Performance

Gary Tischler • March 26, 2015

I went to see the Washington National Opera company’s production of “The Flying Dutchman” at the Opera House recently.   The joint was jumping.  A fashion exhibition lined the entrance, glittering with blue, part of the Kennedy Center’s Iberian Festival of Spanish and Portuguese art, as was a live performance at the Millennium Stage.

Part of me was thrilled by the crowds, not only for the opera, but also the exhibitions and performance for the  center’s yearly arts festival focusing on a nation or region, which were part of former Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser’s tenure. 

A part of me was also a little anxious. I had just finished reading “Curtains? The Future of the Arts in America,”  Kaiser’s latest book, a cautionary tome and vision of a troubled, struggling  American arts world now and 20 years hence. 

Kaiser, now the director of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland since last year, posits the problems now facing the American arts community, envisions that world 20 years from now and offers some solutions, one of which is for arts leaders to acknowledge and embrace the new technology, which is, for all intents and purpose, both the new delivery system for art and a road to new, more intimate venues.

“I don’t mean to make anybody depressed,” Kaiser said in a telephone interview with the Georgetowner.   “I’m not  suggesting that there will be no more art. I  am suggesting that the arts—performance art institutions and venues, as well as museums—will be very different, as will audiences.  You and I, and people of a certain age and generation, we’re used to consuming art in a certain way. You plan, for instance, to go to an opera at a certain time, on a certain night. You get dressed for the occasion,  same as you do for a play, a dance performance, a symphony orchestra concert or a jazz concert.”  

“But the newer generations don’t necessarily do things that way,” he continued. “They don’t prefer to do things that way. I travel all over the country, and I spend a lot of time in airports and I see how many people in airports are on their phones or tablets, often watching a show, a movie, listening to music.”

Kaiser has seen that many arts organizations are already heading toward using the new technology to build and grow audiences.  “It’s expensive, too expensive, to go to the opera, to concerts, and the theater,” he said. “More and more opera performances, for instance, are now being screened in movie theaters .”

Critics and arts writers—myself among them—often tout the fact that a  play, a concert and an opera, are authentic experiences of engagement with an audience, impossible to replicate on a screen.  Kaiser probably agrees with that, but he also suggests that new audiences don’t really care how they view or engage performance art or the visual arts, for that matter.   While art enthusiasts can debate authenticity all they want, the truth of the matter is that exhibitions, plays, operas, dance, music and the like can be experienced in different ways, more fragmented, and less expensively.

“Companies, producers and managers, in the past, faced with economic constraints and trouble, have tended to think they have two choices—raise prices or cut back on spending and resources, and produce tried-and-true popular projects that are popular with audiences,” Kaiser said.

In terms of content, Kaiser, who has warned about the high cost of tickets before, also insists that producers and managers need to raises their sights and be more adventurous.  “You don’t get new audiences with old works and hope that it works,” he said. “Performance arts companies need to do new work to be viable and vital. They need to take risks, engage with the world, challenge the audience. That’s what will bring in new audiences.”

But it won’t be easy. The odds, he suggests, are daunting, for several reasons. 

“The generations now coming into their own, into theater-going age and capability, are woefully under educated in the arts,” Kaiser said. “The emphasis on arts and culture in our public and private school system has declined dramatically. They come to the cultural marketplace absent a body of knowledge and desire.”

The decline of media outlets—and especially newspapers of old, which usually featured knowledgeable, professional and opinionated arts critics—is also a critical factor in the worrisome decline and problem of the arts in America, according to Kaiser. 

Also a factor is the erosion of a long-term donor class. “That generation of donors whom you could count on is dying out and donors have to be found from a new generation,” he said. “This generation, it’s been said, is more interested in politics or causes.  And if they get involved, they won’t do it at the level the arts are used to having from donors.”

Kaiser is concerned, not so much about large institutions like the Kennedy Center or the Metropolitan Opera, (although major opera companies and orchestras face the additional problem of labor costs and have been plagued by strikes), but about mid-level groups and institutions which are struggling to adapt and compete.   “I think you’ll find that large institutions will engage with, adapt to and use the new technology,” he said. “It’s already happening, with screenings and streaming of live performances. But smaller groups might not be able to compete.”

Kaiser’s thin book is pragmatic, structured and thick with facts, ideas and anecdotes, including telling and knowing observations about technology—and oddly, sports, where he finds similarities.

“Think about what happens, how sports have grown into this kind of eco-system that embraces delivery, technology and changing attitudes in the fans,” he said.   “This may happen to the arts to—what if we have an audience that doesn’t want to hear an entire symphony or opera, but just the highlights,” he said. “This is what happens in football and sports now.”

Much of what Kaiser talks about in his book—and I couldn’t recommend it more to anyone interested in the arts,  in plays, in music, in live performances—seems already on the horizons.  You see and hear more and more operas in English, there’s Opera in the Outfield, a screening of a WNO Opera at Nationals Park,  an emphasis on new and shorter work, the cross-pollenization of genres, the uses of add-ons in theater. Many theaters now add interactive aspects to plays—post-play discussions, quizzes, trivia games in the lobby and so on.

