Another Fine OTSL Season

Well, opera season is over here in St. Louis.  My allergies were acting up the last week and I was coughing so much that I ended up skipping the last opera in my series:  The Golden Ticket.   I was sorry to miss it since I always like the (very strange) Willy Wonka story.

According to an email I got from Timothy O’Leary, OTSL’S general director, this season earned Opera Theatre its highest box office revenue ever even though they didn’t raise ticket prices.  Since 2008, they’ve seen an audience increase of 5.5% and they were at 90% capacity over this season which, in this economy, is almost a miracle.  The good box office this year surely had to do with choosing to bring in new audience members by doing A Little Night Music.  22% of the audience was brand new this year.   I hope they all come back next year for at least one opera.

And speaking of next year:

Meanwhile, subscriptions for 2011 go on sale next week, and I hope you will join us for a season that opens with Mozart's masterpiece Don Giovanni, and continues with Donizetti's hilarious The Daughter of the Regiment, as well as OTSL's first-ever Pelléas and Mélisande featuring the much-anticipated return of soprano Kelly Kaduce, and John Adams's chilling tragedy The Death of Klinghoffer, created by the same team that brought us OTSL's landmark production of Nixon in China in 2004.

I’m particularly excited about The Daughter of the Regiment.  I’ve seen it before and it’s a lot of fun.  PLUS it will mark the conducting debut at OTSL of John McDaniel who I knew back in high school.   It’s a comedy and a classic and probably is the opera to choose if you’ve never been to opera before.

Of course you couldn’t go wrong with Don Giovanni either -  after all, it’s Mozart.  But it’s not a comedy.  

Every year OTSL does four operas and I always classify them as The Big Draw (Don Giovanni), The Other Classic (Daughter of the Regiment), The Less Peformed One (Pelleas and Mellisande) and The Modern One (The Death of Klinghoffer).  This year they shook things up a bit by throwing A Little Night Music in the mix as The Less Performed One.

It used to be that there was a better than 50/50 chance that I would think The Modern One was horrible (musically) and The Less Performed One would be … well, let’s just say that it would be obvious to me why it wasn’t performed as often. Over the years, though,  I’ve grown to really like most of The Modern Ones and the productions of The Less Performed Operas have been such clever productions that I often like them the best.  So I’m really looking forward to next year’s Pelleas and Melisande because it features Kelly Kaduce who was the simply outstanding Salome in 2009 (and in pretty much every thing else I’ve seen her in).  That leaves Klinghoffer.  Let’s just say I’m not a big fan of John Adams.  But I’m going to keep an open mind.

So make plans for next season – May and June in St. Louis. 

And in the meantime we have another smaller opera company called Union Avenue Opera.  It has been around since 1994 when it was founded by Scott Schoonover, the music director of Union Avenue Christian Church, which serves as the venue for the operas.   They do a very good job with a very small space.   I’m going to go see The Pirates of Penzance in a couple of weeks.

Smart Actors

I’ve been slowly working my way through all the seasons of FarScape and now I’m finished.   I feel a bit bereft now that it is over.  I can see why people were totally hooked on it when it was on.

The DVDs that I watched had a lot of “extras” including commentary.  I’m a commentary geek so I listened to it all.  I LOVE commentary, especially commentary by writers and directors.  I don’t get nearly as excited by actor commentary.  A lot of times it devolves into snarky “hey, remember the time I screwed up my line” commentary.  Most (not all) actors seem to shy away from talking about the craft of acting and how they shape their characters and seldom do they talk about the other facets of making the show or movie. 

The commentary for FarScape is different.  The actor commentary was outstanding.  Ben Browder (who played John Crichton) and Claudia Black (who played Aeryn Sun) provided exceptional commentary.  What smart actors!  Ben Browder could explain every technical detail of the show as well as the motivations behind his own performance.  He was better at explaining the direction and production of the series than the commentary from the directors and producers.  he even explained the writing as well as the writers.  And Claudia Black should give seminars on the craft of acting.   Her analyses of the choices she made in creating the character of Aeryn Sun made the character even more real for me.   I remember at least one episode where she did the commentary alone – and I’m not sure I can remember seeing any other DVD where an actor was allowed to do solo commentary before.  And a couple of times she was paired with one of the non-actors to do commentary and she drew those persons out with really good questions.

