Cristina Pato: the Joy and Passion of World Music at 6th & I Synagogue

March 26, 2015

Don’t be surprised this weekend if you should happen to be walking around downtown that you might hear the sound of a bagpipe playing.  Beyond that, it’s all surprise.

It won’t be the mournful tones of a pipe playing at a funeral, and it won’t be coming from a guy with a beard wearing plaid kilts,  marching in a parade.

It won’t really be a traditional bagpipe.   It will be a 34-year-old woman who lives in Greenwich Village, N.Y., and hails from Galicia, an autonomous community in northwest Spain, bordered by Portugal, Castilia and the Atlantic Ocean.  It will be Cristina Pato, a rising star bereft of genre except one: originality.

It will be Pato and her own ensemble, playing the gaita, a bagpipe instrument native to  Galicia, a place about which she’s almost as passionate as playing her music. 

In a concert presented by Washington Performing Arts, Pato will be at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue at 8 p.m Saturday,  March 14,  with her band,  playing a kind of music that you’ve never heard coming out of a bagpipe, although it resonates with all sorts of cross-cultural ideas and feelings.    

It will be lively, jazzy, energetic, make-you-want-to-dance and feel joy,  revved up, buzzed by drums and accordion and bass, and Pato’s own sharing, get-it-out there personality punctuated by high-pitched yells , and a long way from marching Scotsmen in tribal uniform.

“It’s the music I grew up with,” she said.  “The gaito is from Galicia, and so am I. “ The gaita is an instrument limited in notes, but in Pato’s hands and way of playing, the possibilities expand enormously.

Watch her on YouTube videos, and you hear her emitting high-note yelps.  “I sing,” she says, “but that’s not me singing. That’s a joyful exclamation. I like joy.”

The music in some ways, and certainly the instrument, sound ancient, which is appropriate, given that the people of Galicia go back to the beginnings of man.  There are Gaelic influences here, which seems only natural, but also Middle Eastern, Latino,  African, Miles Davis, the Chieftains and Paqo D’Rivera are here—and all the exotic and not exotic corners of a world.

“My parents moved to Venezuela at one point and came back to Galicia,” she said. “I try to go as often as I can.”

A conversation with Pato  is a little like her music. The talk is fast, quick-moving from here to there, and it touches on a lot of things: the diversity and variety of music,  her band, which is very diverse itself, her influences, but always you come back to the ideas of place, region, home, and how nations sometimes try to stifle diversity. 

“With Galicia, it was about language and independence,” Pato said.  “Often, when one group dominates a country, it tries to take away the identity, culture and especially language of smaller groups within that nation.”

Nothing like that can happen with Pato around.  She is passionate about her native home, but in the process, she makes it universal.  I mentioned my own Bavarian roots within the framework of Germany, that the people there were known for their music, their culture, for a little bohemian side and for festiveness.  “Sounds like Galicia,” she said.  Sounds Irish too, for that matter.

Less you think Pato and her music are somehow insubstantial, think again.  This is not her first appearance in Washington this year. She came only weeks earlier as part of master cello player Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a much larger group with larger ambitions, a group in which she nevertheless manages to stand out.

Pato is part of the Silk Road Ensemble’s Leadership Council.  She has a Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and has Masters of Music in Piano Performance and a Masters of Music in Music Theory and Chamber Music  and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts (Computer Music).  She is also the founder and director of Galician Connection,  a world music forum celebrated annually at Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.  In Galicia, she and her husband, bassist Juan Pedron, also have a rock band.    She is also a fan of Schubert lieders.

“The piano and the gaita,” she said, “are two sides of me, which are not incompatible.”

In truth, when Pato talks about music , it is really world music—all the influences that flow into her play, playing what appears to be an unwieldy instrument as if it were a tango partner.  

Watching her—whether online or on stage—you get a sense of the music, of her personality as she moves through the vibrant music from her album “Migration.” National Public Radio called her music “wild and wonderful,” which is a nice description of a woman the Wall Street Journal called “one of the living masters of the gaita”. 

This is music that bonds people. “It is so easy to see how we are all connected and speak  the same language when it comes to the music,” Pato said. “The energy builds during a performance and I value the energy that flows between me, the audience and the other players. That is a moment of pure magic.

Magic she is.
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Film Festivals Spring Up Around Washington


The Annapolis Film Festival runs from March 26 through March 29, featuring more than 70 films at venues along West or Main streets and including St. John’s College and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Visit annapolisfilmfestival.com for complete show times and film listings. Each screening will cost $12; a festival pass, $105.

The event will feature question-and-answer sessions and panel discussions. Don’t miss the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Act of Killing,” which showcases members of an Indonesian death squad reenacting the murders they committed.

The Bethesda Film Fest takes place on March 20 and March 21 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., featuring five short documentaries produced by local filmmakers. The event includes a discussion with the filmmakers after the screening at Imagination Stage, 4908 Auburn Avenue. Tickets are available for $10.

The Environmental Film Festival provides you with nearly two weeks of film screenings from March 17 to March 29. More than 150 films will explore topics ranging from climate change to endangered wildlife to clean-water issues. The festival will feature several local, national and world premieres. Venues are all around the city from the National Arboretum to embassies and theaters.

Filmmaker Luc Jacquet (“March of the Penguin” and “Ice & Sky”) will present a survey of his films, including a new piece.

Visit DCEnvironmentalFilmFest.org for more information. Selected films will cost $10 to $12; others will be free. This year’s festival goes is partially funded by a $15,000 contribution from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival, featuring 16 films, will run from March 19 to March 29. Its opening night will take place at Theater J and the other screenings will be shown at Angelika Mosaic. Some films will have a focus on the Jewish faith, while others will offer non-sectarian views by Israeli artists. Each showing will cost $12, and a pass for the whole festival is $64.

Some highlights include “The Green Prince,” based on the memoir of Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian who spied for Israel, and “Above and Beyond,” which is about the early days of the Israeli Air Force.

Obscure Strauss Opera, ‘Guntram,’ to Be Performed Sunday at GW for Second Time in the U.S.

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.

Skateboarding and Other Kennedy Center Surprises

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.

Crocetto Leads the ‘Carmelites’ at WNO


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”

Robert Paterson and ‘The Whole Truth’: a Comic Opera Affair


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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Spring Performances


“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.

‘Flying Dutchman’: Damned With Desire and Worth the Trip


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.

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A Haunting, Harrowing ‘Dialogue of the Carmelites’ at WNO

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)

Robert Earl Keen, ‘Happy Prisoner’ of Bluegrass at the Birchmere Tonight

February 23, 2015

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.