Opera March Madness

Giovanni U: The Dons' up-tempo offense features excellent ball-handling and pass- making skills, but suffers quite a few blocks - and in the clutch they go straight to hell.

Tosca A+M: The Rebels' offense is pure artistry, especially in the paint. Their defense absolutely slays big men, but their flops are sadly ineffective. At game's end, they have a tendency for tragic drops.

Carmen Tech: The Matadors feature a tight-knit squad of one-and-done gypsies who have a real knack for setting traps and tying their opponents up in knots. They're often called for traveling and flagrant fouls (particularly against opposing guards), and a trip to the Final just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Aida State: The Raging Egyptians have celebrated quite a few victories, but an overdependence on an ancient triangle offense leads to one too many fatal isolation plays.

Marcello's Lament

Marcello's Lament

(For Robert Pesich)

"To the ancient Egyptians, these stars (of Orion's Belt) were the resting place of the soul of Osiris, god of the underworld and a symbol of creativity and the continuity of life…"

            --National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky

Starving tenor finds the stone on a

black sand beach covered in driftwood

(If I said the wood was white as bones

I would be giving it away)

He kneels on the sand

where the ocean comes through the rocks and

reaches into the ribs of a burnt-out cello

plowing a pyramid of blackened chars

until he fingers the edges of its mineral heart and

pulls it into the sun

(If I said it was as red as Betelgeuse

I would be lying)

The stone is a jealous stone

it takes away his lovers

takes away his sleep

leaves his pockets thin and sallow

She is

Musetta, the woman you cannot have

but if you hold her to your ear

she will sing you bright waltzes

and turn her lollipop eyes at you across the café

But the song and the glance are not enough

so Marcello takes the stone and grinds it up

spreads it across his Sunday salad

(If I said the dressing was Roquefort

I would be saying too much)

The fragments trunkle their way through his veins and

gather at the aorta, pressing

northward to make his heart skip

on nights when Artemis neglects her duty and

mountainside lanterns

burst like meteors through the Paris streets

Years after Mimi's last breath

he comes back to the sea to

bare his skin to the inkwell sky and

wait for Orion's Belt to burn him down

leaving a coal as red as Betelgeuse

for the timpani waves to steam away

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: A dear friend, an opera singer, says this is the ultimate description of the artistic life. She's biased, of course, this being taken from La Boheme, but it has proven to be deadly accurate in the years since I wrote it. An early editor couldn't get over the literal visual of "toss her lollipop eyes at you across the cafe," so it became "turned." And it's ironic that I would choose Marcello over Rodolfo, since he and I are both poet tenors, but I always considered Rodolfo a poser. Marcello is pure artist, and this is likely the best poem I will ever write.

How to Sing

How to Sing

Speak.

Catch the vowel, plastic wonder.

Extend. Spin to the realm of

vibration, incarnation of breath,

trick of tone

Pop the consonant, Shakespearean

neutral, crack another egg,

open to the lips, toothcarve,

tongueshift, ceramic wind,

sonic floret, bouquet, filigree

Puzzle the syllables into streams,

meander, slice the clock into

boxes, lay them inside.

Push the edges. Swing.

Sustain. Work the quiet.

Erupt. Goof around.

Reasons we do it:

erectus matesigh,

a shout carried long,

a sob lifted.

It seems to make us

human, takes the prison of

self and flares it

across the landscape.

It’s possible to connect the

song to a thing we miscall

the heart, but you need to

close your eyes and

briefly give up your life.

Have a drink. Have two.

Fill your lungs with sky.

Draw the spectrum across your

larynx; you are a stringed

instrument, gorged with overtone,

rimmed with bellstrike, a

cellular call to the

oscillating world.

One day, when the green flash

gives way to a blue moon,

you may find that the

song is singing you.

You may then call yourself

a singer.

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: A rare case (for me), of trying to answer a big question - or at least taking something huge in human existence down to its bare essentials.

Opera San Jose's Carmen

Lisa Chavez as Carmen in the tavern scene. All photos by Pat Kirk.

Opera San Jose

Bizet’s Carmen

February 13, 2016

If Layna Chianakas intended to prove the difference that a stage director can make, she could not have done better. With a single split-second action, she changed the entire discourse of the story, probably ticked off a few purists, and certainly messed with the idea of Carmen as a feminist icon. (I won’t reveal this split-second action here, but if you’d like to know, I’ll describe it at the end of this review.) I, for one, enjoyed the move, but then it neatly agrees with my take on the character: that Carmen was so possessed by medieval superstitions and megalomania that she was determined to fulfill the destiny spelled out in her Tarot cards.