I wonder if Ben and Claudia did any commentary on the Stargate seasons they were on?  I’d find those DVD just to hear that commentary.  

I checked imdb to see what each of them are up to these days.  I saw Claudia Black a few weeks ago on an episode of NCIS and she’s got a film in post-production, but it seems she’s mostly doing voices for animation these days.   Ben Browder is working on a web series called Naught for Hire.   It’s hard to understand why he isn’t in another regular series.  He’s the perfect all-American looking actor. 

Here’s a scene I liked between them:

A Little Indiana History

AndiF asked if there was anything about her home state of Indiana in my books on the French Colonial history of the Ohio Valley.  Most Ohio Valley history is told from the British/American point of view and so mostly it focuses on Eastern Ohio and the forks of the Ohio River (Pittsburgh).   To the extent that the French and Indians further west are discussed, the focus is on the Southern lllinois towns of Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, Nouvelle Chartres and St. Phillipe which were located along the Mississippi River just above the confluence with the Ohio River.  Of those, only the tiny village of  Prairie du Rocher can still be considered a community. The mighty Mississippi wiped out the rest.  The Mississippi even changed its course, wiping out most of Kaskaskia and stranding the rest (which is still part of Illinois) on the Missouri side of the river.  

But there were some important French trading towns in Indiana.  And they didn’t just spring up naturally, they were chosen to be towns by a joint decision of the Indian Nations and the French who supplied them.  In most histories of the American West the settlers are trying to avoid the Indians.  In the American Midwest of the 1700’s the French were trying to attract Indians.  This is the difference between a people who want to develop farming and ranching communities where control of specific parcels of land is important (the Americans) and a people who want a commercial trading relationship (the French).   Unlike the Southern Illinois communities, the Indiana communities are still around. 

So here’s an excerpt from one of the books in my pile that talks about Indiana.  And for my Michigan readers, there’s a little touch of Michigan too.

In 1701 France’s minister of the marine approved a proposal for yet another large central post in the region.  The new post was to be constructed at a place known as Detroit:  located on the straits between Lakes Huron and Erie, Detroit stood on the threshold separating the settled parts of New France from the vast western territories claimed by the colony. The plan was conceived by Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, a director and prime mover of the newly reorganized company that enjoyed Canada’s fur trade monopoly. Cadillac was ignorant of the ecological and political constraints that made large, multiethnic settlement sites problematic, but he hoped that good terms of trade could attract a very large Indian population around Detroit to become home to the Ottawas, Hurons, Potawatomis, Mascoutens, and Kickapoos. All of them might live in contiguous villages, he thought, and conduct all of their trade at Detroit …

… Within a few years of its founding Detroit had drawn nearly 6000 Indians to the area and Cadillac, in his enthusiasm, referred to his new settlement as the “Paris of America".” But the Miamis [Indians] were reluctant transplants and they did not stay long … Once they had taken up residence, it was not long until the Miami band was embroiled in a series of conflicts with the Ottawas there.  They finally abandoned the post altogether in 1712 and requested that individual trading posts be established at their village sites on the Maumee and Wabash Rivers. 

Canadian officials were reluctant to build additional, decentralized outposts for the Miami tribes – Detroit was conceived partly in an effort to consolidate French activity in the west – but they recognized the very real possibility that the Miamis might otherwise opt for even stronger ties with the English colonies.  They chose to comply with the request, and around the end of the second decade of the 18th Century two new posts were built:  Fort Miamis, near the Miami towns on the Maumee River [present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana]: and Fort Ouiatanon, near the town of Ouiatanon on the upper Wabash [present day West Lafayette, Indiana].  A little more than a decade later, in 1731, a third French post, called Vincennes, was established farther down the Wabash alongside the Piankashaw town of Chippekoke. These posts did not make the Miami tribes absolutely loyal to the French alliance – they continued to maintain connections with British traders, often through Iroquois intermediaries, throughout the colonial period – but they did help to confirm and solidify the new spatial arrangement of Miami territories, while they strengthened the force of the alliance between the Miamis and New France.

excerpt from “Elusive Empires:  Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800” by Eric Hinderaker, pp. 49-50.

