San Francisco Opera, "Tosca," June 5, 2009

Tosca can be a physically brutal little opera, and SFO's latest production takes this notion to the hilt, stressing pure power in both its singing and acting. The energy of it all makes for an outstanding evening of theater.

With a magnificent series of tromp-l'oeil sets by Thierry Bosquet, inspired by a 1932 SFO production, and a straightforward approach to the music and action, the differences come largely in the small touches and decisions, notably those made by talented stage director Jose Maria Condemi. One must begin with Scarpia, played by Georgian baritone Lado Ataneli as a sort of creepy ringleader, choreographing events around him for his own maximum entertainment. At one point, he rushes to the front of the stage to reveal the torture being inflicted upon Tosca's beloved Cavaradossi, and the effect is almost like a magician announcing "presto chango" before a masterful illusion. Another particularly sleazy moment comes when he offers to take Tosca's wrap, then gives it a thorough sniffing before setting it down. He spends a large portion of the rest of his stage time pushing his lackeys to the ground - particularly the equally creepy Spoletta, Joel Sorenson, who does a lovely job of smacking the stage with maximum impact. Vocally, Ataneli doesn't quite have the lower-end gusto for the Te Deum, but his high baritone of serves him well for the rest of the performance.

Our Tosca, Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, brings a strong lyric voice to the role, and isn't afraid to go a little ragged for Floria's frightened screeches (particularly after Scarpia reveals the price she must pay for Cavaradossi's freedom). She also plays the opening lines of her "Vissi d'arte" a little breathy, accentuating her character's emotional torment, and finishes the aria with some beautifully wrought diminuendos. As an actress, Pieczonka makes an excellent showing of contemplating the carving knife that has made its way into her hand (almost channeling the approach Sarah Bernhardt used in Sardou's original play), then delivers a deliciously rough stabbing. And her final leap from the parapet is quite convincing (which is more than I can say for most of the Toscas I've seen).

Cavaradossi is played by Carlo Ventre, who sings the part with a rugged lyric spinto, and delivers his top notes with a lushly broad, bronze tone. He excelled in his "E lucevan le stelle," but perhaps was even better in the arioso that follow, "O dolci mani."

In the supporting roles, Dale Travis invests his sacristan with a delightful array of tics and nervous gestures. My favorite among the costumes (costume supervisor: Jai Altizer) is Scarpia's Act II coat, purple with intricate white embroidery. Marco Armiliato's orchestra was strong throughout, especially the horns and percussion, who took great pleasure in Scarpia's thunderous motif (is there better entrance music in opera?).

Puccini's use of motif in the opera is an endless well of discoveries, and this time around I found phrases from the first-act duet "Mia gelosa" ("My jealous one") floating around as Scarpia pursued his Iago-like endeavors to use Tosca's jealousy against her. It's also a constant pleasure to study the way Puccini uses different musical forms against each other: Scarpia's vows of conquest played against the congregation singing the Te Deum, the confrontation of Scarpia and Cavaradossi against the cantata sung by Tosca in the neighboring church, and the shepherd's song (performed by Zachary Weisberg) used as a prelude to the painter's morning execution, a scene whose quietude and comings-and-goings harken back to the tollgate act of "La Boheme." It's fashionable these days to downplay Puccini's talents (and seemingly to punish him for his popularity) but it's stupid to deny this level of musical mastery.

Through June 26 at War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, San Francisco. $15-$290, 415/864-3330, http://www.sfopera.com/.

Side notes: The opera was simulcast to AT&T Park, the stadium of the baseball Giants, and the principals took their bows wearing Giants paraphernalia (the sacristan, for instance, with a "#1" foam finger). They did, however, miss a prime opportunity: Scarpia should have appeared wearing the jersey of the hated rival Dodgers. Walking to the performance, it was impossible not to think of the movie "Milk," which told of the assassination of gay rights leader Harvey Milk, a crime which took place directly across the street from the Opera House at City Hall. The movie made brilliant use of scenes from "Tosca" to foreshadow Milk's murder. One of the singers in those excerpts was tenor Joe Meyers, a friend and choirmate from my college days, which made it, for me, even more personal.

Image: Adrianne Pieczonka (Tosca) and Lado Ataneli (Scarpia).
Photo by Cory Weaver.

Sacramento Opera, La Boheme, May 8, 2009

About the 30th time you see La Boheme, you begin to focus on the itty-bitty particulars. Thus, I am here to report that Sacramento Opera stage director Chuck Hudson opted for a bowl of pickled herring instead of the usual cartoonish prop-fish in the final scene, that the baguette was, indeed, employed in the mock duel (reinforced by a steel rod, no less), and that the sight gag used to demonstrate the failings of Musetta's new shoes was a naughty sit-down can-can.