A memorable OSJ Carmen herself, Chianakas went a little “method” in researching gypsy culture, and her discoveries about that culture’s communal tightness and lack of personal boundaries shows itself here. Most memorable is the opening of the tavern scene, a mass of figures flowing around the stage with the dramatic geometries of a baroque painting, then bursting into flamenco handclaps and footstomps. The frenzy builds during Carmen’s tambourined “Les tringles des sistres tintaient.”

Eventually, of course, all the direction in the world fails without talent, but San Jose’s lineup is loaded. Lisa Chavez was born to play Carmen, equipped with the classic Carmen look, vocal power and attitude. She does a masterful job of tempering that power, keeping her powder dry for the truly dramatic moments. In the Habanera and other classic passages, she retains a self-assured cool that gives her the bearing of a leader.

Lisa Chavez as Carmen, Kirk Dougherty as Don Jose.

Kirk Dougherty sings Don Jose with a spinto tenor and an effective, edgy ring in the top notes. He uses his thin physique to convey a Jose who is unable to stand up to the larger-than-life Carmen. The final phrases of his Flower Song are heart-breakingly tender and fragile. Later, he plays the final stalking scene with a particularly creepy sense of insecurity, the lashing out of a powerless man.

With her big, bright eyes, it’s easy for Jennifer Forni to portray Micaela’s innocence, but she does well to hint at the ferocity of her attachment to Jose. She and Dougherty blend beautifully on the Act 1 theme associated with Jose’s mother, which reappears in Act 3 (followed by a rather lengthy kiss), and she sings the renowned “Je dis que rien nem epouvante” with lovingly crafted crescendos.

Baritone Matthew Hanscom wrestles with the low opening of the Toreador Song, but otherwise delivers a confident, charismatic Escamillo, helped in the tavern scene by the ensemble’s energetic greeting. His voice truly comes alive in the faceoff with Jose in Act 3.

Jennifer Forni as Micaela.

The second tier of singers features some solid voices from OSJ’s past, including baritone Daniel Cilli in the brief-but-pivotal role of Morales, and the seasoned bass of Kirk Eichelberger as the ill-fated Zuniga. The opera comique smugglers Dancaire and Remendado (baritone Eugene Brancoveanu and tenor Michael Boley) lead the Gypsy Quintet through the smuggling plan with precision vocals and phsyical schtick in the Rossinian “Nous avons en tete une affaire.” Carmen’s gal-pal Mercedes is yet another former OSJ Carmen, mezzo Cybele Gouverneur. As for gal-pal #2, I have never heard a Frasquita I didn’t like, and soprano Christine Capsuto certainly fits that bill, playing her as a proto-rocker chick with edgy humor. Her victory dance when the cards predict a rich, near-death husband is hilarious.

Giulio Cesare Perrone’s sets are inventive and utile, providing high archways for the plaza scenes and a brooding, stark mountain set for the gypsy hideaway. Carmen’s Act 2 outfit, a blood red skirt with a black spangled corset, is just hot (Alyssa Oania, costume coordinator). Fight director Kit Wilder maintains a good balance between compelling scuffles and keeping his singers off the disabled list. Conductor Joseph Marcheso led the orchestra in a sumptuous reading of Bizet’s score, particularly in the delicate interplay of flute and harp (and later, exquisite swells of strings) in the Act 3 entre’acte.

Christine Capsuto and Alexandra Jerinic as Frasquita and Mercedes.

The mystery figure of the teenage toreador adds nicely to the intrigue. The two dancers (Gabriel Mata and April Shippen), added a vigrous, athletic element to the proceedings. And the children’s chorus was just superb. In a completely selfish mode, I’d like to thank PR man Bryan Ferraro for the new press kit, basically a standard program with blank pages for critic’s notes. Brilliant!

Through February 28, the California Theater, 345 South First Street, San Jose. $51-$151, www.operasj.org, 408/437-4450.

SPOILER: Carmen, impatient with Jose’s inability to make good on his threats, grabs his hand and forces him to stab her.

Michael J. Vaughn is a long-time opera critic and the author of 17 novels, including Operaville and Gabriella’s Voice.

Bowie

On the night of his death, there was some serious moonlight, but perhaps it was a space oddity, a bit of ziggy stardust. I was but a young American when he came to fame, a rebel rebel from Suffragette City who sang songs of modern love and always delivered under pressure. In his golden years he was a true starman, going through so many changes, giving us so many heroes. So what do we do, now that we have lost the man who sold the world? Get out the China, girl. Let's dance.