One of my ancestors was one of the first French women to move from the St. Lawrence River Valley to the new post at Detroit.  Her second husband was the surgeon at the post.   Many of her sons became voyageurs.  One of them eventually married a French girl in Detroit and that family ended up in Vincennes. Their daughter and her husband, a French soldier who came over for the French and Indian War, eventually moved to the newly founded town of St. Louis after France ceded all of the land east of the Mississippi River to Britain at the end of war.  A brother of one of my ancestors was the chief French trader at the Ouiatenon post for a time.  A cousin of one of my ancestors was the French military commander at Ouiatenon for a time. 

What I’m Reading

I haven’t blogged about what I’ve been reading lately because I’ve been lost in French Colonial History,

particularly the history of the French in the Ohio River Valley, and I doubt anyone is much interested in that.  That’s a picture of '”the pile” I’m working on.  The only one I’ve finished is Elusive Empires by Erik Hinderaker which came out in 1997 but I hadn’t yet read. Starting with the culture of the Mississippian Indians (the mound builders) he works his way through the refugees from the Iroquois wars, the French entering the Illinois Country and the Ohio Valley through Detroit and the English entering through Pennsylvania and Virginia.  It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know but it was an excellent overview of the history and put much in a timeline perspective.  Although it seemed to lean more heavily on the “American” side of the history than on the French, it was much more balanced than many other histories. 

The others I’m reading more or less simultaneously as the spirit moves me.  The New Peoples edited by Jacqueline Peterson isn’t really about the Ohio Valley.  These appear to be papers written by participants at the first international Conference on the Metis in North America, hosted by the Newberry Library in Chicago.  But since some of the peoples of the Ohio Valley (especially on the French side) were metis, I thought it fit into the bunch.  Metis means “mixed” and literally the metis people were children of europeans and native americans. 

Chasing Empire Across the Sea, by Kenneth J. Banks is about communications in the 18th Century between France and her American colonies, including the French Caribbean.  Communication between France and Canada was limited by the freezing of the St. Lawrence River each winter.  Communication between France and the West Indies was relatively simple.  Surprisingly, communication with Louisiana was the slowest because it was the longest distance and the journey up the Mississippi to New Orleans was treacherous.  This book is full of a wealth of information that I’m slowly digesting. 

The Ohio Valley in Colonial Days by Berthold Fernow is a reprint of a book published in 1890 and written by the custodian of the State Archives of New York.  I haven’t started it yet but I never discount books because they are old, especially when they are written by someone who has access to an archive. The language is sometimes florid but there is often good information to be had.

Finally, there is The French and Indian War by Walter R. Borneman, published in 2006.  I’ve read much about that portion of the great world war known in Europe as the Seven Years War. But I never get enough. 

As far as fiction goes, despite my desire to start a new mystery series I’ve been catching up on old friends.  I just read This Body of Death by Elizabeth George and all I have to say is … Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.   Alcoholics are not people you want to mess around with.   I also read The Judgment of Caesar and am now reading The Triumph of Caesar, both by Steven Saylor and featuring Gordianus the Finder.   Don’t know how I fell behind by two books on that series.  Probably because my local library is always late on getting the next one.   I know my Roman History enough to know that Caesar comes to a bad end.  Beware the Ides … and all that.

And I’m still working on Eliza Fay’s Letters from India.   She’s finally reached India after many, many adventures.  In some ways it’s hard to remember that this isn’t a novel.

I Stand with Stan

Stan Musial, the greatest Cardinals player of all time, will turn 90 in November.  The St. Louis Cardinals Organization are organizing a “grassroots” campaign to convince President Obama to give Stan the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States.  Yeah, I know.  It can’t really be grass roots if it’s organized by a corporation, but I signed the petition anyway.

