish the opera itself had been rewarding.

Soprano Anna Noggle is a controlled & solid singer & actor in the title role. Mezzo Catherine Cook is persuasive as a strutting, self-justifying trafficker. I enjoyed hearing Laura Krumm's rich mezzo voice in a part she sings mostly from the floor. I liked baritone Victor Benedetti's warm sound & smooth singing, even though his character mostly beats up women onstage. Soprano Shawnette Sulker convincingly conveys youth & innocence, & tenor Andres Ramirez sings lightly & pleasingly in a very odd role as a kindhearted john, bringing flowers for his favorite prostitute.

The production's visual design works well. The stage is a dingy, cage-like environment, with vivid but discrete video projections enhancing the action. 2 dancers, in glittery make-up, act as stage hands. The orchestra was onstage & partly behind a fence. Nicole Paiement's conducting was tight. The performance ran an intermissionless 90 minutes, & the audience seemed as serious about the material as the performers.

§ Anya17 (2012)
Music by Adam Gorb and libretto by Ben Kaye

Opera Parallèle
Nicole Paiement, conductor
Brian Staufenbiel, director

Catherine Cook: Carole/Natalia
Anna Noggle: Anya
Andres Ramirez: Uri/Gabriel
Victor Benedetti: Viktor
Shawnette Sulker: Mila
Laura Krumm: Elena

Dancers
Jane Das, Quilet Rarang

Marines’ Memorial Theater
4 p.m. June 22, 2014

Opera Parallèle Double Bill

Photo: Steve DiBartolomeo

Saturday night I attended Opera Parallèle's double bill of Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel and Francis Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias. The 2 works were presented in a continuous 100 minute performance that combined them into a single plot line, set in a Mad Max-like dystopian future. I was kept very busy absorbing all the things director Brian Staufenbiel put onstage, starting with a pre-curtain slideshow of newspapers & magazines from the future. The main scenic element is a large boat on wheels that is pulled on & off stage by the principals, who portray a troupe of travelling players. The Mahagonny Songspiel depicts their plight, & Les mamelles is a play-within-in-a-play that they put on. The 2 pieces complemented each other so well that my ears did not have to change gears when the music moved from Weill to Poulenc and then back again.

Members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus figured prominently as a band of orphans & sang & acted with gusto. They crowd-surfed one of their number, & their chorus of babies was one of my favorite parts of the show. Four supers represented a paramilitary guard, and there were 2 rather sexy dancers. Members of Resound Ensemble were a chorus of desert nomads & had a fair amount of choreography themselves.

Photo: Steve DiBartolomeo

The principals all gave dynamic performances. Soprano Rachel Schutz was sparkling in her sex change scene in Les Mamelles, & her high notes were astonishingly free & bright. Gabriel Pressier was an unstoppable baritone as her husband, his voice ringing & athletic. Tenor Thomas Glenn was an excellent comic actor in various Les mamalles roles, & his singing from atop the boat's mast in the finale of Mahagonny was chilling & taut. Baritone Daniel Cilli's voice was full & authoritative in the prologue to Les mamelles, & he displayed fancy footwork as a dueling gambler.

Mezzo Rene Rapier has a wonderfully grounded voice & an out-going stage presence. The blend of her voice with Ms. Schutz's in Mahagonny was gorgeous. Baritone Hadleigh Adams was engaging to watch as a goofy French policeman in Les Mamelles, & his voice is pleasingly clean & unforced. Baritone Aleksy Bogdanov sounded fittingly dark & infernal as Jimmy in Mahagonny, & I liked his horned headgear.

Conductor Nicole Paiement led a 19-piece orchestra alertly, & its sound was crisp. The ensemble was thin on strings, but I was glad to hear the percussion, piano & harp in the Poulenc. I was completely engrossed throughout the show, which successfully mixed absurdity & gravity. Only one audience member attempted to applaud in the brief space between Mahagonny & Les mamelles, but there was much applause during Les mamelles.

§ Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel
and
Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Opera Parallèle
Nicole Paiement, Artistic Director / Conductor
Brian Staufenbiel, Stage Director / Concept Designer
KT Nelson, Choreographer

Rachel Schutz: Jessie/tirésias, La Cartomancienne
Gabriel Pressier: Bobby/le Mari
Thomas Glenn: Charlie/lacouf, Le Journaliste, Le Fils
Daniel Cilli: Billy/presto, Le Directeur
Hadleigh Adams: Le Gendarme
Aleksey Bogdanov: Jimmy/ Le Monsieur Barbu
Renee Rapier: Betty/ La Marchande De Journaux

Members of  Resound Ensemble
Members of San Francisco Girls Chorus

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
Apr 26, 2014 8:00pm

Opera Parallèle Rehearsal

Saturday afternoon Opera Parallèle held an open rehearsal for its up-coming double bill of Mahagonny Songspiel & Les mamelles de Tirésias. We heard substantial chunks of both works, with staging. The cast includes 7 principles, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, an adult chorus, 2 dancers & 4 supers. Opera Parallèle may be a small company, but there is nothing modest about its ambitions.