These days, Kaiser travels extensively. He still lives in Washington and is proud of his tenure at the Kennedy Center.  “I certainly miss the people I worked with there,” he said.  He writes a blog for the Huffington Post on topics  that range across the whole spectrum of the arts.

From the bird’s eye view of Washington, where the arts seem, with some notable exceptions, for the most part to be flourishing, Kaiser’s book is a warning about a rapidly and dramatically changing arts world .

There may come a time when “Dutchman” and Iberian nights — or the time in 2007 when Kaiser and Michael Kahn, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company,  pulled together people and places of the D.C. arts community into a six-month “Shakespeare in Washington’ Festival — will be a fond memory.

Kaiser, who steered the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, the Royal Opera House and the American Ballet Theatre as well as the Kennedy Center, is more optimistic  and pragmatic than nostalgic by nature.  “I’m not predicting the end of the arts, “ he said.
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Gary Tischler • March 19, 2015

Washington Concert Opera  is known for putting on rare productions of sometimes legendary or little known operas.  “Guntram,” Richard Strauss’s first opera from 1894, certainly fits the bill, and it will be performed at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Sunday, March 1.

Last produced for the first time in the United States 32 years ago, “Guntram” is a kind of two-for-the-price-of-one opera  in the sense that it presages both the great and later operas of Strauss, such as “Der Rosenkavalier,” and mightily echoes strong Wagnerian themes and operas.

“Guntram” premiered in May 1894 at the Grossherzogliches Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany, and later in Munich and Frankfurt—and then in Prague, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. It was not considered a failure after its debut, which may account for the lack of later performances and interest.

In 1940, Strauss revised and trimmed the opera, making it  a more readily accessed work for audiences. But the plot—and the music—remains Wagnerian in scope and approach. Wagner was an idol of the young Strauss,  and Strauss took on the task of writing the libretto which is Wagner to the core. 

“Guntram” concerns a sweet, brave minstrel knight—middle Europe and the lands of Germania were full of such swains in medieval times—named Guntram, who sets out, as knights were wont to do, to promote kindness, peace and brotherhood. Instead, he manages to kill the husband of the woman he loves.  German to the core, Guntram renounces pleasures of the flesh and departs to contemplate and to suffer deep, guilty feelingst—perhaps not real life but operatic and surely Wagnerian.

Plot in opera isn’t everything and the Washington Concert Opera’s artistic director and conductor Antony Walker (who is also conducting “Dialogue of the Carmelites” at the Washington National Opera) saw a work that “heralds a new period in his [Strauss’s] compositional maturity.”

The Washington Concert Opera is presenting the 1940 version which trimmed 45 minutes of music and, according to Walker,  “turns what was a slightly unwieldy work into a tightly dramatic and beautiful opera. As well as using Wagnerian inspired leitmotifs and philosophical ideas, Strauss clearly presents us with the beginnings of a very personal operatic style: through his daring use of harmony, the virtuoso demands of the orchestra and the very “modern” idea that concludes the opera. Walker is in his 13th season at the Washington Concert Opera.

Because of the demands of the music, the Washington Concert Opera orchestra has been increased to 65 musicians.

The cast is led by artists who know their way around both Strauss and Wagner.  Critically acclaimed for heroic Wagner roles, tenor Robert Dean Smith takes on the title role, with soprano Marjorie Owens singing Freihild.  Smith, who lives in Switzerland,  starred at the 1997 Bayreuth Festival in “Der Meistersinger.”

This performance will be only the second American production: the first was a production by the Opera Orchestra of New York in 1983.

Gary Tischler • March 11, 2015

Deborah Rutter spent the last six months or so getting used to her role as president of the Kennedy Center, and in a whirlwind of activity – talks to donors, meetings with the board, appearances at the Press Club (and at one of the Georgetown Media Group’s leadership breakfasts at the George Town Club) – she shared her ideas and her vibrant personality, giving Washington’s cultural and media crowd a chance to get to know this new player on the Potomac.

She made her first appearance as host of the Kennedy Center’s season announcement in the Family Theater last week, and truth be told, it was kind of fun and not a little startling. The program and the planned offerings turned out to be a fair indication of just how she and the center were willing to embrace the future and all it might bring –and, for that matter, all that the center might bring to the future.

New initiatives, new works and new faces were all on the plate. “We will be presenting works and projects that will cut across genres, that will be cooperative and new,” said Rutter. Think Jason Moran, the center’s gifted artistic director of jazz. Think new composer-in-residence Mason Bates. Think former ABT dancer-choreographer and Aspen Institute Cultural Director Damian Woetzel and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient mandolinist Chris Thile. All of these talented folks will headline special series in 2015-16.

You might also want to whisper out loud the word “skateboard,” something not usually associated with the nation’s performing arts center. Skateboarding will be the focus of the season-opening festival in September, “Finding a Line: Skateboarding, Music, and Media.” Collaborative and genre-bending, this explorative and immersive festival will celebrate skateboarding’s connection to art, movement, music and improvisation. The Kennedy Center is partnering with the George Mason University School of Art and the D.C. nonprofit Cuba Skate to bring together students, artists, musicians, skaters, and community members. Moran and his group, the Bandwagon, will headline the last two days of the Sept 5-12 festival, which will also include a specially-built skateable structure designed by artist and skateboarder Ben Ashworth.