Stan Musial is an old fashioned baseball legend, a guy who was with one team and who has stayed loyal. And he was a great player, a career .331 hitter with seven NL batting titles.  It’s hard to get attached to baseball players these days, they might leave for more money.  But Stan?  He’s always been part of St. Louis:

Though Musial left the playing field, he never left his fans. He stayed put in his adopted city, lending his good name to good causes -- from Old Newsboy Days and the Easter Seal Society to the current fundraising campaign to renovate the Soldiers Memorial. Ask St. Louisans about Stan the Man, and they might tell you about the time they shook his hand in a restaurant or heard him play his harmonica with members of the St. Louis Symphony.

Yes.  You can run into him anywhere.  I’ve seen him at the airport and at church.   It’s a bit harder these days, he’s getting older and doesn’t get out as much.  But he still shows up for big days at the ballpark.

It was Senator Kit Bond’s idea that Stan should be honored and this is one thing I agree with Senator Bond on.   "Throughout his life, Stan has never sought recognition for his good works. His happiness comes from doing the right thing and bringing joy to others,'' wrote Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. in his nominating letter. "While Stan does not know of our efforts to nominate him for this honor, we respectfully request your consideration as Stan has been a true role model -- exemplifying the humility, grace and generosity we so desperately need to see in our American sports heroes.''

Whether Stan gets the nod from President Obama or not, he’ll always be The Man to us here in St. Louis.

Stan Musial:

* Spent his entire 22-year Major League baseball career as a Cardinal, establishing a National League record for most seasons with one club

* Most Valuable Player in the National League: 1943, 1946, 1948

* Career batting average: .331. He won seven NL batting titles

* Hit five homeruns in a May 2, 1954, doubleheader vs. the New York Giants

* Played on World Series championship teams in 1942, 1944 and 1946 and the pennant-winner in 1943

* When he retired on Sept. 29, 1963, he was ranked first in NL history in hits (3,630) and home runs (475)

* His nickname grew out of unhappy Brooklyn Dodgers fans complaining about his hitting, as in: "Here comes 'that man' again.''

* Was Cardinals general manager for one season, 1967, when the team beat Boston in the World Series

* Recipient of the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award in 1957 for exemplifying good character

* Named to Major League Baseball's All-Century team in 1999

* Appointed as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964

* Elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969, his first year of eligibility

* Served as chairman of the Crippled Children's Society of St. Louis for 20 years and on boards of organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, the USO, Senior Olympics and Muscular Dystrophy Association

* Served as an unofficial ambassador of goodwill to Poland during the Cold War years. In the late 1980s, Musial, the son of a Polish immigrant, sent thousands of dollars worth of baseball equipment at his own expense to children in Kutno, Poland.

Source: The St. Louis Cardinals

Land of Lincoln

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.  I had lots to do and not enough time to do it.  And I had the hay fever/allergy cough that so many people seem to have right now.   But.  Enough whining.

I spent last weekend in beautiful Springfield, Illinois, seasonal home of the Illinois legislature and permanent home of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Although I’ve driven through Springfield dozens of times I’ve only stopped in Springfield once for something business related.  I had never seen any of the Lincoln sites.  I’m not sure why.  Most kids from St. Louis get there for a field trip at some point in their school careers.  But I never did.

It turned out to be a great trip.  Springfield is only 90 miles from St. Louis so even accounting for bridge traffic and Friday night rush hour it is an easy trip. The Museum is easy to find, there are signs everywhere and a huge tourist parking garage about a block away.  And the museum?   It is easily one of the best history museums I’ve ever been to.  It has only been open since 2005 so it is a new experience for almost everyone.

I don’t have any photos from inside the museum because they are prohibited except in the “Plaza” area.  The Plaza is the central area from which you enter the various exhibits.  On one side is a replica of the log cabin that Lincoln grew up in and on the other is the facade of the White House.  There are life size Madame Tussaud style figures of Lincoln and his family in the center of the Plaza and visitors stop to take pictures of each other with the Lincoln Family before cameras have to be put away.