A more important decision was the use of an upstairs loft over the tollgate in Act III, to host parts of the double-couple interplay - but this may not have been a decision at all, since the sets were borrowed from the University of Cincinnati. Brian Ruggaber's design is pretty nifty - the Paris skyline literally flies away to open up the fourth wall -but the higher elevation of the singers had the unfortunate effect of sending their voices directly into the flies. This added to the already-challenging acoustics of the Sacramento Community Theater and the sometimes overboisterous playing of Tim Rolek's orchestra.

Still, the production featured some strong young singers, equipped with quirks that were sometimes problematic, sometimes intriguing. This came through especially in the garrett scene, whose trio of hit arias did not strike gold the way they usually do. Adam Flowers was fighting his passagio in "Che gelida manina" (thought his top notes were fine), and NaGuanda Nobles sang a hurried "Mi chiamano Mimi" that refused to blossom in its usual fashion, not even at the rapturous turn when the spring sunrise comes to Mimi's windows.

With Flowers, this seemed to be simply a matter of warming up. He was back to form in the tollgate duet with Mimi, "Donde lieta usci," and downright captivating in his final-act duet with Marcello, "Ah, Mimi, tu piu non torni." As for Nobles, it turned out that "Mi chiamano" simply didn't take advantage of her outstanding feature, a sultry lower range that came to the fore in the tollgate scene and made the death scene even more devastating than usual.

I am forever amazed by Rochelle Bard's chameleonic ability to match her voice to a role. Though she's capable of broadening her tone to the depth of a lyric-dramatic when it's called for, she chose to rule that quality out completely and sing Musetta as a pure Rossinian lyric. This added an extra degree of coloratura to Musetta's famed Waltz, and allowed Bard to reveal, through deft phrasing and a gorgeous final messa di voce, the longing behind her character's seeming bragadoccio. She also does a pretty good can-can, and bosses around her Alcindoro (Burr Phillips) in an extremely amusing fashion.

As for Marcello, who continues to be my favorite of the bohemians, Nicolai Janitzky is not much more than perfect, his baritone resounding but never forced, his characterization a fine balance of Marcello's machismo and painterly sensitivity. He was the other reason that the final Marcello/Rodolfo duet achieved such a profound level of intensity. (And a brief plaudit for Tom Corbeil, who did a fine job with Colline's Coat Aria.)

Sacramento Opera's volunteer chorus was superbly energetic; Hudson led them to a degree of barely controlled chaos in the Cafe Momus scene, which is just about right (and did so without the usual scrambling children). The silver lining to the orchestra's occasional overplaying was that they were also spot-on, bringing out all the fine colors of Puccini's score. I also enjoyed the company's supertitle projection, which allowed for additional lines to be added to a single frame. This allowed the translations to more closely match the singing.

The sign of a masterwork is that, even on a 30th viewing, the listener is still making discoveries, and this time I made at least two. One arrived as Musetta was warming Mimi's medicine over a candle, saying, "Don't let the flame go out." I apologize to librettists Giacosa and Illica for not noticing this before. The other was the suspended note from the strings at the moment of Mimi's death. Puccini is the master of playing the audience's emotions, and yes, you bastard, for the 30th time you made me cry.

Through May 12. Sacramento's '09-'10 season includes "The Elixir of Love," "La Traviata" and an evening of opera music by Tchaikovsky. 916/737-1000, http://www.sacopera.org/.

Image: NaGuanda Nobles and Adam Flowers as Mimi and Rodolfo. Photo by Sacramento Opera/Eleakis Photography.

Opera San Jose's Carmen, April 18, 2009

Sometimes it takes all night to figure out a voice, and such was certainly the case with Opera San Jose's Alexander Boyer, whose powerful tenor had a way of dominating the opening night of the company's "Carmen." Boyer's reading of Don Jose's famed Flower Song fully displayed the lyric ring of his instrument, but there was something else lying at the edges of his timbre, yet to be uncovered.

That something began to reveal itself in the mountain scene, as Jose got into louder and louder squabbles with his Carmencita, and came to full fruition in the final scene at the bullfight: a primal, slashing edge to his tone that began to bounce off the walls the further he fell into his character's desperate, ruined mindset. Boyer delivered an emotional welling-up full of stalker creepiness, leading up to a well-choreographed stabbing and a nice post-mortem kiss just to put a little Stephen King icing on the cake. I don't know if I've ever sat through a Carmen finale filled with so much tension, or a more fortuitous match of a singer's talents with a role's requirements.

The production marked the stage-directing debut of former OSJ singer Sandra Bengochea (nee Rubalcava), and though her ensemble work is a little rough around the edges, you have to enjoy her leanings toward chaos and an action-packed stage. This came through in much of the side-work: the hijinks of the boisterous smuggler duo Dancairo and Remendado (Stephen Boisvert and Bill Welch) and the intriguing decision to take the first-act catfight (usually recounted after-the-fact) and bring it onstage.

