Backstage with the bohemians - Part 2

Caroline Baum
photo by David Corbett

The second instalment from guest blogger Caroline Baum in the La bohème rehearsal room at Opera Australia headquarters.

Rodolfo is texting, waiting for Marcello to show up for a music rehearsal for La bohème.
Maestro Christian Badea paces the Opera Australia rehearsal room, cracking jokes.  He may be Romanian by birth but when he speaks he sounds like a don in a Scorsese movie. There’s a ripe ‘don’t mess with me’ roundness to his vowels, an accent that betrays years studying in New York and then working in Savannah.  It’s his first time in Australia.

He picks over the score of acts three and four in forensic detail, a musical detective sifting through evidence to examine the nuances of every phrase, correcting tempi with a hint here and there about emphasis and diction.

‘I know you are a great Tosca, Takesha, but right now I need you to be shy and gentle as a wallflower. You will die beautifully and with passion,’ he adds, ‘ but not just yet!’

He keeps the mood in the room light, energetic - serious and playful at the same time. It’s quite a skill to be authoritative without being heavy and makes the process, which is very detailed and focused, look deceptively easy. I realise what I’m really watching is the building up of trust to make the singers feel they are in safe hands.  

To Takesha: ‘That was good, it was about sixty per cent, but I want you to go for broke here, really push me backwards. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you sing too much or you’ll kill yourself.’

To Marcello: ‘It’s Mi-Mi , not Mi-Mee - too heavy.’

And : ‘Sing out more! She’s the one who’s sick, not you. You are the good guy, you care about her so be generous , you are like an older brother to her, don’t be too reserved.’

And: ‘We have to milk the money notes not the transitions.’

And: ‘Marcello, here the character is rather edgy and kinda crunchy’
Takesha laughs: ‘Crunchy... I like that’

The Maestro again: ‘You are both young, too many ralentandos and you will end up sounding middle-aged!’

To Musetta: ‘I think you should slap him (Marcello) at this point otherwise what he’s doing is domestic abuse. Is Gale asking you to do that?’
Musetta nods.
‘Great, then he gets excited and they can have lovely make-up sex later,’ jokes the maestro.

Which is probably exactly what Puccini was thinking.

Read the next installment of 'Backstage with the Bohemians', or skip to part 1...3, 4, 5, 6.

Book tickets to see La bohème at the Sydney Opera House, from 31 December 2012.

Backstage with the bohemians

Caroline Baum
photo by David Corbett

Walking in on my first production meeting for La bohème, I feel I’ve wandered into the situation room in an episode of The West Wing. Fifteen people sit forward around the table, all intently focussed on one person. Director Gale Edwards is getting updates from her generals about troop movements and weaponry. She is planning her campaign with military precision. When she wants reinforcements or heavy artillery, this is where it gets negotiated.  It’s perhaps not as tense as the situation room, but it’s not relaxed either.

The team is talking about Act II, the Café Momus scene, which, like everything else in this production Gale has transposed from its traditional Parisian locale to Weimar Republic Berlin.  ‘Everyone gets a sausage, some bread and a nice bit of garnish on their plates’, says Mat Lawrence, Head of Scenic Props. ‘Good, I want to stay away from food that is too liquid, nods Gale, adding ‘We need a sound effect when Musetta breaks a plate.’ No detail is too small: coins for Schaunard in Act I need to be bent so they don’t roll off the table. Salami needs to be smaller and accompanied by a jar of pickles.

At the end of the meeting, Gale is upbeat, despite a cold picked up on a last minute flying visit to China. Thanking everyone for their contribution she says, ‘It’s rare to feel this positive at this stage.’

But she is also understandably nervous: today is her first encounter with her Mimì, Takesha Meshé Kizart, the American soprano who was such a hit with Sydney audiences when she sang Tosca last year. Takesha’s arrival was delayed by a week, and now she too is unwell, battling a cough. When she arrives from Frankfurt, she looks a little vulnerable, but even her shy giggle is melodic.

