I had the great pleasure of working with a new up and coming opera company in New York last week, Opera Manhattan. I sang the role of Scarpia for the first time in concert with them, and I have to tell you that it was a real pleasure. Professional through and through with musical standards that are seemingly harder to come by these days.
At the performances, Bryce and Rebecca got up to tell of how this company all started. Singers searching for that place inbetween working in “real” opera houses (or working there sporadically) and being overqualified to still be considered a student. They saw the trying-to-be-opera world with a glut of places where you could pay to sing, to try it out, where sometimes musical and dramatic standards were… erratic. They wanted to fill that gap with someplace where people could try it, without shelling out thousands of dollars and with high standards. They saw a need and they filled it. They told you it was all about the singers, helping them. Giving them the chance to learn these roles and perform them, get them on the resume. As much as I admire them, I think they were wrong, or at least only half right. It was all about the music.
The conductor was Carmine Aufiero, a man who practically sweats olive oil because his approach to the music was so F@#$ing italian. He sang along every note in the orchestra, his brown knit with deep concentration as he brought the score to life. At the piano, Wilson Southerland, whose gentle southern demeanor belied the passion and virtuosity with which he commanded the piano…. I can go on and on about the singers, but that isn’t why I am writing this.
This company is a gem in the rough. It is not there for the singers, for the musicians, as much as it is for the music. Every person that I made music with at these concerts had spent hundreds of hours on the music, thousands of hours practicing and poured there heart and soul into it.
The company exists for the sole purpose of making music. Specifically of making opera. More so, by making it with people who haven’t had chance to make it, or atleast not with this opera. When you think about it, it is an absurd idea, putting time effort and money into something like this, right? Where can the pay off be? We are in the middle of the great recession right? Yet here we are, a bunch of singers, a conductor and pianist all in a room trying to take notes on a page and bring them to life. Not to life as they had been made before, but fresh and new. Experiencing opera, the creation of it is an amazingly addictive experience.
This is not a time to be conservative, all the big opera houses need to be conservative now to make it through, it is a time for working in the red, not the black, and a time for bold moves like Opera Manhattan.
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