As our heroine, Cybele Gouverneur, born of Venezuelan parents, begins with the advantage of just plain looking like Carmen. The mezzo does well with upper ranges and elevated emotions - as in the final two scenes - but opts for a covered tone that can sometimes mute the lower reaches, as in the opening Habanera. (When the range dips truly low, however - as in the ominous Tarot song, "En vain pour eviter les responses ameres" - the results are downright spooky.) Gouverneur also needs more work with the "rhythmic gymnastics" portion of the program, the percussion and dancing tasks of Lillias Pastia's tavern.

As Micaela, Rebecca Davis delivers the same lovely lyric soprano we've heard in previous productions, but with a few odd problems with breathing and phrasing, particularly in the showpiece aria, "Je dis que rien ne m'epouvante." She's much stronger soon after, in Micaela's brief report of the impending death of Jose's mother. Bulgarian baritone Krassen Karagiozov plays Escamillo with a James Bond smoothness that's almost too smooth. The part could use a little more vigor. I have always been a sucker for the sopranos who are cast as Carmen's sidekick Frasquita, and Jillian Boye certainly continues that tradition, playing the part as a kind of gypsy goth girl.

The OSJ chorus was a little off its game, taking an unfocused approach to Bizet's difficult parts, and carrying on a few quibbles with conductor David Rohrbaugh over entrances and tempos. This also happened with the rapid smuggler's quintet, "Nous avons en tete une affair." The orchestra, on the other hand, was spot-on all night, particularly with the gorgeous entre'acte and the festive bullfight anthems that follow. Set designer Giulio Cesare Perrone uses brick archways and slate steps to produce a warm public square, but his mountain set seems a little artificial. I'm also rather fond of the new stage cigarettes, which allow performers to simulate smoke by blowing powder out the ends. And, as always, the decision to use Bizet's original spoken dialogues will always receive a thumbs-up from these parts.

Opera San Jose, Bizet's "Carmen, through May 3, California Theatre, San Jose, $69-$91, 408/437-4450, http://www.operasj.org/.

Image: Cybele Gouverneur as Carmen. Photo by Chris Ayers.

Gabriella's Voice: The Serial Novel

Chapter Four, Part II

Trauma at the Space Needle

After watching Tosca take her stunningly awkward dive from the parapets of the Castel Sant’Angelo, Gabriella and I evacuated, stopping by the opera house dispensary to obtain a couple of aspirins for her self-fulfilling headache. We passed by the International Fountain, walked through the monorail terminal just in time to see the night’s last departure, then crossed the big lawn in the direction of the Space Needle, shining like a big round boat against the milky blue clouds of night.

“Let’s go there,” I said.

“No-oh!” sang Gabriella, on a descending fifth (coincidentally, Puccini’s favorite interval). “That is too cheesy, much too cheesy. And it’s a rip-off, too. Trust me on this one. Seven bucks for a glorified elevator ride, and once you’re at the top all you’ve got is a jungle of tacky souvenirs and the same boring fucking Seattle skyline you can see from any of the perfectly free hilltops all over town. Spare me!”

“Wow,” I said. “This is a sensitive topic, isn’t it?”

“Yes! Every friend of mine in the world who lives farther away than Olympia insists on dragging me up this screwy thing!”

“One problem, dearest Rosina,” I said. “I’ve never been up that screwy thing myself, and it’s funny but I have this rampant inability to pass up going to places I’ve never been. Come on – my treat.”

Gabriella let out a sound like a congested lion and led me grudgingly across the green. The elevator attendant warned us that they were getting ready to close down for the night, but I reassured him that my companion couldn’t handle more than a few minutes anyway. After a half-minute of excessive gravity, we exited to find shiny cheap mounds of retail kitsch and a window-wide band of lights. Gabriella shucked off her contempt and settled into the old role of tour guide, taking my hand and pulling me to the south window, where the skyscrapers of Seattle posed for us like fly-eyed giants who slept standing up.

“Okay, the tall, thin puppy at the far end there – sorta square on one side, rounded on the other? – that’s the Columbia Seafirst Center, 943 feet, built in 1985, dark black by daylight, almost a shadow, then swing just a little bit to the right, with the pyramid on top, that’s the Mutual Tower, 730 feet tall and my favorite, jade green tints and art deco stars, some groovy retro geometrics, cause you know me, I’m a traditionalist. Built in 1988. Then that ugly concrete circus tent off in the distance, that’s the Kingdome, of course. Next! Well, just around the corner from that you’ve got that little white thing with the nice spire, that’s the Smith Tower. Not much now, but back when it was built in 1914 it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Now, what really cracks me up, back over to the, um, east here, are those godawful circular.… I don’t know, they kinda look like the apartment building Mary Tyler Moore lived in – those are the Westin Hotel towers. You can’t see the first one, it’s hidden behind the other, but they built it in 1969, when all architects were obligated to design ugly buildings, but when they built the second tower, the one we can see, in 1982, well, they decided it had to look exactly like the original, because why have one homely building when you can have two? And then, if you swing further east, across I-5, you can see that big, gentle rise of Capitol Hill, and right between that and the freeway there’s Pike Street and the Trademark Cafe and First Hill, of course, where you’re... no longer living.”