In the first run-through of her entrance in Act I she protects her voice, merely speaking her lines. Gale guides her and Korean tenor Ji-Min Park through the delicate choreography of their encounter mapping out where she faints, where her head should land. ‘Touch her face like eggshells,’ says Gale to Ji-Min, demonstrating. She extracts every drop of juice from the libretto, taking ownership of it, while checking that she is not in conflict with the score. Turning to conductor Brian Castles-Onion she asks: ‘Can I drop him sprinkling water on her face?’ Castles-Onion nods. By the end of their first session together, Takesha feels confident enough to try a few notes. The effect hints at thrills to come.

After lunch a buzzing in the corridor suggests a large swarm of bees is on approach.

But no, it’s just the chorus. ‘Where are my topless prostitutes please?’ shouts Gale above the noise. She has to do a lot of shushing to get them to settle down and focus. To add to the challenge of marshalling forty people in high spirits, each with something individual to do, the scene takes place on a revolving stage, which has been rigged up in the rehearsal studio. The operator warns everyone when it is about to move and when it is about to stop ‘jolt coming now everyone!’ Later on in the day those words resonate very differently with news of the Japanese earthquake.

Read the next installment of 'Backstage with the Bohemians', or skip to part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Book tickets to see La bohème at the Sydney Opera House, from 31 December 2012.

An update from Adrian Collette AM - Chief Executive

A couple of weeks ago I made a whirlwind trip to London – all of four days – impressions of which are now starting to be remembered through a jet lag induced funk.

What an extraordinarily rich and at times bizarre world we inhabit in opera.

On my first day in London I was fortunate enough to attend the Thanksgiving Service for Dame Joan Sutherland at Westminster Abbey, attended by a throng – strictly speaking a congregation – of opera lovers, including His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. Particularly beautiful was the playing of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under its Music Director, Antonio Pappano; and particularly moving for me was a reading by Richard Bonynge. Add to this the many, many Australians in the audience (Yvonne Kenny, Jonathan Summers, Jonathan Mills, Jennifer McGregor, Geoffrey Robertson, Kathy Lette and our High Commissioner, John Dauth, to name a very few!) and I felt I had flown to the other side of the world to feel right at home. And then there was the transcendent voice of Dame Joan…..

Next day (after a series of meetings with the Commercial Director of our Digital Media Unit, Hans Petri, who resides in the UK and is in charge of selling our HD recordings to Europe and the United States) came Parsifal at the English National Opera. Now this is a long way from Dame Joan’s and Mo. Bonynge’s world of bel canto – and entering the world of Parsifal is like entering yet another time zone. I pretended not to be jet lagged as I plunged into the massive swell of this final Wagnerian rumination, beautifully conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, by the way, who many of our audience will remember for his admirable conducting of Peter Grimes last year. It was great to hear our own Stuart Skelton in the title role, his voice sounding as warm and focussed as ever, and the sonic super-abundance of John Tomlinson’s Gurnemanz.

And on the final day, another time-shift away from the bel canto artistry of Dame Joan, came the opening night performance at The Royal Opera of a new opera by Mark-AnthonyTurnage, which floated on a sea of silicone as it depicted an overblown pornographic phenomenon, namely, the notorious life and sickly-sad demise of a Playboy model and gold digger, Anna Nicole Smith. This corner of London was abuzz with the theatrical promiscuity of Anna Nicole, the libretto of which was written by Richard ‘Jerry Springer’ Thomas. The score was eclectic and inventive – Brecht, Britten, Stravinsky and any amount of jazz riffs; the design seemed inspired by the larger than life, playful grotesquery of Jeff Koons; and the performance of Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role was…well, large; and also virtuosic.

Three days, three completely contrasting experiences of opera – all suggesting a corner of the canvass my colleagues and I get to paint on every day. Come to think of it, my severer than usual bout of jet lag probably had more to do with the operatic time-shifts rather than the hemispherical ones.