TAKE NOTE

Lise Lindstrom as Turandot in Cleveland Opera’s 2006 production of Turandot.A strong showing for opera in Cleveland
By Laura Kennelly
Photos by Roger Mastroianni

Franz Welser-Möst can’t remember the first time he heard Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. The piece arrives here in June when the Cleveland Orchestra presents it as the latest in the enormously popular annual dish of “operas in concert” (established when Welser-Möst became music director five seasons ago). “As an Austrian,you sort of grow up with Der Rosenkavalier, like you grow up with Don Giovanni and Figaro and Magic Flute,” explains Welser-Möst from Cleveland (just before jetting off to join the Zurich Opera, where he is general music director). No television re-runs for little Franz and his siblings while growing up in Linz, just culture with a capital C.

“From an early age,” he says, “I knew that opera. It sticks with you. I think it’s one of the very best theatrical pieces in opera history, and it shows that, simply because it has gone into the repertory of basically any opera house in this world. It has been played many millions of times, and people just fall in love with it.”

He is not being a snob about it, though. Opera was just what one did in Linz, a ritual pleasure, like going to see the Indians or Browns – or the Cleveland Orchestra – here. “I’m always optimistic,” he says. “It’s never too late [to love opera].” Slipping into idiomatic English, he cites as evidence what happened to good friends of his in Cleveland when the couple agreed to hear Wagner’s monumental Die Walküre in concert for the first time.

Franz Welser-Möst
celebrates his fifth season
with an Austrian favorite

The sound of opera:
courtesy of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Taking it all in:
the Cleveland Orchestra,
framed by a rapt audience.

Welser-Möst doesn’t see that as just the response of a woman in love. “For me, [her reaction] was a clear sign that at any age, you can get hooked on these things and they really transform you.” (As an aside, he mentions to me that he’ll be doing Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle – four operas – at the Vienna State Opera. “You should come,” he says. I wish.)

But back to Der Rosenkavalier: “People should not be scared with Der Rosenkavalier [because] it takes longer than the normal concert.That’s one of the magic sides of opera – it just takes you with it, and you just get carried away by it, and all of a sudden it’s over, and you wonder where time went.”

He agrees that time certainly flies for him, because he’s busy conducting orchestra and soloists, but for the audience he says, “The architecture in these masterpieces is so great – that’s one of the secrets – time isn’t relevant when you sit there. The way Der Rosenkavalier is built, with all the humor and all the melancholy, it sort of aims to that famous [concluding] trio. You have to wait for it and at the same time, waiting for that is very short. It is one of the most magic pieces in opera, absolutely.”

That the magical work will be sung in German (with English surtitles) won’t be a problem, he says. “What people should be aware of is, even though it’s in a foreign language, everyone has enough imagination so that they will hear all the emotion. So they shouldn’t be afraid and saying, ‘Oh my God, I don’t speak German!’ If they just listen to it and use their imagination, they get the entire drama in the music.”

Set in the 18th century, the comic opera Der Rosenkavalier was first produced in 1911. Coming shortly after Strauss’ blood-curdling Salome, which features a kiss for a chopped-off head, it seems positively wholesome fluff, all lilting melodic lines and courtly stylish flirting. Often compared to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, it treats high society with a light hand. The story turns on a love triangle between a Marschallin – sort of a “Mrs. Field Marshall”; her young lover, a comely lad of 17 named Octavian (a role always sung by a woman); and the luscious Sophie, a lass of 15. There’s also the buffoonish Baron Ochs, who wants to marry Sophie for her fortune, plus a number of hangers-on. The “Rosenkavalier” of the title is supposed to be the young squire, who carries a rose to Sophie as a traditional gift from her husband-to-be, the Baron Ochs. Complications, of course, ensue.

Welser-Möst said that as a very young man he enjoyed the character of the ladies’ man the Baron Ochs the most.“ He’s a little bit macho, and he’s a chauvinist, but at the same time, he’s great. He’s clever in a certain way – he’s clever like the way farmers are, people of the countryside.”

The Marschallin’s aria at the end of act one still holds appeal for Welser-Möst today. “[It’s about] how she wants to hold the clock, about the time and how it passes all of a sudden.” He admits that: “When I was 20 I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I’d like to go directly from 20 to 60 – avoiding all that hassle in between.’” These days, he doesn’t feel quite the same way.