How this drawn-out spiel turned so quickly, I don’t know. But there it was – Gabriella’s brown eyes melting me down not with anger, necessarily, but rather with a look of confused impatience, one finger still pointed out the window toward Broadway.

I felt more ashamed of this than I should have – the woman didn’t own me, after all. Right? I turned to finger a row of dangling Mt. Rainier keychains, trying to come up with a good answer. “How did you know?” I asked.

Gabriella slapped me playfully on the shoulder, trying to shake some of the overseriousness out of my face. “You, pal, are a known quantity. Certain islanders have observed you sharing long conversations with a certain celebrated soprano, and have set the bloodhounds loose. And of course they all figured out the deal about your big ass check, too, which only adds to the intrigue. All of which means that I get daily reports on your whereabouts and behavior, whether I want them or not. So what are you doing staying at the Island Country Inn?”

“It’s a nice island,” I said.

Gabriella skipped over my lame response and continued her cross-examination, turning her head away from me and toward her skyscraper sisters. “I don’t get it. If you were some kind of stalker – and believe me, I’ve had ‘em – well, you were already in an ideal position right there on First Hill, just down the street from the Trademark, where I spend the majority of my waking hours, and where you could come in any ol’ time and run into me. So why would you pick up and move to Bainbridge?”

“It’s a nice... island,” I muttered.

“God, Billy! Open up, wouldja? Won’t you give me just one damned factoid about yourself? If you really want to be opera-pals, you gotta give me one or two little strings to hold on to here.”

“I’m in love with your voice,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s nice, I know, and I appreciate it, but what’s that got to do with.…”

The buzz came up from my shoetops and rifled into my arms. I grabbed fistfuls of Gabriella’s velvet wrap and pulled her toward me. Her eyes popped out in surprise.

“Listen! I’m - in - love... with your voice. Bainbridge Island is the place in which your voice resides. When you perform in that theater, your singing leaves a residue in the air, and the rest of the week… I walk the streets of Winslow, breathing it in, letting it settle on my skin.”

The buzz seeped back out of me and I loosened my grip on the wrap, smoothing out the creases with small, apologetic movements. Gabriella backed away to a safe distance, clearly unnerved. I hung my head, ready to take whatever she would give.

“I was right about you. You are a creep. I should have known, I should have.… Damn it!” Her speech was beginning to slur, her eyes shining with water. “I was starting to like you, you know? It’s not easy for me to find friends, Billy. I’m weird. I’m constructed of different... parts than other people, and you might think that’s just great… but it’s not easy! It’s….”

She never finished the sentence, but instead turned and walked quickly to the elevator. If the idea was to get away from me, it wasn’t going to work. The elevator was still on its way back up. I caught up with her just as the door slid open. We seemed to have no choice but to get in, together.

“Ah, the last couple of the day. You should feel honored….”

The attendant was punchy from the day’s work and didn’t seem to notice that his well-meaning chatter was being ignored. I stood on one side, Gabriella on the other, silent, both of us staring down at the burgundy carpeting. The quick descent, the steady escape of gravity pulled at my chest and stomach and the old music came rushing back in, grandma and mom and dad and Bobby, and Stephanie, poor Stephanie, and by the time we reached the ground the walls of the elevator were moving in on me. The doors showed a thin slip of light and I panicked, pushing past the attendant and through, rushing out into the gift shop where I immediately lost my directionals, running one way then the other down the rows of clothing and road maps as the cashier stared on in horror. She must have thought I had committed some sort of crime, and was attempting to flee. Finally I spotted the front door and spun in place, knocking down a rack of Puget Sound T-shirts before sprinting for the door and bursting into the night air.

I thought the outdoors would be enough for me, but they weren’t. I sucked in air but couldn’t breathe. I stumbled forward, dizzy, hyperventilating, halfway across the big lawn and fell to my knees, knocked down by the wind off Lake Union, by the lights of the Needle like a frozen helicopter at my back. I raked at the grass with both fists, throwing the blades over my shoulders, into my hair. The buzz gripped me with its seaweed hands and threw me into sobs, great gasping waves, and I buried my face into the lawn, the warm damp earth filling my nostrils with the smell of tobacco and grilled fish and burning wood.

The rest of it came to me through several feet of sand; I was buried somewhere, trying to dig my way out, and I heard the sound of my name, a hand on my shoulder, fingers around my forehead lifting me up. The feel of skin against half my face. What came next was song. As I lifted my ear to the base of Gabriella’s neck, a warm liquid filling my head, and the world came back to me.

