LONG ISLAND OPERA GUILD NEWSLETTER MARCH 2016 Stony Brook Opera 2015-2016 Season A letter from the Artistic Director of Stony Brook Opera Our current season will end with a semi-staged concert performance of Giacomo Puccini’s beloved masterpiece La Department and friends from New York City who attended Bohème, sung in the original Italian language with projected those performances all told me that from a theatrical point of titles in English. The Stony Brook Symphony will be on stage, view nothing was lacking, and that they enjoyed immensely with the opera chorus behind it on risers. The Stony Brook being able to see how the singers, chorus, and orchestra Opera cast will perform from memory on the stage space in interact in the overall musical and dramatic experience. That is front of the orchestra. Timothy Long will conduct the cast, not possible when the orchestra is out of sight, as it always is chorus and orchestra. Brenda Harris, Performing Artist in in a full production. From a theatrical point of view, La Residence and a leading soprano in American regional opera Bohème presents a far greater challenge than Lucia did, in part will direct the singers, who will be fully blocked, and will use because it calls for so many “things” on stage throughout the props and furniture and minimal costuming as appropriate. opera—not only essential furniture pieces, but also numerous Tomas Del Valle of the Theatre Arts Department makes his small hand props, all of which are vital to the narrative, and Stony Brook Opera debut as the lighting designer, and he is carry great emotional weight in the plot, such as the candle planning exciting theatrical lighting for the space where the and the key, and Mimì’s bonnet, to name a few. Yet we are singers are acting; the orchestra will be lit with some confident that we can make it work in an exciting way in this evocative mood lighting, and the chorus by some brilliant format. In this issue you will find a synopsis of the opera specials when they sing. I’m very excited about this (from the Metropolitan Opera), my notes about the work and production, and we have a particularly strong cast for it. its genesis, interviews with our conductor Timothy Long, our This production continues the experiment that we began last stage director Brenda Harris, and our lighting designer Tomas year with our semi-staged concert performances of Donizetti’s Del Valle, and photos and bios of our cast. We look forward to Bel Canto classic Lucia di Lammermoor, which was a great seeing you at our performances on Saturday, April 30, or success artistically and was warmly received by a large, Sunday, May 1, 2016, on the Main Stage of the Staller Center. enthusiastic audience. Colleagues of mine from the Music –David Lawton, Editor Marcello Mimì (Act I) Adolfo Hohenstein, costume designs for the premiere of La Bohème, Turin, 1896. Original posters by Adolfo Hohenstein: (1896—left; 1900–-right) Synopsis of La Bohème ACT III. Dawn on the snowy outskirts of Paris. Musetta is ACT I. Paris, the 1830s. In their Latin Quarter garret, the heard singing inside a tavern. Soon Mimì wanders in, near- destitute artist Marcello and poet Rodolfo try to searching for the place where Marcello and Musetta keep warm by feeding the stove with pages from now live. When the painter emerges, she tells him of Rodolfo’s latest drama. They are soon joined by their her distress over Rodolfo’s incessant jealousy. She roommates—Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, says she believes it is best that they part. Rodolfo, a musician, who brings food, fuel, and funds he has who has been asleep in the tavern, wakes and comes collected from an eccentric student. While they outside. Mimì hides nearby, though Marcello thinks celebrate their unexpected fortune, the landlord, she has gone. The poet first tells Marcello that he Benoit, comes to collect the rent. Plying the older wants to separate from his sweetheart, citing her man with wine, they urge him to tell of his flirtations, fickleness; pressed for the real reason, he breaks then throw him out in mock indignation at his down, saying that her coughing can only grow worse infidelity to his wife. As his friends depart to in the poverty they share. Overcome with tears, Mimì celebrate at the Café Momus, Rodolfo promises to stumbles forward to bid her lover farewell as join them later, remaining behind to try to write. Marcello runs back into the tavern upon hearing There is another knock at the door; the visitor is a Musetta’s laughter. While Mimì and Rodolfo recall pretty neighbor, Mimì, whose candle has gone out on past happiness, Musetta dashes out of the inn, the drafty stairway. No sooner does she enter than the quarreling with Marcello. The painter and his girl feels faint; Rodolfo helps her to the door and mistress part but Mimì and Rodolfo decide to remain relights her candle. Mimì realizes she lost her key together until spring. when she