Daughters of Cecilia

Daughters of Cecilia

Antonina Milyukova

No, no, I’ll not on this earth give my love to another. Whatever part fate may decree, I am yours!

            --Tatiana, Eugene Onegin

Terrified, man-mad Tchaikovsky. You send him a crush note as he composes Onegin. He instructs you to quell your feelings.

He writes Tatiana’s world-lifting Letter Scene, followed by Onegin’s cruel dismissal, and feels guilty. So he marries you.

The honeymoon inspires Tchaikovsky to throw himself into the Moscow River. The desired pneumonia fails to arrive.

He pays you off, at 6,000 rubles a year. You bear three children by another man. Still, you refuse a divorce.

Sixteen years later, Tchaikovsky flirts with a duke’s nephew. A court of colleagues orders him to kill himself. He does so.

You outlive him by twenty-four years, condemned by a court of your own to hold on to the ancient tether, as it pulls you from one asylum to the next.

I picture your face at the barred window, tracking the silversnail path of the moon. Listening to the Pathetique, over and over.

Doria Manfredi

Continue to work at your picture till nightfall, and you must promise that no pious lady, no fair or dusky beauty, shall be admitted here on any pretext!

            --Tosca

Summers in Torre del Lago, you wait to do your ironing  in the cool of night. This is also when the Maestro works, his cowboy opera ringing through the villa.

At break time, you find him in the garden, puffing on a cigar, and share a brief talk. The Maestro is elegant, soft-spoken. It could be that you look on him as a father (how you long for a father).

Elvira Puccini hears the voices beneath her window. Doria stays late to be near my husband. She meets him in the garden for lovemaking. She fires you, spends the autumn denouncing you as a slut. What’s worse, everyone believes her.

The Maestro sends a note, lamenting his wife’s behavior, but seems incapable of stopping her. She finds you at Christmas day mass and threatens to kill you.

Haunted and sick, you purchase a bottle of mercuric chloride, a corrosive disinfectant, and swallow three tablets. The stomach cramps begin immediately, followed by five days of riveting pain.

In your note, you ask for revenge on Elvira, and clemency for Puccini, who has done nothing.

The gossips conclude that Doria has died of a botched abortion. The authorities order an autopsy, to be conducted in the presence of witnesses. The autopsy reveals that Doria was a virgin.

Renata Tebaldi

I’ll go alone and far as the echo from the churchbell. There, amid the white snow; there, amid the clouds of gold – there where the earth appears as but a recollection.

            --La Wally

I drive the length of Oregon. The radio slaps me with a four-word sentence. I stop at the Shakespeare festival, trekking the Christmas-lit streets for a latte, rubbing a jigsaw piece between my fingers.

This grieving makes no sense. I don’t know you. Everything you’ve given me is locked away on vinyl and aluminum. My loss is precisely nothing.

But once, you took hold of my tangled hearing, and untied the knots.

Jenny sits at the kitchen table, her eyes growing wide. You’ve never heard Tebaldi? She reaches for the stereo: an impossibly broad soprano voice, constructed of butter, an aircraft carrier tracing cadenzas like a speedboat.

She tells me you’re alive, residing in Italy. This does not seem possible.

I have made no secret of my fixation. My friends will send me condolences, as if I have lost a favorite aunt. I will read reports of you at San Marino, breathing your last, one eye on the hills.

On the night of four words, I scale the Siskiyous, strangely energized, the roadsides patching with snow. My head fills with Catalani, Renata loosing her dovish triplets as she climbs the white mountains, untethered.

From Michael J. Vaughn: Collected Poems

Notes: I discovered these stories of Puccini and Tchaikovsky almost simultaneously - the first in a biography, the second while researching a story on The Nutcracker. This was followed by the passing of Tebaldi, and my trilogy was complete. The stories are so astounding I found that the best way to their poetic hearts was by stripping everything else away, and using the prose poem style. Thanks to Terrain.org for printing these. Oh, and Cecilia is the patron saint of music.

Mimi at Nepenthe

Mimi at Nepenthe
(For Kirsten)

They drive to Big Sur and
pull into a lot hovered by
witchcraft oaks

Says Rodolfo:
It's named for an elixir,
one that takes away all sorrows

Says Mimi:
In that case,
let's drink all that we can!

Scrubby hillsides sprayed with
copper sunset, a single
cloud in the shape of a boomerang

The Pacific far below,
a shade of forever nightsky that wraps the
continental rift like a fitted sheet

A fresh fire over
Mimi's left shoulder

Rodolfo takes a rhapsodic breath,
brings the fork to his mouth and
chews on a glazed duck that could
bring La Scala to tears

Even in Puccini,
such moments should not be possible