Although the skateboarding festival is something new – “Why not take risks?” Rutter asked – it’s on a path that the center’s been following for a while. Not all that long ago, few people would have expected to hear former Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser utter the words “hip hop festival” when making a season announcement.

Moran is emerging as one of the center’s stars. An adventuresome and daring planner, he’s also a spectacular jazz pianist. The coming season will feature “Jason +,” a series that comprises the skateboarding festival; “Jason + Jeremy,” a “duel” between Moran and a fellow keyboard master, classical pianist Jeremy Denk (in collaboration with Washington Performing Arts); and “Jason + Ronald K. Brown,” a collaboration with the founder of the dance company Evidence; and “Jason + Mason,” an evening of electric jazz with the participation of DJ Masonic.

Bates is the newest electric wire – literally and otherwise – at the center, in the guise of a composer in residence. The youthful Bates will head KC Jukebox, presenting cutting-edge instrumentalists, vocalists and DJs in familiar and unfamiliar Kennedy Center performance spaces. He’ll be heading three new events, beginning Nov. 9 with “Lounge Regime: 100 Years of Ambient Music,” a trip through electronic music, 1970s minimalism and the “furniture” music of 1930s Paris.

Celebrity mandolinist Chris Thile will head “American Strings: A Tradition of Innovation with Chris Thile,” a festival of performances, workshops, jam sessions and panel discussions in 2016. Woetzel will present “DEMO,” a new series of cross-center performances with dance as its focus.

There’s big news at the Washington National Opera, where Artistic Director Francesca Zambello proudly announced the presentation of Richard Wagner’s complete “Ring of the Nibelung.” Three cycles of the four operas – “The Rhine Gold,” “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods” – will be presented in April 2016. Long talked-about and envisioned, and often stymied, this should be one of the most anticipated cultural events in D.C., and the nation, in recent years.

But then again, there’s “Appomatox,” by the always-ahead-of-his-time composer Philip Glass, with a libretto by Oscar-winning writer Christopher Hampton (“Selma”), in November. “It’s an amazing work,” Zambello said. “It bridges the Civil War and the Civil Rights era. It’s just astonishing and moving.” The second act, which centers on the era of Dr. Martin Luther King, is newly composed. “Carmen” starts off the season, which also includes Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” in February.

Nothing quite so startling is ahead in the theater season, though it starts off with a production of the Greek tragedy “Antigone” with luminous French actress Juliette Binoche. The rest is an all-musical season on the main stage, beginning with “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” in October and ending with “Phantom” in July of 2016.

The National Symphony Orchestra will offer two new programs: “Declassified: Fridays@ 9,” a mix of classic and modern works with pre- and post-performance programming, and “Coffee Concerts” at 11:30 a.m. on Fridays.

The Center’s contemporary dance program will focus on a celebration of choreographer Twyla Tharp’s five-decade career of dancemaking.

With the Kennedy Center in the midst of an almost month-long celebration of Iberian arts, it was announced that Ireland would be the subject of next year’s international festival.

Gary Tischler •

For the last few years now, when people talk about American soprano Leah Crocetto, who’s currently making her Washington National Opera debut in the role of Madame Ledoine in a emotionally wrenching production of “Dialogues of the Carmelites,” they tend to swoon a little. They talk about her big, expansive soprano voice, the prizes she’s won, and the rise to stardom she’s had, especially at the San Francisco Opera, where she’s built a passionate following of fans.

It’s not difficult to join a dialogue of Crocettoites. You might also add to that a conversation with her reveals her natural warmth, a certain effusiveness and love of the life she’s leading, and a lot of emotion about the experience of preparing for “Carmelites,” a contemporary (it was written in the 1950s) opera about the dramatic, chilling fate of an order of Parisian nuns during the French Revolution.

“From the very first days of rehearsals,” Crocetto said in a phone interview, “it was always about being a part of a group. It’s not just about collaboration—this opera moved all of us, and that feeling of closeness grew. It’s a very emotional piece, you can’t help get caught up in it. I can’t remember a rehearsal where we weren’t crying.”

She’s repeatedly described as a rising star but by her track record and performance, she’s definitely gone beyond that. She has risen. She was a winner at the 2010 Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions Concert at the Met, represented the U.S. at the 2011 Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competitions, and she’s frequently appeared at San Francisco Opera, where she has shown her star quality in numerous productions. Her roles are diverse, but also amount to highlight of great roles for sopranos—Desdemona in “Otello,” with the English National Opera, Mimi in “La Boheme” with the SFO, Liu in “Turandot” (at SFO and at the Met), Verdi’s Requiem, “Travatore,” and the Female Chorus in “The Rape of Lucrezia,” among many, many roles.

Here’s something you note, though as you watch and listen to Crocetto weave her way through the role of Madame Ledoine, which was once sung by Leontyne Price. The opera begins like a gust of wind and includes an almost terrifying death scene by the prioress. The revolution rages outside the walls of the convent as Ledoine arrives to take over.