The purpose of the Museum is to give the visitor an overview of Lincoln’s life and of the times in which he lived.  It is an entire city block big and it is an interactive museum – state-of-the art doesn’t even begin to describe it.  For instance, one exhibit is a room where the visitors can sit on benches and watch film of a historian answering questions about Lincoln.  The question pops up and then the historian comes on with an answer.  At first I thought this was a nice place to rest while waiting for others.  Then I realized that there was a computer terminal and the visitor could “ask” the questions.  A menu gave categories of questions and lists of questions within every category.   So, for instance, you can ask what Lincoln believed “liberty” meant.  Or any other question that interests you. 

The actual museum is divided into two parts.  For some reason we did them out of order but it didn’t really matter. Part I is entered through the Log Cabin and takes you through the early years of Lincoln’s life.  The museum recreates, for instance, a room in Lincoln’s law office in Springfield to show what it was like.  Like most law offices it was full of piles of papers.  Figures of Lincoln’s sons, Willie and Tad, are shown running wild through the office giving life to the description of Lincoln as being a “permissive” parent.  Lincoln’s courtship of Mary Todd is represented.  The 1860 campaign is represented through a modern media room where Tim Russert is reporting on the campaign as if it is a modern day campaign.  

Part II is entered through the White House facade and took us through the presidential years, the war and Lincoln’s death.  One particularly effective display shows Lincoln standing at his desk contemplating the Emancipation Proclamation.  On the wall behind him you can see shadows coming and going as “people” approach to tell Lincoln what they thought.  And you hear their voices – angry, emphatic.  No one was pleased.  It went too far.  It didn’t go far enough.

The last room in this exhibit is a complete recreation of Representative’s Hall in the Old State Capitol with Lincoln’s casket lying in state as the visitors pass by.  It sounds odd but it is really quite touching and you really do feel as if you are paying your own last respects to him.

There are also two theaters.  One uses holograms to explain why it’s important to study history and especially this history.  This other is a film about Lincoln that uses multiple special effects. 

We had a great time exploring the museum and the best part was that it wasn’t one of those museums where you spend the entire day, end up exhausted and still haven’t seen everything.  We were there about three hours and then we left and went to lunch and do other things. 

For lunch I tried a specialty of Springfield – a Horseshoe Sandwich.  Then it was on to the Old State Capitol:

Inside there were re-enactors including the “president elect and his wife” who were “accepting visitors”.  Those kinds of things can be cheesy but these actors did a great job and were completely in character the entire time.

We decided to skip the Lincoln Home and the Law Office and go see Springfield’s only Frank Lloyd Wright home instead.  But the next day, before we left for home, we stopped at the cemetery to see the Lincoln Tomb and pet the nose of the Lincoln bust out front for good luck:

Then it was back home.  But I intend to go back and see that museum again and maybe some of the other historical LIncoln “stuff” that I missed this time.

A Little Night Music

The Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music is probably the strangest production of that show that I’ve ever seen. Isaac Mizrahi is the director and also designed the sets and costumes. In the trailer for the production, he says that the year he first saw A Little Night Music he was also working on a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and they got muddled in his mind. So when asked to do this production he went with the muddle. And it worked. Although it is really hard to explain.

Act I takes place in three locations: at the town home of a lawyer and his wife, at a theater and at the home of a dragoon and his wife. Act II takes place at a country home. But this production takes place in the woods. The floor is covered with grass, there are trees in which people sit, and furniture is moved in and out to suggest inside locations. The chorus (a quintet) who are usually dressed as servants or other household supernumeraries are, in this production, dressed in odd little costumes that look like, but aren’t quite, underwear. And they have little puck-like wings on their backs. Strange. But it worked! The set production was delightful. It might have been better on a stage that revolved because moving all the furniture in and out was cumbersome. But it never took too long, and we usually got to listen to the quintet sing (and flit around in the trees) while things were being moved.

The main characters are still the main characters and they do nothing strange with their performances. Fredrik Egerman is married to his very young, very beautiful second wife, Anne. Who is still a virgin after 11 months of marriage. Who is also the object of desire of Fredrik’s son Henrik. Fredrik and Anne attend a theatre performance starring Desiree Armfeld who, it turns out, is Fredrik’s old flame. There are still sparks between Desiree and Fredrik but she is involved with a married dragoon who has an abused wife, Charlotte, who loves and hates him. Desiree thinks maybe she’s at a point in her life where she should settle down. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Fredrik go all those years ago. So she engineers a weekend at her mother’s country estate to see what will happen. I won’t go into everything that happens.

