Founder Prepares to Bid Opera Lafayette ‘Adieu’
By • October 28, 2024 0 584
Speaking at The Georgetowner’s Oct. 24 Cultural Leadership Breakfast, Ryan Brown, artistic director of Opera Lafayette, commented on the coincidental link between the event’s venue, the President Woodrow Wilson House on S Street NW, and the medal he wore.
Brown had been awarded the Médaille d’Or du Rayonnement Culturel in 2012 by La Renaissance Française, an organization founded in France during Wilson’s presidency to strengthen and extend French culture in the wake of World War I.
In 1995, Brown — at the time a history-minded, Juilliard-trained violinist — launched Les Violons de Lafayette as a period-instrument ensemble playing French baroque repertoire in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s exquisite Salon Doré, transplanted from Paris by Montana Sen. William A. Clark.
Reincorporated six years later as Opera Lafayette, the group set its sights on rediscovering and presenting operas by (mostly) French 17th-, 18th- and early 19th-century composers. As Brown put it at the breakfast: “We specialize in works you’ve never heard.”
In his recounting, one of several “watershed moments” occurred in 1999 with the “site-specific” performance of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s one-act opera-ballet “Pygmalion” of 1748, not in the Salon Doré but on the Corcoran’s statuary-flanked grand staircase — ideal for a work about a sculpture of a woman that comes to life.
Later venues included the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where Opera Lafayette was part of the opening events in 2002, and the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center. Performances in Manhattan were added and Opera Lafayette remains the only opera company to present its full season both in Washington, D.C., and New York. With the “increased visibility” has come “increased costs,” said Brown, noting that it is a challenge for a D.C.-based organization to get backing from New York funders.
Though support has come from the Embassy of France, Opera Lafayette received the stamp of approval (literally) from French concertgoers in 2012 and 2014 at the Opéra Royal de Versailles, where, Brown noted, “14 firefighters have to be at every performance.” At first deathly silent, the audience began “clapping in rhythm, then stomping in rhythm” on the wood floor, he recalled. At one performance, someone in the back shouted “Vive le Roi!”
Before following the urge to “Go East, young man,” Brown was raised in Sonoma County, California, and on a Colorado ranch that has been in his mother’s family for generations. In October of 2020, Opera Lafayette performed and filmed a Westernized version of “Le maréchal ferrant (The Blacksmith),” a 1761 opéra comique by François-André Danican Philidor, at the Marcos ranch, with the socially distanced audience “sitting on hay bales.”
With the ranch (and related land and water issues dating, he explained, to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) taking up more of his time, Brown decided to step down at the end of Opera Lafayette’s current, 30th anniversary season. His successor, Patrick Quigley, now artistic director designate, will take over on July 1.
The theme of the 2024-25 season — which began with an Oct. 21 Terrace Theater performance by classical Indian dance company Kalanidhi Dance (performances, which were also to feature Ensemble Amedyez, at Dupont Underground and in New York were canceled due to visa issues) — is “Who owns culture?”
Quigley will conduct Opera Lafayette’s next production, a collaboration with New Orleans’ OperaCréole: several world-premiere concert performances of “Morgiane, ou, Le Sultan d’Ispahan” of 1887, the first known opera by a Black American, Edmond Dédé (1827-1903), who was born in New Orleans, studied at the Paris Conservatoire and conducted for more than 40 years in Bordeaux.
Performances of “Morgiane” will take place on Jan. 23 at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans (an excerpted presentation by OperaCréole with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra); Feb. 3 at D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre on U Street NW; Feb. 5 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York; and Feb. 7 at the Clarice Smith Center’s Dekelboum Concert Hall in College Park. “The world needs to hear it,” asserted Brown at the breakfast.
While several Opera Lafayette productions have highlighted contemporary concerns — Brown gave examples such as discussing sexual harassment in connection with Alessandro Stradella’s “La Susannah” and having queer performance artist Machine Dazzle design “modern rococo” costumes for Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Io” — there has been “increased recognition of social context,” he said. Post-pandemic, foundations are looking for “clearly socially relevant” projects.
Brown’s “swan song” (his words), a program of works he has championed as artistic director, will be presented on April 30 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York and on May 1 in the Terrace Theater.
Stating that Opera Lafayette occupies “an important place in the American cultural fabric,” Brown shared his relief that Quigley will “keep the organization relevant and alive for another generation.” Regarding the transition: “I’ve been so ready and Patrick is so gracious.”
Charles Greene, Chamber Dance’s Diane Coburn Bruning, Ana Harvey and Eric Rogers, both with Dupont Underground. Photo by Kate O’Brian.
Chris O’Flinn and Susan Lynner, board members of Opera Lafayette, flank Ryan Brown, founder and artistic director of Opera Lafayette. Photo by Kate O’Brian.
Vikram and Anuradha Nehru, founder and artistic director of Kalanidhi Dance. Photo by Kate O’Brian.