You notice in all her singing, and her strong acting, that Crocetto’s Ledoine is a kind of glue in the making. She is visibly and vocally strong; you listen to her because of the voice, but also the persona. The two merge seamlessly as she sets about pulling her flock together against the surrounding threats and chaos. For a diva type, it’s a subtle thing. You can see her charges pulling together under the ministrations of her rich voice, guiding and leading, as they slowly come together as a group and rise, moving toward martyrdom. You can feel the emptiness in the house when she marches to her fate, and also the deep, resonance of her presence, bearing and voice.

“I think it’s a character that’s often misunderstood,” she said. “She is uneasy about the martyrdom but when the decided to embrace it, she leads them and protects them.”

Crocetto is part of a large Italian family from Michigan, which accounts for a lot of things. She was drawn to singing and opera at an early age. She likes to sing cabaret style too and loves jazzy torch songs a la Ella and Sara Vaughn. She has a “mild-mannered” Maltese named Ernie—after Ernest Hemingway, one of her favorite writers.

“Carmelites” will be performed at the Opera House March 5, 8 and 20. It opened February 21 in the middle of a major snow storm but many people braved the elements anyway. And Crocetto will always remember the occasion. “What we do as performers, directors and actors can be so profound.”

She wrote on her Facebook page the morning after the opening night. “ There is a reason we do what we do and more so now, than ever before. I believe opera is a calling. We are telling as story so much bigger than all of us”

Gary Tischler •

In the world of opera, there’s an ongoing debate about “new” and “contemporary” works—what are they, who’s doing them, what should they look like, be and sound like. The debate goes on all over the world and across the country, among composers, opera companies and directors.

You can find out a little bit about what direction contemporary opera is going or coming from if you take in “The Whole Truth,” a comic chamber opera by much buzzed-about composer Robert Paterson, commissioned by Urban Arias. It is getting its premiere at the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Intersection Festival — 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 21; 9:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 27; 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 28.

Paterson is a young composer,  bringing with him much critical acclaim for his operas, compositions and songs, often pushing the envelope and at the same time defining  the contours of modern, or contemporary opera.

“The Whole Truth” is described as a comic chamber opera in seven scenes, which doesn’t quite tell, well, the whole truth.  It features a libretto by Mark Campbell and is based on a short story by noted novelist Stephen McCauley.  It was commissioned by Urban Arias and its executive director Robert Wood. Urban Arias, which operates out of Northern Virginia,  has staged works at Artisphere and is considered a cutting-edge opera company, groundbreaking and presenting “exciting, compelling operas by living creative teams.”

“The Whole Truth” is short, under a half an hour,  but doesn’t lack for ambition, nor does its composer.  “I know there’s this debate going on, about the direction of opera and music,” Paterson said.  “I think that opera, especially contemporary opera, should reflect the times we live in.  The canon is all very well and good, and we should have it, but there needs to be new works for new audiences. 

“The trouble is that a lot of the new operas, long or short, tend to be in a very heavy serious vain, or people think the music, in order to be new, needs to be somehow atonal and difficult, or dissonant,” Paterson said.  “I think we need works that are about something and someone, people that today’s audiences will recognize.”

“And, so, when you say comic opera, well, that just isn’t done,” he said.  “It’s rare in opera to begin with except for some of the classics by Mozart. I think you can make statements with comic opera, with a lighter touch.”

“The Whole Truth”  has only  three singers, and is about  a young married woman named Megan, a role shared by a soprano and a mezzo-soprano, who has an affair with a fellow dentist and a dalliance with a young carpenter, all of which leads her to confront  the lies she’s told to others and to herself.  The characters are simple: the man, the woman, with the man also playing two psychiatrists, the lover, the husband and the carpenter.

The libretto is by Mark Campbell, who has written two comic operas with composers Bill Bolcom and John Musto.

“It almost works like a sitcom,” Paterson said. “It has those kinds of people and situation, but you can address everything that’s going on different kinds of music—sometimes jazzy, fragmented, bouncy, sexy.”

“It’s not necessarily laugh out loud funny, but it is humorous,” he said. “People do want to laugh. And in this work, the libretto is especially important. It has to be understood and mean something, not just move the narrative, but reveal what the music is suggesting.  The libretto hasn’t always been given its due in opera. It’s always about the music and the singers. And English is sometimes difficult to shape into singing operatic music.

Look up Paterson on YouTube, and you find his works in profusion, including  his chamber opera “The Companion,” which gives you a good sense of his musical and opera ideas.

His works have been praised for being “vibrantly scored and well-crafted” for their elegance, wit, structural integrity and wonderful sense of color. The Classical Recording Foundation named him “The Composer of the Year” at Carnegie Hall.

The Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Intersection Festival runs through March 7 and features more than 100 performances and events in all sorts of genres, including  sound, music, comedy, movement land dance, story telling, family material and café concerts. Among the performers are the Vision Contemporary Dance Ensemble,  Saudade puppets, Split This Rock, the Tehreema Mitha lDance Company, the Taffety Punk Theatre Company, Rajab, Rachel Ann Cross, Speakeasy D.C., Jane Franklin Dance and Happenstance Theatre, among others. Go the Atlas Performing Arts Center web site for more information.
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Gary Tischler •

“Iberian Suite” at the Kennedy Center, March 3 – 24

The profound and far-reaching impact of Iberian culture – that is, the culture of Spain and Portugal – will be getting a thorough, almost month-long examination and celebration at the Kennedy Center in “Iberian Suite: Global Arts Remix,” continuing the center’s practice of focusing on specific world cultures.

