Tag: Miriam Gordon-Stewart

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PICK: UNSUNG

Publicity Photo

Phoning in the overture: When Victory Hall Opera’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata was canceled, the cast turned to their iPhones—but not for pandemic-induced doom scrolling. Instead, they collaborated on filming UNSUNG, the first feature film made by and about opera singers. In it, the cast navigates the challenges of life during a pandemic, and searches for ways to remain connected to the music they love. The result is a testament to artistic courage in the face of unprecedented obstacles. “It is crucial that these stories be heard; the stories of singers whose calling and life’s work has been banned in the time of COVID, with singing suddenly feared as a virus-spreading danger,” says VHO’s Miriam Gordon-Stewart. The film premieres on-demand, with a live recording of a chamber version of the opera soundtrack available through iTunes.

Saturday 2/27, $10 to stream. victoryhallopera.org.

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Lost and found: Victory Hall Opera explores boundaries in The Forgotten

Victory Hall Opera’s The Forgotten merges two scary operas into a modern fairy tale of cultural exploration. Photo by Celena Cox, courtesy Victory Hall Opera

The story of “Hansel and Gretel” is a familiar one: the hungry children of a poor woodcutter are lost in the woods when they stumble upon a house made of gingerbread and sweets, enticing to their eyes and empty bellies.

The house belongs to a witch who lures the children inside and captures them, intending to fatten them up so she can roast and eat them later. But Hansel and Gretel outwit the witch (who perishes in her own fiery oven), and the children stuff their pockets with the witch’s jewels and treasure before finding their way home.

Like most folklore and fairy tales, “Hansel and Gretel” has been adapted many times, in many languages, each version differing slightly from the next. This week at Light House Studio, the Charlottesville-based Victory Hall Opera adapts Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera Hänsel und Gretel into an experimental version of the story, one that considers modern anxieties about the self and the other, about innocence lost and awareness found.

Inspired by the Halloween zeitgeist that captures imaginations at this time of year, VHO wanted to stage an opera with “genuinely scary material” for its fall production, says VHO artistic director Miriam Gordon-Stewart. Hänsel und Gretel was one choice. Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium is another.

Written and set in the wake of World War II, The Medium is a two-act tragic opera about a fraudulent psychic (Baba) who ropes her daughter (Monica) and a mute servant (Toby) into leading grieving clients through fake séances. During one séance, Baba has an experience she cannot explain; it terrifies her and drives her mad.

Gordon-Stewart and Brenda Patterson, VHO director of music, noticed similarities between the two operas: Both are fairy tales with a boy and a girl as lead characters. “A fairy tale has never really been about ghosts or witches. It’s always been about the ‘other,’” says Gordon-Stewart. Another point of convergence: Both could be set in the woods—in our woods.

Gordon-Stewart and Patterson weave strands of each opera together into a single production called The Forgotten, drawing the first part from Hänsel und Gretel and the second from The Medium. The actors who sing Hansel and Gretel (Patterson, a mezzo-soprano, and Nancy Allen Lundy, a soprano based in New York state) also sing Toby and Monica, respectively, and other actors double up on roles as well.

In The Forgotten, Hansel and Gretel are overprotected, privileged, smartphone-obsessed private school kids living in a luxury housing development on the outskirts of Charlottesville. When they’re sent into the nearby woods, it’s the first time they’re out of their highly-controlled environment: They are “completely mystified” by being in nature and being unsupervised, says Gordon-Stewart.

In the production, the woods serves as a meeting place for two seemingly disparate worlds. The idea is that if you walk through the woods of Charlottesville, you might end up in the county, and possibly meet someone who has a very different experience of living in Virginia, says Gordon-Stewart. “I think we’re all aware of the fact that Charlottesville is a bubble within a very different culture…and I think there are a lot of fears, from both sides of the border, about that,” she says.

Lundy, who sings Gretel and Monica, appreciates the “very, very creative” approach VHO has taken in exploring this theme that has both immediate and global implications. She relishes the depth the narrative gives to her characters, particularly Monica, who, Lundy says can come off as “trite, girly, and silly.” In The Forgotten, Lundy feels Monica’s devastating arias so deeply she says she barely has to do any acting.

VHO has also incorporated elements of the Charlottesville area’s own (and true) fraudulent psychic story into The Forgotten. For a while, Sandra Stevenson Marks claimed to be a psychic and offered “Readings by Catherine,” including palm, tarot, astrological, and spiritual readings, from a rented house on Route 29. She knowingly stole more than $2 million from five people, pleaded guilty to the charges brought against her, and in November 2016 was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Gordon-Stewart wanted to add a bit of “genuine magic” and a truly supernatural atmosphere to The Forgotten, and so VHO asked Light House Studio filmmakers—who are about the same age as the Hansel, Gretel, Monica, and Toby characters—to create films about the woods that are part of the production, along with the score from the live chamber orchestra.

Just as The Forgotten explores fears of difference, the unfamiliar and the unknown, so does VHO. The company does not deliver expected opera performances, says Gordon-Stewart, and that’s the point. “In order for audiences to really engage, to really genuinely feel something in the theater, they have to be disarmed,” she says. “They have to experience something unexpected, and if I’m giving them what they expect, then there is part of them that is not awake.”