There was nothing odd about the performance of any of these roles. What was odd, however, was the combination of actors and singers. I know, you’re thinking, there are always combinations of actors and singers in musicals. Yes. But not in operas. Not generally. In operas everyone is a singer and we live in hope that they can also act. And we don’t notice too much when they can’t. But here we had an opera production starring … Amy Irving – yes, the movie star and broadway actress Amy Irving who sings in the production but isn’t, herself, a singer. Surrounded by opera singers. So it was all just slightly … out of balance. But not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the evening.

Amy Irving was a low-key but completely believable Desiree Armfeld and Send in the Clowns doesn’t really depend on vocal abilities anyway, it depends on an actress who can carry off the pathos. Sian Phillips, another actress who is not an opera singer, played Mdm. Amfeld with just the right acerbic note. But since this was an opera production it was very noticeable that they each could do no more than carry a tune, whereas in a “normal” production of this show it might not have been so noticeable.

Christopher Herbert, an opera singer who can act, was however, a very believable Fredrik Egerman, with a delightful full voice. His duet with tenor Lee Gregory (another opera singer who can act), as the dragoon Carl-Magnus Malcom, was a highlight of Act II. Herbert and Amy Irving had enough chemistry to make their relationship work for the audience. Gregory was good enough with comedy to make Carl-Magnus a comic terror.

Amanda Squitieri (playing Anne Egerman) and Erin Holland (playing Charlotte Malcom) had beautiful voices and their duet in Act I was a highlight. Both were decent enough actresses that in an ordinary opera production I might be complimenting their acting performances. But here, in comparison with the acting of Irving and Phillips, they were merely adequate. Squitieri seemed a little too old to be a believable Anne (and seemed to be robbing the cradle with Henrik) and Holland wasn’t a good enough actress to blend the pathos and comedy of the role of Charlotte. She mostly just seemed cranky. But it didn’t really matter because there is so much going on in this show that their scenes would sweep into the next scene before their acting could slow down the performance.

From an opera perspective, the quintet of supernumeraries was the best part of the production. They are part of Opera Theatre’s young artist program and they were delightful.

The only thing I really didn’t like about the show was that it was miked.

Really. That was the only thing I really didn’t like. At the end we all said to each other … I liked that!

Then we added … but I hope they got this out of their system and don’t do anything like it again.

It’s hard to explain why. I did like it. Really. I’m glad they tried it. I’m glad I saw it. It’s just that I’ve seen better productions of A Little Night Music. In fact, I saw a production of A Little Night Music on the exact same stage ten years ago done by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis that was the best production I’ve ever seen. Maybe that affected my perspective.

But also, it just wasn’t a show that lent itself well to opera.

It isn’t that I don’t think opera companies can’t or shouldn’t do musical productions. I just think this particular show isn’t a good choice because the character who is the linchpin of the entire plot is required to be an actress first and foremost and doesn’t necessarily need to be able to sing well. As I said, it threw the production out of balance.

Maybe they could try Carousel. Or Phantom of the Opera. Or even Sweeney Todd. If they really want to do musical comedy.

But … and yes here is where I’m going to whine. Just a little bit. Opera season is very short. There are only four productions a year. Five miles away, across the city, in the middle of Forest Park, is an outdoor ampitheatre where The Municipal Opera Association (the MUNY) puts on an entire summer of musical comedies. And during the fall, winter and spring months, the FOX brings in touring companies doing … musical comedies. Wicked is playing right now. And the Rep always does at least one musical. As does The Black Rep.

I love musical comedy. It sends me out humming and singing. This production of A Little Night Music sent me out humming and singing. But it isn’t as if there is a dearth of musical comedy in St. Louis . There is no musical comedy void that needs to be filled.

So maybe OTSL should stick with what they do best – opera. Because there is not nearly enough opera in St. Louis.

Here is the trailer for a taste.