“There has been a tremendous amount of cross-pollinating during the course of history, sparked by Portuguese and Spanish exploration and colonization in the 15th century which had rippled effects in North and South America, in Africa and Asia and all over the world,” said Alicia Adams, festival curator and the Kennedy Center’s vice president of international programming and dance.

One of the major components is a huge exhibition (150 items) called “Picasso, Ceramics and the Mediterranean,” organized with the support of Picasso Administration, chaired by Claude Picasso. There will be numerous performances, including Post-Classical Ensemble’s multimedia program “Iberian Mystics: A Confluence of Faiths” and concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra with Portuguese fado singers Carminho and Camané, Spanish singer Concha Buika with Cuban pianist Iván “Melon” Lewis and his Continuum Quartet, the Arakaendar Choir and Orchestra from Bolivia and a host of others.

“The Originalist” at Arena Stage, March 6 – April 26

It’s hard to believe, but it looks like controversial conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is about to enter the pantheon of theatrical and pop culture. At Arena Stage, he’s the focus of “The Originalist,” a new play by John Strand, who won the Charles MacArthur Award for best new play several years ago for “Lovers and Executioners.” In “The Originalist,” in Arena’s Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle, a smart, liberal Harvard Law grad is in a highly sought-after Supreme Court clerkship with Scalia. The result is a complicated, sometimes humorous portrait of an edgy court and human relationship. You’re likely to be in good hands what with Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith at the helm and Ed Gero – who’s shined in roles from Ebenezer Scrooge to Mark Rothko – starring as Scalia.

“Uncle Vanya” at Round House Theatre, April 8 – May 3

Washington theater appears to have been dominated by Chekhov, American style, lately, with director-playwright Aaron Posner bringing his versions of “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya” to the stage with “Stupid F—–g Bird” at Woolly Mammoth and “Life Sucks” at Theater J, respectively. Plus, there’s the Christopher Durang play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a mashup of several Chekhov characters, which will be directed by Posner at Arena Stage April 3 – May 3.

But if have a taste and a desire for the real thing, you probably can’t do better than the Round House Theatre production of “Uncle Vanya,” although here too you’re getting an adaptation by Annie Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who brings a contemporary feel to the language. But what a cast, directed by John Vreeke: Gabriel Fernandez-Coffey, the astonishing Kimberly Gilbert, Mitchell Hébert, Mark Jaster, Nancy Robinette, Ryan Rilette, Eric Shimelonis, Jerry Whiddon and the incomparable Joy Zinoman, founder and former artistic director of Studio Theatre.

“Laugh” at Studio Theatre, begins March 11

Back in the 1980s, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley was known for funny, heartbreaking plays about families in the modern South such as “Crimes of the Heart” and “The Miss Firecracker Contest.” Set in the Hollywood silent-film era, “Laugh” may be a different matter altogether, a play – billed as a slapstick comedy – full of surprises, adventures and maybe a little romance. It has live music by composer Wayne Barker and is directed by David Schweizer. The cast includes Helen Cespedes as the orphaned heroine Mabel and Creed Garnick as Roscoe.

In Series’ “Don Giovanni” at GALA Hispanic Theatre, March 14-23

One of Washington’s hidden treasures, the In Series – with a history of venturing into not-always-compatibles genres, going in a season from cabaret resurrections to opera evenings – is promising to bring something new to something old. The company’s staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” an opera dealing with crime, murder, seduction, love and death, comes complete with a new adaptation in English. The production has a 1920s religious-revival setting, a la “Elmer Gantry,” which, come to think about it, was all about hurly-burly and seduction. Tom Mallan directs, Stanley Thurston conducts a chamber ensemble and Andrew Thomas Pardini plays the Don.

Washington Ballet’s “Swan Lake” with Misty Copeland, April 8-12

That the Washington Ballet is staging Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” shouldn’t come as a surprise – although it’s actually the first time the company has mounted the ballet – but there are additional reasons to see this classic tale of a princess, an evil sorceress and swans both white and black. For one thing, Misty Copeland, American Ballet Theatre’s star ballerina, will be dancing the starring roles of Odette-Odile, paired with Brooklyn Mack. One of America’s most celebrated ballerinas, Copeland is only the second African American ballerina to be promoted to soloist at ABT. The production also marks the launch of a creative collaboration between the Washington Ballet and the S&R Foundation’s Evermay Chamber Orchestra, which will perform the famous score.

Gary Tischler •

For opera lovers, salivating at the thought of the Ring Cycle being produced by the Washington National Opera next spring—and for those less familiar with the Richard Wagner experience—the WNO’s current production of “The Flying Dutchman” aka “Der Fliegende Hollander”) at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House offers a more focused, stirring taste of Wagnerian delights and challenges.