Welser-Möst firmly believes that thanks to great music, time’s passing doesn’t have to mean the end of joy. “If you don’t grow old too early, you can be 80 and you can be young. You can be open to the world and learn something. I believe very strongly that it’s never too late.”

Lyric Opera Cleveland’s Little Women.Wanted: Opera lovers
By Laura Kennelly
Photos by Steven Zorc

Opera Cleveland’s new executive director hopes audiences will embrace his company as part of a great city

Maybe the devil didn’t make him do it. Charles Gounod’s opera Faust – in which the devil plays a big part – first exposed Opera Cleveland’s new executive director Jeff Sodowsky to opera’s charms. Originally a dancer also interested in drama and voice, Sodowsky discovered while working on a University of Oklahoma production of Faust just how grand opera could be.

“I started to put it all together,” he says of his discovery that opera combined the arts he loved. “It opened a whole new world for me – 450 years of operatic literature for me to experience.”

Today, coming off eight years as director of development with Kentucky Opera, Sodowsky feels quite at home in opera’s super-charged dramatic and musical territory. He’s excited about working in Cleveland, a city with big opera potential that already has a crowd that “will go [to the opera] every time you open the door,” says Sodowsky. There are also plenty who might love it once they get past the intimidation factor.

Sodowsky believes opera buffs may unintentionally scare off new converts, as opera fans are the most passionate fans of all – even more so than sports fans. “Opera has a bad rep for people who haven’t experienced it,” he says.“People don’t have to understand the melodic themes in the second oboe to love opera,” though he does admit it takes courage to cross the theater threshold for the first time. Ultimately, Sodowsky wants to create a “comfortable point of entry” for newcomers.

“It helps to know that today opera is about exceptional theater,” he says. “It’s a multisensory experience that you don’t get with other forms. You have this incredible symphonic sound, you’ve got these phenomenal voices. It is athleticism to the utmost … It’s amazing when you think of these tiny little [vocal chords] filling multi-seat theaters with no amplification.” He adds that opera also has an interesting story and visual spectacle. “The days of ‘park and bark’ are over,” he says, referring to opera’s early days,when stout singers merely stood on stage while the audience pretended they were beautiful women or dashing heroes.

Sodowsky knows there are audience-building challenges ahead for the newly formed company (Opera Cleveland resulted from the combination of Cleveland Opera and Lyric Opera Cleveland), but he points with pride to existing programs that bring opera to the schools. He notes that in one outreach this year, more than a dozen elementary schools are involved in working with artists-in-residence who are teaching children Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. At Hinckley Elementary School, he recounts, the whole school produced an opera about a scientific theory. These programs and others like them, including those focused on adults, can exponentially build audiences.

The challenge for Opera Cleveland, according to Sodowsky, is to integrate the strengths of both previous companies. Opera management must “try and match what size opera company Cleveland can support, with an operation that parallels that support. That’s [something] that doesn’t happen overnight.” In the end, he says, “Cities have the arts communities they fight for. Right now, Clevelanders will have to define what they value having in the city.” Almost offhandedly,he adds,“There are no great cities in the United States that don’t have opera companies.”

So what is the executive director’s advice for the novice who decides, on a whim, to take in Opera Cleveland’s first production, Richard Strauss’ Salome, this month? “I like to go into an opera and just experience it fresh,” says Sodowsky. He notes that director Jeannette Aster’s take on the work based on the New Testament – and turned into an erotic horror story by Oscar Wilde – makes sense in today’s terms. “It’s a dysfunctional family.”

When 15-year-old Salome hears John the Baptist condemning her parents, “She thinks, ‘Oh. My. God. Here’s someone talking about my parents in the way that I feel.’” Then, the roller coaster ride begins. At opera’s end, Salome’s dance of the seven veils causes two men to lose their heads: one, John the Baptist, quite literally; the other, decadent King Herod, merely figuratively.

Soprano Lise Lindstrom (who thrilled opera goers in Cleveland last spring in the title role of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot) says she’s been working out since last summer to get ready to be Salome. She compares the role to running a marathon, and then some. “It’s very aerobic and gymnastic in the sense that your entire physical self is involved all the time,” she says. Will she dance nude? “That’s up to the director.”

