Quickies Down Under
Last week on the day before Valentine’s Leo and I slithered over to the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge for a quickie, and boy what a delight that was! Yes, Opera Boston’s Music Director, Gil Rose hosted and conducted a talented bunch of young singers in four, nine minute operas at the lounge. This was an Opera Boston Underground event geared towards cultivating a younger audience but they graciously allowed us aging beauties to squeeze in with a minimum amount of kow towing.
The Lizard Lounge is, as you probably know, a cozy little nook down stairs from The Cambridge Common restaurant. I had never been to Lizard before but I love cabaret night clubs so I was psyched. The joint is tiny and at first I was scratching my head wondering how Maestro Gil was gonna pull this one off. So I repaired to the bar where a cheery duo of mixologists shook the shaker and poured me a perfect Manhattan which went a long way to settling me down. I chatted pleasantly with Carole Charnow, (General Director of O.P.) and Will Chapman, (Director of marketing) as we watched Gillian Morrison and Stephen Libby (O.P. staffers) oil the wheels of the evening, enabling the event to roll on smoothly. I might add that the lovely Gillian was looking especially foxy as she graciously tended to the fans squeezing down the stairs.
The curtain went up on a zippy little ditty by Lukas Foss, Introductions and Good-byes, libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti This consisted of a host (Brian Church) of a typical cocktail party madly singing hellos and good-byes with a group of four guests( Sol Kim Bentley, Glorivy Arroyo, Christian Figueroa, and Sepp Hammer). Somehow these five gifted singers with flawless professional voices enacted a fully developed party; arrival, conversation and departure all in nine minutes.
The next opera was Menotti’s The telephone which you will remember consists of a girl,(Sol Kim Bentley) glued to her phone chattering up a storm while her boyfriend, (Dan Kamalic) drops by to propose. But he can’t get a word in edgewise until he leaves her apartment and calls back from outside. This proves my point that, “the only important person to talk with, is the one who isn’t there.” The frightening thing about this modern dilemma is that the opera was written forty plus years ago proving that cell phones are only the latest manifestation of phone gluttony.
Photo by Iory
"Pamela", Angela Gooch and "Antonio" Christian Figueroa in "Broken Pieces"
The last opera, Broken Pieces, music by Daron Hagen and Libretto by Barbara Grecki was a delicate interaction between Pamela, (Angela Gooch) a lonely divorcee living with her cat and Antonio, (Christian Figueroa). Antonio is a bathroom tile man for whom Pamela has been waiting, seemingly forever, to do some work at her apartment. This unlikely duo has a flirtation which accentuates the loneliness of their separate lives.
In all four operas the singing was superb and the singers were deeply engaged in their characters, either comic or tragic, to an extent that allowed me to be totally absorbed in their stories. I was briefly swept away from a rainy winter night in Boston into the expanded world of opera where the music of singing voices soars beyond ordinary limits.
The Lizard Lounge is, as you probably know, a cozy little nook down stairs from The Cambridge Common restaurant. I had never been to Lizard before but I love cabaret night clubs so I was psyched. The joint is tiny and at first I was scratching my head wondering how Maestro Gil was gonna pull this one off. So I repaired to the bar where a cheery duo of mixologists shook the shaker and poured me a perfect Manhattan which went a long way to settling me down. I chatted pleasantly with Carole Charnow, (General Director of O.P.) and Will Chapman, (Director of marketing) as we watched Gillian Morrison and Stephen Libby (O.P. staffers) oil the wheels of the evening, enabling the event to roll on smoothly. I might add that the lovely Gillian was looking especially foxy as she graciously tended to the fans squeezing down the stairs.
The curtain went up on a zippy little ditty by Lukas Foss, Introductions and Good-byes, libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti This consisted of a host (Brian Church) of a typical cocktail party madly singing hellos and good-byes with a group of four guests( Sol Kim Bentley, Glorivy Arroyo, Christian Figueroa, and Sepp Hammer). Somehow these five gifted singers with flawless professional voices enacted a fully developed party; arrival, conversation and departure all in nine minutes.
The next opera was Menotti’s The telephone which you will remember consists of a girl,(Sol Kim Bentley) glued to her phone chattering up a storm while her boyfriend, (Dan Kamalic) drops by to propose. But he can’t get a word in edgewise until he leaves her apartment and calls back from outside. This proves my point that, “the only important person to talk with, is the one who isn’t there.” The frightening thing about this modern dilemma is that the opera was written forty plus years ago proving that cell phones are only the latest manifestation of phone gluttony.
Photo by Iory
The last opera, Broken Pieces, music by Daron Hagen and Libretto by Barbara Grecki was a delicate interaction between Pamela, (Angela Gooch) a lonely divorcee living with her cat and Antonio, (Christian Figueroa). Antonio is a bathroom tile man for whom Pamela has been waiting, seemingly forever, to do some work at her apartment. This unlikely duo has a flirtation which accentuates the loneliness of their separate lives.
In all four operas the singing was superb and the singers were deeply engaged in their characters, either comic or tragic, to an extent that allowed me to be totally absorbed in their stories. I was briefly swept away from a rainy winter night in Boston into the expanded world of opera where the music of singing voices soars beyond ordinary limits.
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