Next: Recovery at Bainbridge

Buy the book at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Gabriellas-Voice/Michael-j-Vaughn/e/9781929429950/?itm=1

Image by MJV.

Gabriella's Voice: The Serial Novel

Chapter Four, Part I

Potato Voice


It was nearing seven o’clock on a Thursday, and I was flat-footing the pavement down Fifth Avenue, seeking out the sci-fi Polaris of the Space Needle to guide me. For the last few blocks, I’d been back-watching for a cab, but by now I felt like I must be pretty close, so I continued pacing and sweating. This was not the way I wanted to make my debut at the Seattle Opera.

The needle-ray August heat had given way to waxy balls of September humidity, the skies a long white shadow borne down with barometric pressure. I held my shirt away from my torso and flapped it like a fly-line, trying to keep cool but unable to slow down this power-walking that was causing the problem in the first place. I would rather be anything, anywhere, than late to an opera.

It could be that this was my punishment for deceiving my muse, my Euterpe, my Santa Cecilia. Refusing to admit that I was now residing on Bainbridge Island, I had told her that I would be doing some book-hunting downtown, and would prefer to just meet her at the Opera House, rather than having to plod back uphill to the Sheraton. I thought that I had left myself plenty of operating room, but the ferry I was supposed to take out of Winslow had a breakdown, and I had to wait for the next one, the Wenatchee, which arrived forty-five minutes later.

My next mistaken assumption was that once I found the Space Needle, and thus the Seattle Center, finding the Opera House would be easy. The lady at the Opera had told me that it was on Mercer Street, so I figured I would just keep walking north till I ran into it, but I didn’t figure on a couple of things. For one, the Center itself is about the size of a small city; for two, that city contained more opera-size buildings than two square blocks of mid-town Manhattan. I made my way like a cockroach under the kitchen light, scattering one way to the Pacific Science Center, the other way to the Key Arena. Even after I conquered my XY chromosomes and asked for directions, I passed the Bagley Wright Theater, the Intiman Playhouse and the Exhibition Hall before I finally blundered into the Opera House.

And, of course, I was too late, anyway. The lady at the entrance handed me my tickets, informed me that the overture had just ended two minutes ago, and signaled me downstairs to the buffet room, where my fellow delinquents were watching the first act on a trio of television monitors.

When I rounded the corner, I noticed two things: the picture on the monitors was coming to us courtesy of a fixed camera at the very back of the hall (a Ken Doll-size Cavaradossi, applying swipes of paint to a postage-stamp portrait of Maria Maddalena); and every single one of my fellow patrons, no doubt blessed by the ocean-breeze transport of air-conditioned automobiles, appeared to be five times as well-dressed as myself. I even spotted a couple of guys in tuxedos. Catching a glimpse of my blue jeans and wrinkled khaki shirt in the mirrored wall, I thought, great, even here among the lepers, I’ve got bubonic plague.

Then I spotted Gabriella dolled up in a flouncy black pantsuit with sharp white piping and a crushed-velvet wrap, and felt even worse. Then she smiled at me, embracing the length of the room with her teeth, and I immediately felt better.

She waved me into a seat at her table and whispered, “What happened to you? You look like you took the underside of an escalator.”

“Unexpected distances,” I answered, and prayed the response was sufficiently vague.

“Well here,” she said. “Sit down, sip some of this water, watch Carol Vaness waltz around the stage in that floral red dress (God I’m jealous!), and I’ll get you a cappuccino. The big advantage of being late is the ol’ downstairs espresso bar.”

“Thank you,” I said. I wrapped my palms around the glass of ice water and applied the cold moisture to my forehead.

After watching the nondescript figures of Tosca and Cavaradossi wend their way into their confluent fixes, Gabriella and I wandered up the wide, golden stairway and down to our seats.

“It’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen,” said Gabriella, noting the way my head was pivoting from wall to wall. “The local singers call it The Barn. I think that’s why they do so much Wagner here; it’s the only stuff that’s loud and obnoxious enough to fill the space.”

The bells rang, the crowd reassembled around us and the curtain rose to reveal an impressive but ridiculously ornate rendition of Baron Scarpia’s apartment, featuring Greco-Roman touches like twenty-foot Ionic columns and a humungous frieze of a glowering Zeus. The audience reacted immediately with that amusing, only-in-opera phenomenon, an ovation for the set. I’m surprised the designer didn’t come out and take a few bows – and perhaps the audience could throw blueprints at his feet. Gabriella was apparently having identical thoughts; she turned to me and half-whispered the word “money,” then repeated it a few times: “Money money money.” Then added a self-amused “moooooooooo-lah!”

“What are you trying to say?” I asked.