“The Flying Dutchman” was Wagner’s fourth opera, and he had not yet dipped full tilt into Germanica, but many of the signs of style and stirrings are already here—the wave or orchestral genius here and there, the embrace of myth and general bigness of themes, even in the less than Valhalla setting of a small Nordic port, the outpouring of emotions, in the music and the libretto.

In a production that’s nearly two and a half hours long without intermission, the challenge is self-evident, it has aspects of a marathon for the audience. It requires endurance as well as desire.

Let me say, with few reservations, that the trip is worth it , even if you’ve taken it before. Chief among them is American bass-baritone Eric Owens, a rising star in the opera and classical music firmament, who makes the part of the Dutchman, the nearly mad, deathless captain of a haunted ship, searching for a faithful woman who will break the curse of his existence, very much his own, vocally and emotionally. He has the size, the charisma and stride to match the demands of the part and to bring out his humanity, because this is a man roiling in grief and loss, longing for both love and death.

The part needs a partner in the role of Senta, the daughter of a local captain who’s basically promised her to the Dutchman, even though she retains some interest in an old swain, the huntsman Erik. In German soprano Christiane Libor, he’s got a perfect mate, a woman who desperately wants to free him from his curse, quite often punctuated by an unerring ability to reached emotionally rending high notes, in their one-on-one encounters.

The part of the Dutchman is full of temptations, not the least of which is to make it full of sound and fury. Owens resists the temptation and finds the right notes for grief as well as fury, not an easy task when singing in German.

This production, again directed by Stephen Lawless, is in outline and tone, the same as the one he directed here in 2008. Again, we have the Dutchman’s startlingly outlined red ship, his rather strange entrance in the ropes of the ship, bearing a sign that reads, “Verdammt” (German for “damned,” but cursed all the same). He offers the captain a ship heading for port a fortune for the hand of his daughter.

Wagner was already flying with “The Dutchman,” the libretto—he also wrote it along with composing the music—is replete with an accumulation of exclamations and outbursts of emotion. Lawless’s staging includes the arrival of ghostly women coming off the ship—women cursed for not fulfilling fidelity. There are beautifully lit scenes in the town, women around a table knitting, awaiting the arrival of the seamen, the sailors and townspeople celebrating, scenes that provide a respite from the Wagnerian emotional angst embraced by the Dutchman and Senta.

It’s important, too, that conductor Philippe Auguin in the overture and throughout the evening provides the necessary stormy sometimes overwhelming surging of Wagner’s music that is the set as well as the mind-and-heart set of the opera. Anyone who saw the WNO’s epic “Tristan and Isolde” will recognize the signs. For the rest—whatever flaws there are in this production—resistance in the end is futile. The force, Wagner (and Owens) is with you.

“The Flying Dutchman” at the Kennedy Center Opera House: Eric Owens sings the part of the Dutchman March 9, 13, 15 (a matinee), 19 and 21; Alan Held will perform March 11, joined by Jennifer Root as Senta.

Gary Tischler • March 5, 2015

To say the least, “Dialogues of the Carmelites”, now receiving a haunting, sometimes harrowing Washington National Opera production at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, is not what you’d expect from an opera, even in today’s music climate, where so-called contemporary operas are starting to appear regularly on season schedules.

“Carmelites” is a 1957 opera written by Francis Poulenc, a French composer who was known for his song cycles and music that straddled the lines between the sensual and spiritual. Yet, he composed an opera that’s managed to become a contemporary classic, a historical opera that today reminds us of contemporary horrors.

In the hands of a fine cast, a patient and imaginative director, driven and decorated by impeccable stagecraft, the WNO production manages to overcome what seem to be some minefields in the music and the structure of the opera itself.

“Carmelites,” which elevates musically a historic atrocity that was a by-product of the French Revolution run rampant, was sung in English, per Poulet’s long-standing request that the opera would be sung in the native language of the country where it is performed.

Musically, as an opera, the structure avoids the familiar—the highlights are strong dramatic duets between several principal characters, rising, graceful harmonies most effective with the use of a cappella singing from nuns gathering together. There are no arias, no overt expressions or opportunities for grandiose displays of technical skills, but there is music, sometimes emphatic and overly dramatic, that signals emotional surges and passages. The idea in fact was born as a film script, and the music often operates like a film score in the sense that it acts as a guide for the audience’s emotions.

The Carmelites were a group of nuns living in a convent in Paris, often used by aristocrats or good families to deposit daughters with emotional problems, as is the case here with the character of Blanche, a nervous, even fearful, pretty young woman who’s elected to come to convent. She’s come at a time of sea change both in the convent and the country. The prioress, Madame de Croissy, is mortally ill and so is France, beset by the bitterest of outrages at the revolution, best by mobs intent on destroying churches, monasteries, convents and anything that smacked of the Catholic clergy.

It’s a feverish, fearful atmosphere, more so after the prioress, raging against God, furious at her suffering, dies, and is replaced by the calm, pragmatic Madame Lidoine. She is placed in charge of a convent full of fear but also with a surge of longing for martyrdom. She’s resistant to the idea—even though their priest comes to hide and warn them of the danger.