fainted, and as the two search for it, both candles are blown out. The poet takes the girl’s ACT IV Now separated from their girlfriends, Rodolfo shivering hand, telling her his dreams. She then and Marcello lament their loneliness. Colline and recounts her life alone in a garret, embroidering Schaunard bring a meager meal; to lighten their flowers and waiting for the spring. Expressing their spirits the four stage a dance, which turns into a mock joy in finding each other, Mimì and Rodolfo embrace duel. Musetta bursts in to tell them that Mimì is and leave for the café. outside, too weak to come upstairs. As Rodolfo runs to her aid, Musetta relates how Mimì begged to be ACT II. Rodolfo buys Mimì a bonnet near the Café taken to her lover to die. The girl is made as Momus and then introduces her to his friends. The comfortable as possible, while Musetta asks Marcello toy vendor Parpignol passes by, besieged by eager to sell her earrings for medicine and Colline goes off children. Marcello’s former sweetheart, Musetta, to pawn his overcoat. Left alone, Mimì and Rodolfo makes a noisy entrance on the arm of the elderly but wistfully recall their meeting and their first happy wealthy Alcindoro. She complains that her shoe days. When the others return, Musetta gives Mimì a pinches, sending Alcindoro off to fetch a new pair. muff to warm her hands and prays for her life. As she The moment he is gone, she falls into Marcello’s drifts into unconsciousness, Rodolfo closes the arms and tells the waiter to charge everything to curtain to soften the light. Schaunard discovers that Alcindoro. Soldiers march by the café, and as the Mimì is dead, and when Rodolfo realizes it, he bohemians fall in behind, Alcindoro rushes back with throws himself on her body, calling her name. Musetta’s shoes. INTERMISSION --Synopsis by the Metropolitan Opera 3 Long Island Opera Guild Newsletter Notes on the opera David Lawton Puccini’s La Bohème actually grew out of a dispute between These two also wrote the librettos for Tosca and Madama him and Ruggero Leoncavallo (the composer of I Pagliacci). Butterfly. In the collaboration, Illica drafted the scenario in The two composers, who had been friends up until then, had some detail, then Giacosa versified Illica’s rough text. Puccini coffee together one day in the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele loved to work in collaboration. La Bohème, Tosca, and near the La Scala opera house in Milan. Discussing their Madama Butterfly were actually conceived and worked out “in upcoming projects with one another, they were astonished to committee,” so to speak, with regular meetings between the learn that they were both planning an opera based upon Henri composer and his librettists chaired by the publisher Giulio Murger’s novel Scènes de la vie do Bohème. Because both Ricordi, who was not only a shrewd businessman and a skilled men were backed by powerful Milanese music publishers— mediator, but also a man of keen artistic judgment. While Puccini by Ricordi, who had been Rossini’s, Bellini’s, working on La Bohème, Puccini drove his librettists crazy Donizetti’s, and Verdi’s publisher, and Sonzogno, who had with his constant requests for changes to their texts. Many of launched Leoncavallo’s career with I Pagliacci—the rivalry these were required because once Puccini had actually soon went public. Il Secolo, the daily newspaper of the Casa completed the music for a particular scene, often it no longer Sonzogno wrote: fit the original poetry in certain respects. La Bohème “Maestro Leoncavallo wants to make it known that since last premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on February 1, 1896. December he had signed a contract for a new opera and since The conductor was Arturo Toscanini, who later recorded it in then he had been working on the music of this subject 1946 with the NBC symphony on the 50th anniversary of its (Bohème). He had not had the opera announced only because premiere. he wanted to keep it a surprise.” After pointing out that Leoncavallo had also spoken with several singers about * * * particular roles, and noting that Puccini’s libretto was not yet In terms of its division into acts, La Bohème has a symmetrical finished, the Secolo concluded “Therefore it remains structure: confirmed indisputably that Leoncavallo has the precedence Act I—in the garret for this opera.” Puccini himself responded with a letter Act II—outside the café Momus published the next day by the Corriere della sera, then as it is Act III—At the barrière d’Enfer on the outskirts of Paris today the principal Milanese newspaper: “It is certain that if Act IV—in the garret Maestro Leoncavallo, with whom I for some time have been connected with strong feelings of friendship, had confided in Two interior scenes frame two exterior ones, and the second me before revealing it to me suddenly the other night, I would interior scene is a tragic mirror of the first.