All through the second act, as poor Cavaradossi got the blood squeezed out of his forehead, then, as the Baron and Tosca did their little boss-and-secretary decathlon around the furniture, Gabriella would wait for high soprano notes and dig her fingers into my forearm, then lean over and whisper the words “po-ta-to voice.” Not wishing to disturb those around us any more than we already were, I took the phrase as some kind of derogatory reference to Irish singers, and chose to withhold response. After about ten of these instances, however, Gabriella having worked her way to simply mouthing the words and hiding her face in her hands, I will admit I was getting a little curious.

After Scarpia was safely dispatched with a kitchen knife to the heart, two Catholic candles burning vigilantly over his corpse, I turned to my red-headed companion and asked, “Okay. What the hell is a ‘potato voice’?”

“Follow me,” she replied. “And I will tell you.” She performed a neat spin and led us into the aisle, waiting until we were again side by side, descending the golden staircase into the lobby, before she explained.

“Potato voice, my friend, is when ill-trained singers attempt to produce big, dark shouting-in-the-cave sounds by dropping their jaws to the turf and making an exaggerated vertical shape with their mouths.”

I was beginning to catch on. “So... their mouths are making shapes... like a big long Russet potato.”

“You are shoh clevah,” she lisped. “Yes. And somewhere along the line, some highly paid voice teacher told our Tosca that if she wanted to make it to the big time, she was just gonna have to show some molars. You’ll be big and loud and impressive, you will frighten children and small dogs, and you will get lead roles at the Seattle Opera, where Microsoft executives will throw roses and laptop computers at your feet.”

“So in a sense, at least,” I said, “the potato voice works.”

Gabriella came to a parade halt at the precise center of the lobby, patrons cutting cowpaths all around us, and put a hand to my shirt pocket. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s ugly, ugly, ugly, and it cuts years off your singing career, because no one has a throat that can handle that kind of punishment. Except Domingo, perhaps, and he’s a freak of nature.”

I hitched my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans and made a conscious decision about my friendship with Gabriella Compton: we were comfortable enough now that I could pester her with some willful irritation. “Let me try this out on you, Rosina. Yeeeeeew... want nothing more in this life than to put on big, filthy-expensive costumery and sing on stages like the one past those stairs – am I right?”

“Si.”

“Soooooooh, given your Kryptonic natural talent, couldn’t you adopt the potato voice, just for a while, to appease the lions of fashion, and then, as you get more and more successful and pri-ma-don-na-esque, slip your way right back to bel canto?”

Gabriella took on her customary squint (more and more, with those almond-shaped eyes, this gesture was reminding me of a young Lauren Bacall – which, if you think about it, is not at all a bad thing to remind someone of), then opened her eyes back up with ideas and gave my shoulder a triple tap, like a conductor on a music stand. “Come with me.”

She escorted me to the northeast corner of the lobby and past an easel and placard marked Press Room. As we entered, she put a hand over her mouth and said, “If anyone asks, you’re Harvey Glassenderfer from the Santa Barbara Gazette.”

It was a spacious room with that typically ecumenical decor of Northwestern interiors, though the ornate wallpaper and broad-striped armchairs were trying really hard to speak French (parlez-vous armoire?). A Bosendorfer grand was squatting all over the southeast corner like a big black musical rhino, while along the opposite wall stood various underdressed media types (professorly tweed, diagonally striped ties from college graduation, loose cotton pants, never ironed), grazing from a modest buffet table.

Gabriella split the crowd like a power fullback, leading me straight through to the object of her intentions, a twenty-foot-long wall covered from stem to stern in signed black-and-white photographs. She pointed them out like a school teacher explicating phonetics.

“Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. Tito Gobbi. Richard Tucker. Oh, and here’s Licia Albanese – ain’t she a babe? Then some older ones over here – Lily Pons! Mary Garden, Enrico Caruso, Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Ezio Pinza. Um, Luisa Tetrazzini – that’s the chick the Italians named their white sauce after – and Beverly Sills. Joan Sutherland, Claudia Muzo, Anna Moffo. Oh, and, of course,” she turned to a picture of Renata Tebaldi, dressed alpine-style for “Guglielmo Tell,” made a respectful curtsy, and laughed. “Sorry. I always feel the need to genuflect. But are you getting the picture? The pictures?”

Not having fully comprehended that this was part of her answer – in fact, most of her answer – I gave Gabriella no more than a dumb stare.

She let out a frustrated yip that almost turned into one of her renegade notes, then rolled her eyes artfully heavenward. “Must I transcribe everything for you, Billyboy? You see, I am a good soprano, right? I am aware of the fact that I do have some substantial raw material tucked away in this throat o’ mine. So, I’ve got a choice here, two roads diverging in a yellow wood. I can take that talent, pump it up with that cartoon jawdrop orangutan steroid therapy, and make of myself a dandy little mediocre barking diva. Pay all my bills on time, play places like Seattle, scare ninety percent of the audience into thinking that I am one of the damned finest, loudest, most alarming singers they’ve heard... why... in the last month or so, and hey! that’s jes’ fine.

