(HOST) Commentator Bill Mares always appreciated opera, but it is the intimacy of live performance at a local opera company that really got him hooked.
(MARES) Unlike my wife, who loves opera, I’ve only attended a few of the warhorses, such as La Boheme, Madama Butterfuly, Carmen, and Aida.
Even the advent of superscript translations above the stage moved the needle of my interest only a few degrees.
But my indifferent attitude changed after I attended several performances of the Opera Company of Middlebury. Suddenly, in the richly-refurbished Town Hall Theater, I was there! – in the orchestra, on the stage, working the lights, singing and conducting! At least it felt that way.
The attractive singers looked their parts. They were mostly young people, on their dream-driven ways to bigger stages. Two years ago, when they sang La Boheme, they looked like love-smitten, starving students.
This year, the opera company mounted a rarely-heard work by Georges Bizet. The Pearl Fishers requires much more willing suspension of disbelief than the torrid love story of Bizet’s famous Carmen. In this tale of pearl divers in Ceylon, there is a love triangle in which two divers compete for same priestess. At the end one of them burns down a whole village to save her and his rival from execution.
No matter! The opera contains one of the most famous duets in all of opera. The two young rivals sang it sitting down, their voices completely under control. In that small theater, the pair sounded as powerful as Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.
As I sat there listening to duets, trios and quartets, words from Peter Schaeffer’s play AMADEUS came back to me. Mozart was pleading to the Emperor: "Sire, in a play, if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise. But with music, with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at once, it’s not noise, it’s a perfect harmony. Only opera can do this!"
Second row seats at Middlebury were far better than box seats at the Metropolitan. I was practically on the shoulders of the orchestra members. With four or five familiar faces from the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, it felt a bit like a chamber music concert. I could follow the notes of the violinist and trumpeter and almost touch the bow of the double bass.
From twenty feet away, I marvelled at the deft economical gestures of conductor Mark Shapiro as he drew notes, tone and volume from the dozen musicians. His baton was a magic wand that stirred instrumentalists and singers alike into this delicious bouillabaisse of sound and action.
The performance wasn’t perfect; but this was grand opera because it was grand to be enveloped in an art form on a small stage in Middlebury, Vermont.
(NOTE) Thanks to the Opera Company of Middlebury for making their recording with Matt Morgan and Andrew Cummings available.