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VHO’s Sympathy was centuries in the making

Victory Hall Opera’s Sympathy, based on Jean-Philippe Rameau’s La Sympathie, took more than 250 years to come to the stage. L to R: Ted Schmitz (Acante), Rachelle Durkin (Céphise), Sarah Wolfson (Zirphile) and Jorell Williams (Génie) are surrounded by Michael Golez, Valdon Daniel and Ana Lorenza, members of the Forte Dance Crew. Photo by Martyn Kyle

I’ll be honest: I’m not really an opera person.

Until this weekend, I assumed opera consisted of people in fancy outfits belting overwrought, angst-ridden songs in foreign languages before dying on stage. And while I’m terribly impressed by the skill and talent required to fine-tune the operatic “instrument,” I am not the most qualified person to write a review of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Sympathy, the latest production by Victory Hall Opera.

But Charlottesville-based VHO is a company for people who don’t go to the opera. Actually, it’s for newbies and veterans alike, which explains how I wound up having this conversation with a stranger during intermission: “French Baroque shows are very unusual. You rarely see them performed,” said a bespectacled man who stood next to me. “I drove all the way down from Maryland to see this.”

Sympathy
The Haven
November 3

Though it may be lost on certain locals (cough), VHO is an anomaly in the opera world, drawing top talent from across the planet with its distinctive model of ensemble-led “indie opera for the people.” Miriam Gordon-Stewart, the director of Sympathy, is not only a co-founder and artistic director of the opera, but an internationally recognized singer as well.

Sympathy itself is a remarkable show. As Brenda Patterson, VHO’s director of music, writes in the playbill, “we believe these are the first professionally staged performances of [Jean-Philippe Rameau’s La Sympathie] since it was written in 1751.”

Can you imagine? A Baroque opera writer composes a whimsical story to celebrate the birth of a duke…and it pops up in Charlottesville, 266 years later.

“You rarely see this period on stage,” explained my compatriot, “because 18th- century French is difficult. It requires specialized singers. You know, ones who can make the words sound like clouds floating across the sky.”

Though cumulus aesthetic is lost on me, I was aware that the singers are excellent, and the entire show feels relevant, interesting and—dare I say it?—entertaining.

Sympathy tells the story of Céphise, the female half of a picture-perfect couple, who doubles down on her commitment to her partner, Acante, after realizing she’s attracted to their neighbor, Génie. Céphise and Acante seek the help of Zirphile, a celebrity therapist and relationship healer, who casts a spell that causes each to feel the emotions, and echo the movements, of the other. Hilarity, frustration and self-realization ensue.

In VHO’s clever retelling, Céphise and Acante wear matching footie pajamas and trot around town in unison, locked in their devotion to farmers markets, mindful eating and each other. But when Acante isn’t looking, Céphise dives outside for a cigarette. Clearly, she’s stifled and ready for sin. Then her neighbor offers her a handful of potato chips and all bets are off.

The show itself is short, which was a welcome surprise for this impatient viewer. Though plot twists didn’t unfold as quickly as I hoped, the pacing allowed me to slow down and appreciate art constructed for audiences more than 250 years ago.

Gordon-Stewart’s direction uses physical comedy to fill in the blanks between and during songs. Even the translation of Rameau’s lyrics, cast on a projection screen, are brief and quippy. (I doubt that Génie’s prayers literally translate to “I’m a son of God like you, I know how to man up,” but that’s what VHO gives us.)

Clever props, contemporary costumes and colorful murals paint an ultra-modern picture of guru worship, romantic obsession and a Whole Foods-fueled quest for moral purity that strangles authentic happiness.

I especially liked the ensemble—all talented singers in their own right—acting as vocal observers of the central love triangle. Some even wore Acante and Génie shirts. Watching both sides cheer its respective hero, I was reminded of shows like “The Bachelor” and “The Voice,” where the intimate passion of strangers becomes a spectator sport. Hilarious yet disturbing, no?

Rachelle Durkin, who plays Céphise, walks a wonderful line between independent lady and guilt-ridden, empathic lover.

Though I struggled to hear him consistently, Ted Schmitz’s Acante nailed the look and energy of That Well-Meaning Yet Navel-Gazing Boyfriend Who Loves You But Refuses to Ask Directions When You’re Clearly Lost.

Jorell Williams, who plays Génie, has a voice and presence that’s powerful and truly moving. (I was Team Génie, obviously.)

Sarah Wolfson, playing self-aware sexpot-slash-relationship coach Zirphile, relishes her rising fame with polished expectation and enough gusto.

And I really loved the comedic timing of Patterson, who used her few lines as The Grand Priestess to enliven a lagging second act.

Throughout Sympathy, a chorus of hip-hop dancers—the Forte Dance Crew—appear in casual street clothes to underscore emotional turbulence between characters. Not only did Maria Daniel’s choreography expand the storytelling (and my brain), it gave me a chance to soak up the beauty of the music, performed by ensemble-in-residence the Early Music Access Project, and expertly conducted by Christine Brandes.

I walked away from Sympathy feeling a little confused. Not just because the end surprised me, or because I kept wondering what Rameau’s lyrics actually said, but because when you’re a goldfish peering outside the bowl, you become dimly aware that an entire world exists beyond what you can see. I may never become a hardcore opera fan, but VHO has officially opened my eyes—and allowed me to enjoy the experience.