“Or... I can stay true to my art, I can focus on exactly what it is that I and only I want out of the music, I can spend hours at the Trademark Cafe making bucks so that opera will not be my sole source of income, and I can work my ass off on the bel canto treadmill of infinitely subtler and subtler vocal gradations.…” She raised a finger and dropped it down on the marcato beats of her conclusion. “And - get - my - pick - shure - on - that - fuck - ing - wall!” then hitched a thumb to the sea of portraits behind her.

Gabriella froze for a moment, like any great performer waiting to read the reaction of her audience, then smiled with great affected charm and said, “Question answered?”

“Oh my, yes,” I said. “And we’d best get back to our seats, because I hear the bells a-ringing.”

Gabriella took my hand and led me from the press room. “Okay. I wish I didn’t have to listen to that potato voice, though. She’s giving me a headache.”


Next: Trauma at the Space Needle

Buy the book at:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Gabriellas-Voice/Michael-j-Vaughn/e/9781929429950/?itm=1

Image: Joseph Wright and Deborah Berioli in Opera San Jose’s 2004 production of “Tosca.” Photo by Pat Kirk.

Gabriella's Voice: The Serial Novel

Chapter Three, Part II

Gabriella’s Diva Café

After the Sunday matinee of “Il Barbiere,” I came out to Bjune Drive and was greeted by a hailstorm, nickel-size nuggets pelting the ground to the timpani roll of thunder. It made a lovely post-dinner cocktail to Rossini’s ringing final-act choruses, and so I stood there a while, under the covered entranceway of the theater, bewitched.

The others in the audience, likely islanders and Seattle-area natives, were not so enamored, and charged into the downpour like warriors, umbrellas and determined scowls firmly in place. I stood to the side, behind a square-faced column, and tried to look inconsequential.

“So was I good, or not?”

The voice came in from behind me, spirited and husky. I mistook it for a snatch of some passing conversation, and failed to respond. Then came three taps on my shoulder, and I turned to find Gabriella, shrouded by her long Italian hair.

“What? Was I that bad?”

“Not at all,” I answered, trying not to smile. “If anything, you’re getting better. Your breathing has evened out.”

“Not as much fear,” she laughed. “Those cadenzas were scaring the shit out of me.”

“I did notice something slightly different in the first act, though. It seemed like you were placing your top notes higher in the mouth, higher in the.… What do you call it?”

“The mask.”

“Yes. The mask. What was that?”

She dropped the corners of her mouth. “Was it bad?”

“No. Not at all. Just a little lighter, that’s all. And I only noticed it early on, not later.”

Gabriella placed her hands on either side of the square-faced column and let the side of her umber hair fall along its length. “I’m a bit sore today. I had to take it easy till my voice warmed up.”

“Hmm. Like a pitcher working through the early innings without his best stuff.”

“OK…?”

“Sorry. I’m a bit overfond of baseball metaphors. But it’s no surprise, you being sore. This Saturday night Sunday matinee thing has to go.”

“Yes, Maestro says the same thing. It’s pure economics, of course; they get a better deal on the theater for two days straight. Hey, after I get out of these goofy clothes, you want to go somewhere and talk about my voice?”

I gave Gabriella a studied squint. “I don’t know. Are you going to turn into a creep?”

She placed an offended hand against her hip. “I beg your pardon.”

“Who played shortstop for the Orioles last year?”

“Placido Domingo.”

“Not even close.”

Gabriella shook back her shoulders and raised her already-upturned nose. “I don’t have to be right. I’m a soprano. So – The Pegasus?”

“No. I’ve got a better idea.”

I took Gabriella to the Madrona and introduced her to the wonders of martinis and steamed mussels. After a few tentative nibbles, she was going through them like popcorn, and drinking up the sauce with her spoon.

“Damn, Billy! These are gorgeous!”

“Eating mussels is like ingesting the sea directly.”

“She paused for a sip of her martini and made a face. “And how about this?”

“Drinking martinis is like ingesting gasoline directly.”

“Amen!”

“It’s an acquired taste. Give it ten years or so.”

“Yeah. I’ll get back to you on that.” She cleansed her palate with ice water and watched the Winslow Ferry, slipping southeast under quickly clearing skies. The captain gave us two pulls on the horn, low baritone range, a quarter note followed by a whole. Gabriella downed another mussel and pointed her tiny seashell fork in my direction.

“Do you know what I like about you, Billy?”

“Tell me everything.”

“You are the only person besides Maestro who knows what it is I’m doing up there. Do you know how hard it is to be working so hard to do something, and have nobody really understand what it is you’re doing?”

“No. But I can imagine it.”

“And do you know, that when I’m singing just right, I can’t really hear my own voice. It rings right up out of my head and floats away.”

“A separate entity.”

“Exactly. I call it my heaven voice, because you know when you die, your voice rises up out of your body and goes to heaven.”

“Did you get that from Maestro?”