In the end, after their arrest, she embraces what is a given prospect; they’re sentenced to death for “gathering in a group”, and all manner of crimes dreamed up by a feverish mob.

The steady, relentless march of the Carmelites toward their fate is conducted in an atmosphere and setting that’s almost feverish. The set by Hildegard Bechtler is a massive, gleaming structure that often dwarfs the nuns who seem to gather strength coming together in groups. Here, in the lighting work by Mark McCullough, shadows surge over the surface, large and small, elliptical and strange, flickering and moving figures against candlelight and mirrors.

In this environment, emotions rise almost naturally. Not only is Blanche burning with fear, but also the audience starts to feel a growing dread as the inevitable outcome approaches.

You have to feel and fear for the characters and in this, the production is served well by the cast—mezzo soprano Dolora Zajick commands the stage from her cot as the dying prioress; rising star soprano Leah Crocetto’s singing is full of clarity with a strong voice that cements leadership qualities—including unto death—of Madame Lidoit. Another new star, Layla Claire plays Blanche with tremulous fragility. She’s like a changeling lost in the forest. Ashley Emerson as Constance seems almost like a too-wise and eager mascot for the group.

WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s guides the production by letting it evolve almost organically—as the pace leads the women more and more into the maws of the revolution, they seem to come together as a group—you see them praying lying flat on the ground, coming together in prayer, in debate, in sorrow and fearfulness, and finally, to their end.

The ending is a remarkable piece of stagecraft that would punch and peel the hardest heart—all the nuns, facing the mob, climbing one by one to the platform, singing and chanting hymns, each with a different way of walking, toward the guillotine. The singing is interrupted only by a resounding and sharp thud and all the while the singing continues as their numbers dwindle.

At this point, the proceedings become unforgettable. It seems almost as if, as they all disappear, that the singing is louder and deeper, an illusion of the heart.

(“Dialogues of the Carmelites will be performed again on February 27, and March 5, 8 and 10)

Gary Tischler • February 23, 2015

I first saw “Godspell,” the John-Michael Tebelak-conceived and Stephen Schwartz-composed hip and hippie musical, based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, in San Francisco in 1972, when it toured after its Broadway debut in 1971. Jesus had a huge red afro, as I recall, wore a Superman t-shirt. The stories and parables of Jesus were sweet and funny comic turns, one of them by lads dressed up like the Marx Brothers.

It was the post-hippie 1970s, and the music was joyful, gospel-pop-rock, and the show was a touching, inviting call to community. Mary Magdalene in that version had the hot hit song “Day By Day,” and all was swell with the world. I remember taking my son to a mass in Berkeley at which the presiding priest wore a Superman vest.

That was a long time ago, as fads and hit shows go, and there have been many incarnations and revivals of “Godspell” since then, including a Broadway revival as late as 2011.

So, where is “Godspell” now, and how is it doing?

It’s at the Olney Theatre Center, not a likely hot spot. Since we asked, it’s doing just fine, looking not so much quaint as fresh. The hippies have become something akin to a gaggle of questioning drifters and hipsters, a nice mix of gender and ethnic types in a show in which gender and ethnicity appear to have been complete blurred in the sense that they don’t matter and aren’t referenced. It’s egalitarian as all get-out, although Jesus, in this instance is not black, Hispanic or female.

Audiences matter, especially in a show like “Godspell,” which still appeals to young people, although they might snub its overt sweetness and gentleness, but then that’s a question of how you feel about Jesus, the gospels and perhaps the one percent.

“Godspell” remains firmly grounded in its gospel material and in a Jesus who’s here to laud the virtues of being kind to your neighbor, turning the other cheek, rewarding those who acknowledge sin or help others. It’s about love, love, above all, love God to be sure, but also your neighbor as you would yourself. The suggestion is also there that you should love yourself, or at least give yourself a break, because Jesus will.

It remains a sweet show, with unflagging energy, and the audience of mostly past-40 types greeted it with enthusiasm. It’s as a commune of sorts being applauded in suburban Maryland, an event that’s kind of gratifying.

Director Jason King Jones has assembled as high-volume, high-appeal and frisky cast—everyone gets a turn to shine out his or her light, although as individuals they’re deliberately not differentiated as specific characters.

The exceptions are Jordan Coughtry as Jesus and Rachel Zampelli with the double duty task of John the Baptist and Judas. The rest are a ragtag group of apostles who appear first as contemporary discontents wandering into any-old-town USA one at a time, with back packs, bags, and worn clothes along.

Soon enough, with the arrival of John the Baptist and Jesus, unannounced but clearly special—Jesus spreads water on the sometimes reluctant new followers, the group begins to coalesce into a story that is often joyful, sometimes questioning, sometimes funny, very often surprisingly appealing. From the first real blast of arrival—the stirring “Prepare Ye,” sung in fine form by Zampelli, to a familiar “Day by Day,” led by Allie Parris, the audience is led to a musical journey through the gospel.

Coughtry as Jesus is immensely appealing—he has the gospel spirit but also the hippie spirit of the 1960s, a handsome, compelling presence, who is most affecting in the end at the Last Supper, in the course of suffering, questioning God the father.