The show combines the 2 works into a single asurdist scenario. The performance starts with the Mahagonny Songspiel, set in an arid, dystopian future, where a troupe of travelling players is dragging a boat across a desert. The production features an actual boat, which can be wheeled all around the stage & becomes a stage-within-a-stage for the troupe's performance of Les mamelles. Conductor Nicole Paiement was very excited to demonstrate how the last notes of Mahagonny dovetail into the 1st notes of Les Mamelles without a break or transition.

This was a working rehearsal, & there were times when the performers were getting notes from 3 directors simultaneously. There will be a lot to watch. The young cast is charismatic & sounded great. Soprano Rachel Schutz has a spacious voice & gliding high notes & is a confident actress. It seems she will be wearing a very peculiar costume when she appears as Thérèse, before transforming into Tirésias. Baritone Hadleigh Adams is a persuasive actor, even when wielding a prop as silly as a hobbyhorse.

Following the performance portion of the rehearsal, there was a Q & A with the cast & artistic team, who all clearly enjoy working together. The rehearsal took place in the old Palace of Fine Arts location of the Exploratorium, which has been converted into a very cool campus for the Town School for Boys.

More rehearsal photos over at Barihunks.


§ Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel
and
Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Opera Parallèle
Nicole Paiement, Artistic Director / Conductor
Brian Staufenbiel, Stage Director / Concept Designer

Rachel Schutz: Jessie/tirésias, La Cartomancienne
Gabriel Pressier: Bobby/le Mari
Thomas Glenn: Charlie/lacouf, Le Journaliste, Le Fils
Daniel Cilli: Billy/presto, Le Directeur
Hadleigh Adams: Le Gendarme
Aleksey Bogdanov: Jimmy/ Le Monsieur Barbu
Renee Rapier: Betty/ La Marchande De Journaux

§ Open Rehearsal
Town School for Boys (formerly the Exploratorium)
4 p.m. to 6 p.m. April 19, 2014

§ Performance
Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts’ Lam Research Theater
8 p.m. April 25, 26, 2014 and 2 p.m. April 27, 2014

Opera Parallèle Preview

Wednesday evening Opera Parallèle previewed their up-coming double-bill of Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel & Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which will have 3 performances at YBCA, April 25 - 27. Conductor Nicole Paiement enthusiastically gave a slide talk about the 2 composers, arguing that they go well together because of their shared sense of aesthetics. Both drew from popular music, excelled at melody & experimented with the boundaries of tonality & dramatic structure. 7 singers were on hand to perform excerpts from both works, accompanied by industrious pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi. The young cast all sounded fresh & strong & dropped into their scenes with ease. Mezzo Renee Rapier was wonderfully sultry demonstrating the contrast between sprechgesang & singing in the Alabama Song, & soprano Rachel Schutz was such an engaging actress as Tirésias that I was ready to hear the rest of Les Mamelles right then. John Bischoff was standing in for just this performance, but his orotund bass voice was striking.

Director Brian Staufenbiel explained the production's "Überstory," which amalgamates the 2 works. First we'll hear Mahagonny, set in a dystopian future, where nomads search for water in a world where natural resources have been depleted. A theater troupe, dragging a boat on wheels across dry land, stops to perform Les Mamelles, followed by a "retrograde reprise" of Mahagonny. According to blogger SF Mike, who's a super in the show, we'll see a real decomissioned boat on stage. SF Mike's determined face can also be seen in the show's publicity photos.

The Poulenc will be presented in a re-orchestration for smaller orchestra, which has its US premiere at these performances. Members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus are participating as well. When Maestra Paiement momentarily lost her place during her talk, she let out a "Merde!", which she translated for us as "that means a flower." "I forgot!" During the Q&A, Mr. Staufenbiel hinted that Tirésias would get rid of her breasts in a surprising manner quite different from what is in the libretto. A wine reception with the musicians & Opera Parallèle administration followed the preview.

§ Kurt Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel
and
Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Opera Parallèle
Nicole Paiement, Artistic Director / Conductor
Brian Staufenbiel, Stage Director / Concept Designer

Rachel Schutz: Jessie/tirésias, La Cartomancienne
Gabriel Pressier: Bobby/le Mari
Thomas Glenn: Charlie/lacouf, Le Journaliste, Le Fils
Daniel Cilli: Billy/presto, Le Directeur
Hadleigh Adams: Le Gendarme
Aleksey Bogdanov: Jimmy/ Le Monsieur Barbu
Renee Rapier: Betty/ La Marchande De Journaux

§ Sneak Preview
Sol Joseph Recital Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music
6 p.m. April 9, 2014
Free and open to the public
Handouts:  Les Mamalles, Mahagonny

§ Open Rehearsal
Town School for Boys (formerly the Exploratorium) 2750 Jackson Street
4 p.m. to 6 p.m. April 19, 2014
Free and open to the public

§ Performance
Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts’ Lam Research Theater
8 p.m. April 25, 26, 2014 and 2 p.m. April 27, 2014