Lindstrom believes it’s not the nudity that makes for sensational opera, but the appalling story. “It’s this monstrous character and the situation, which is so dramatically strong.” Sensational staging or no, she finds the role fascinating and complex. “I don’t think Salome’s completely cuckoo all the way; there’s something ‘not right’ about the wiring. She’s had way too much way too early, but she has no life information to base things on.”

Stephen Powell, last seen in Cleveland Opera productions of Eugene Onegin and Sweeny Todd in 2005, will play Jokanaan (John the Baptist), the man who attracted Salome’s fatal passion. As the conflict between Salome, who can’t take no for an answer, and the prophet, who refuses her, moves to its inexorable ending, don’t be surprised to experience what Lindstrom describes as “dissonance that gets your body uncomfortable in your seat, ”mixed with intervals of “the most tonal, delicious phrases in the world.”

Opening night is Friday, April 20 at 8 p.m. at the State Theatre, with additional showings April 22 and 28. Other performances this season include Verdi’s La Traviata, opening June 15; Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, opening July 11; Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, opening August 10; and Puccini’s Tosca, opening October 19. Single tickets are $25 to $135 and may be purchased online at www.operacleveland. org, or by phone at 216-241-6000 or 800-766-6048.

Top Bach

Nobody did a weekly countdown of the biggest hits during J.S. Bach’s day, but he was a chart-topper – and still is. This year’s Bach Festival at Baldwin-Wallace College is number one with a bullet for several reasons, which we’ve listed below. The most compelling, however, is that at 75, the festival is building for a big future. Want proof? This year, even Bach buffs unwilling to cross the Cuyahoga River can participate: the performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor will take place at Severance Hall on Saturday, April 21 at 2:30 p.m. East siders, rejoice.

1. The Music Critics' Panel

Moderated by The Plain Dealer’s Don Rosenberg, this panel includes critics from The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Daily News and Dallas Morning News. The sparks fly on Saturday, April 21 at 9:30 a.m. at BW’s Gamble Auditorium.

2. Dave Brubeck

The jazz legend traces much of his inspiration to the music of J.S. Bach, and his presence at the festival widens the event’s appeal to an entirely new audience. The Dave Brubeck Quartet performs Sunday, April 22, at B-W’s Gamble Auditorium.

3. Free Public Events

The festival kicks off on Friday, April 20, when visitors can experience the Riemenschneider Bach Institute Open House on the main floor of B-W’s Merner-Pfeiffer Hall, room 105, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.; at 3:15 p.m., the B-W Festival Brass Choir performs at the college’s Marting Hall Tower, John Brndiar conducting. On Sunday, April 22 at 11:15 a.m., the United Methodist Church of Berea will play host to a Bach service that’s open to all.

4. Tradition

In 1932, inspired by the Bach festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Albert and Selma Riemenschneider established the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival, which has grown into an annual event attracting visitors from all over the country and performers from around the world. Albert – who somewhat reluctantly came to his post as music instructor and eventually head of the department – soon found himself under the spell of J.S. Bach’s work,and saved his money to invest in Bach manuscripts. These purchases were the basis of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute.

5. The Bach Choir of Bethlehem

The oldest American Bach choir, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) was founded in 1898 and gave the first complete American performances of Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. Under the direction of Greg Funfgeld, the choir’s 95 volunteer singers have a repertory of 133 Bach cantatas, all of the motets and 15 larger works. The choir performs Bach’s Mass in B Minor on Saturday, April 21, 2:30 p.m. at Severance Hall.

6. Staying Power

Arlene E. Kadel, a 1936 B-W graduate and retired vocal teacher, has sung in or attended every one of the Bach Festivals to date. Another alumnae, 1943 graduate Jean Unnewehr Putnam of Yellow Springs, Ohio, has also attended all of the festivals. Now that’s dedication – and good reason for you to discover what keeps people coming back.

For more details on the 75th Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival, visit www.bw.edu or call the school’s box office at 440-826-2207. Some events are sold out; ask about ticket returns or a waiting list. Subscriptions to the Bach Festival are typically sold year-round, so plan ahead for next year.

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