There’s something carny-like, child-like, circus-like about it all: It’s story-telling hour, the rich man and the poor man, the good son and the prodigal son, the seeds that fall on stone and earth, accompanied by Schwartz tunes which are still terrific—“Save the People,” “O, Bless the Lord My Soul,” “Learn Your Lessons Well,” “All for the Best” (a ringing indictment of the one percenters), the touching “”By My Side” and the bawdy “Turn Back, O Man.”

The simplicity of the staging—make-do set, pop-rock band on another level, the intimacy between cast members and cast members and audience—seems almost brand new.

— “Godspell” (through March 1) opens Olney’s 2015 season, an eclectic bundle of musicals, new plays and classics. The season includes “Grounded,” “Carousel,” Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” “The Producers,” Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever,” “Bad Dog” and “Guys and Dolls.”

Gary Tischler •

Robert Earl Keen, the premier Americana music singer-songwriter and “Americana” star from Texas has a natural way of talking—and, we guess, writing. It’s like the beginning of natural-born memories, conversational, and without too much heavy lifting.  Sort of like the way he sings,  his voice is direct in delivery, you remember the way it sounds, not necessarily how long a note is held or the timbre.  As he’s said before about his voice, “You get used to it.”

The 59-year-old Keen has been around a while to amass a reputation, lots of tunes and albums (18 to date), beginning with “No Kinda Dancer,” and now his latest—just out this month —“Happy Prisoner,” a bluegrass-themed trip back to his listening and playing roots, which includes a cover of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe’s “Footprints in the Snow.”

He’s come to bluegrass territory, playing music from the album, at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Va., Tuesday night, a place which bills itself as “America’s Legendary  Music Hall,” in an area and state which happens to be a hotbed of “Americana” music and bluegrass.

“It’s a great place,” Keen says of the Birchmere. “Been there before. I loved it.  The album, the music, bluegrass, that’s like going back.”  He’s also said before, “I can’t think of a better thing on a Saturday morning than to tune into a bluegrass station, and get it going with that music and you listen, and you say ‘well, okay, let’s get started.’ ”

Keen is more or less a musician’s musician, singing, playing, writing in the “Americana” field in the sense that he works hard, travels all the time, tours and loves being in front of a live audience,  in clubs, parks, stadiums and venues all over the country. “There’s nothing better than singing in front of people,” he says.

“This is our roots,” Keens says of Bluegrass music. “It’s where all the other stuff comes from—folk, country,  cowboy music, all the sounds and rhythm are in there.  And Monroe, he’s the greatest, if you had to do that and Flat and Scruggs and others.”

Keen is from Texas, through and through and through, growing up in and around Houston, picking up English rock and Willie Nelson, and after getting a degree in English in 1980, starting writing songs and playing,  initially, you guessed it, “bluegrass.”  “It’s my roots, too, it’s what I started out doing.”

In the mid-1980s, he also started out doing albums—his first was in 1984 “No Kinda Dancer.” His album titles, like his song titles, are resonant of what you might call people’s music,  country and folk flavors, with a little bit of Texas spice. “No Kinda Dancer” was followed by “West Textures,” “A Bigger Piece of the Sky,” “Gringo Honeymoon,” “Picnic,” “Farm Fresh Onions,” “Ready for Confetti” and others.

“I think there were a lot of people doing so-called “Americana” music before it even became a genre or category,” Keen said.  “My buddy Lyle Lovett was doing it, and all of a sudden, it’s a Grammy category. But I think it’s several strands of music or offshoots of the strands, like country, from all over the country, from Nashville to Willie (Nelson), to folk, traditional music, regional,  bluegrass and so on.  I guess I fit in the category—so does Roseanne Cash, Lyle, Emmy Lou Harris.  It’s a pretty rich, diverse and broad category.  A lot of  it is acoustic.  It’s based in exceptional instrumental playing as well as in the emotional power of lyrics and stories.”

“I believe it’s an art form, sure,”  he said.  For Keen, the words mean a lot—he was an English major, after all.  “Yeah, they do,”  he said. “I like to write, I like to write songs that could stand alone and be read for themselves.” We talk a little bit about John Stewart, the former Kingston Trio member who was probably an “Americana” pioneer, and top-notch songwriter (“Daydream Believer”).  “He was a terrific guy,” he said. I knew him. Really good writer. Really good songs.”

Keen is proud of being a Texan—he’s lived there in different parts all of his life. “It’s got this mystique—the music, too, but there’s a lot of jokes about it, too.”

“We’re doing this by way of all acoustic,” he said.  “It’s embracing the music.   I didn’t write any of the songs. Me and the band put it together.  Lyle sings on it.”

The song list will give you the flavor: “Hot Corn, Cold Corn,” “99 Years for One Dark Day,” “East Virginia Blues,” “T for Texas,” “Old Home Place,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “Steam Powered Aeroplane and others, including: “Footprints in the Snow,” the Bill Monroe classic, which is a story, a song, which starts out with “Now, some folks like the summertime, when they can walk about . . . ” and builds to an end. 

For Keen himself, yes, the road does go on forever, as he likes to say. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Robert Earl Keen, “Happy Prisoner: The Bluegrass Tour” with Bonnie Bishop, 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 17, the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, Va.