“No. That one’s mine. And it’s true, you know. But... oh, what was I talking about? Oh! Yes – that’s why I need people like you, Billy, people who can hear these things. Because I can’t hear them myself. I am totally disconnected from my own voice.”

“That’s a shame, because you’re missing out on a wonderful experience.”

She tried her martini again and winced a little less this time. “So why is it that you can hear these things, Billy? You have no formal training – am I right?”

I took a chunk out of my garlic bread and chewed it down before I answered. “I come from a long line of sopranos.”

“As good as me?”

“No. But good.”

“Did they ever take it anywhere?”

I heard those little alarms going off again, and answered her with a blank gaze.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve re-entered the confidential information zone. Jesus, Billy, you’re like a one-man mine field. So tell me this, at least. Why didn’t you say hi to me after last night’s performance?”

There she had me. “How did you...?”

“When you know a part as well as I know Rosina, you start letting your eyes drift. Fourth row, orchestra right. Am I correct?”

“Well... yes.”

“And you haven’t dropped by the cafe once this week.”

“I was trying... not to be a creep.”

“Ah, Billy!” She slapped me on the hand. “Look, son, Gabriella Compton’s Diva Cafe is sort of like an exclusive private club. It may be hard at first to gain admittance, but once you’re in, you’re in. Relax, wouldja?”

“Okay,” I said. “I will.”

The waitress came by and we ordered cappuccinos, plus a raspberry cheesecake and two forks. Then we wandered into another lengthy agenda of operatic subjects: the lush recitative orchestrations of Richard Strauss, the appropriate age for major singers to retire from the stage, the role of academia and monied foundations in propping up amusical, overintellectualized modern operas; and, finally, a handful of opera jokes aimed at the different voices.

“Three,” I said. “One to screw it in, two to say, ‘I could’ve done it better.’”

Gabriella covered her mouth and popped her eyes at me. “God!” she tittered. “Bill! That is so true!” Then she took a look at her watch. “Uh-oh.”

“Ferry time?”

“Ferry time. Are you coming with?”

I might have been a freshly initiated member of Gabriella’s Diva Cafe, but I wasn’t ready to look like a stalker, so I had my lie tucked away in my shirt pocket, available for ready use. “Actually, I’m heading the other direction. Meeting a friend in Bremerton.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’d better go. Kiss my hand?”

I couldn’t refuse an offer like that. “Molto bene, signorina.” I touched her hand to my lips in the gentleman’s manner, then wished her “Buona notte” and watched her drift off along the waterfront. After finishing a cup of decaf and following Gabriella’s ferry across the harbor, I paid my bill and began the five uphill blocks to the Island Country Inn, Bainbridge’s only hotel.


Next: Potato Voice

Buy the book at: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Gabriellas-Voice/Michael-j-Vaughn/e/9781929429950/?itm=1

Image by MJV.

Opera San Jose, Cosi fan tutte, 2/07/09

In regional opera, sopranos are supposed to be a dime a dozen - and quality baritones and golden-voiced tenors the rare birds. What a phenomenal decade it's been for Opera San Jose, as Irene Dalis's resident troupe has put on casts of remarkable male singers.

OSJ's opening-night production of "Cosi fan tutte," then, might mark a return to normalcy. Michael Dailey as tenor Ferrando and Daniel Cilli as baritone Guglielmo are certainly fine singers and good comedians, but their voices have yet to hit that mid-residency blossom point where the sound begins to jump off the stage.

In the case of the sister sopranos, however - abbondanza! Betany Coffland endows Dorabella with a powerful mezzo that cuts right through the orchestra, particularly in her first-act aria of grief, "Smanie implacabili." Rebecca Davis displays a vivid lyric soprano as Fiordiligi, with superb and easy top-notes. She's not quite up to the off-the-cliff low notes of the monstrous second-act aria, "Per pieta, ben mio," but then, few but Mozart's original template, Adriana Ferrarese, are. The many duets between the sisters are harmonically ecstatic experiences. The two are also spot-on in character - the frisky, gullible Dorabella, the stern, morally solid Fiordiligi - and up to the excellent physical humor coached by stage director Brad Dalton.

The two comedian parts are in capable hands, as well. Khori Dastoor, who has spent most of her residency playing ingenues, falls easily into the soubrette role of Despina, and (who knows?) might have found herself a new career path. (You could do worse than having all the onstage fun.) And baritone Joseph Rawley, a Merola alumnus, displays the most robust voice in the cast, as well as the perfect blend of cynicism and fun, as Don Alfonso.

The extremely conflicted da Ponte plot - in which two lovers go into disguise to woo their best friend's betrothed - gets better and better with age. Or could it be that opera critics get more cynical with age?

Opera San Jose, Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," through Feb. 22, California Theatre, 345 S. First St., $69-$91, 408/437-4450, http://www.operasj.org

Photo by Pat Kirk.