Ana Lucrecia García sings the role of Odabella in the Seattle Opera production of Verdi’s Attila, January 14-28, 2012.
Ana Lucrecia Garcia
Ana Lucrecia García heard her first opera from the pit, where she was playing as a professional violinist. She’d been studying violin since early childhood, nurtured by the national network of music education in Venezuela, El Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles. By age eight she was already in an orchestra. Garcia had plenty of exposure to choral singing particularly around Christmas, but opera was something she was not sure she liked, until that pit experience.
It was Bizet’s Carmen, and the descriptive, expressive arias hit her like a ton of bricks. She began mimicking them for her colleagues, from the sopranos to the basses, and soon they began to say: “You should really take some singing lessons.” She was 23 when she began to study singing in earnest, and found a fulfilling joy in it, which surprised her as she had always thought the violin was her first love.
Moving to Spain in 1998, she worked with opera greats Teresa Berganza and Alfredo Kraus, but after a few years felt there was something missing and took time off. Speaking though Seattle Opera interpreter Maria Durham, she says the singing and the repertoire she was doing did not make her happy.
But then, everything came together when she found “a marvelous Italian teacher in Madrid, Enzo Spatola. I had my first class with him December 19, 2004, began officially with him January 2005, and I’ve never stopped. He taught me to sing in a different way, and the voice bloomed that I have now. What I had inside could come out. It’s what I dreamed of doing.” Together, she says, they can do spectacular work. “I love the preparation, the discovery, the creative part of the work before the public hears the results.”
The work she achieved has indeed been spectacular. Six short years later, she was tapped by La Scala for the second cast heroine, Odabella, for Verdi’s Attila. She’d never sung such a dramatic role, never done this kind of bravura singing, requiring enormous agility in voice and body language. She had a year to prepare, and did so thoroughly.
When the opera opened last summer, she was strolling the streets of Milan with her fiancé in the afternoon, not being on for that night’s performance, when she was called at 4 p.m. to tell her that the first cast Odabella could not sing and she was needed immediately. The Italian press said after: “She staked everything on ‘Santo di patria’ the role’s intimidting calling card, and emerged with all honors.”
With each succeeding production, García continues to grow. She sang Aida here in Seattle in 2008, in a fine performance, but her skill and artistry have grown beyond that now, and even beyond her La Scala Odabella last year.
Verdi has remained her first love, and she has sung little else. Aida, I Duo Foscari, Nabucco, Macbeth,LaForza del Destino, Il Trovatore,Don Carlo, and the less-known I Masnadieri as well as Attila are all now in her repertoire, but down the road she would like perhaps to sing Puccini’s Tosca and Manon Lescaut, and Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. She has just however sung Bellini’s Norma in Salerno, a role which needs great agility and range.
John Relyea as Attila and Ana Lucrecia García as Odabella in Seattle Opera’s Attila (Photo: Elise Bakketun)
Asked how her orchestral background has helped her in her opera career, she says it has in every way. “To start with, I hear opera more easily. I read it like a musician. The line of the singer is easier for me than that of the violinist. I feel I can be inside the orchestra and hear all the instuments and their language, and it gives me a different type of security. I get to know the music so well that even if I’m singing it for the first time I already know what all the music is about.” Sometimes, she says, she is told when embarking on rehearsals that it’s as though she had sung it before.
She has found this Seattle Opera production of Attila (set in the 20th century) a little hard “because of the weapons. I don’t like weapons, but the rationale (stage director) Bernard Uzan brings is very interesting and engages you from the start. The story develops clearly and without disturbing the work of the singers.”
She is happy to be back here. “It’s always a pleasure to come to Seattle. I like the theater and the way the theater works and the trust (general director) Speight Jenkins has in all of us. I like the orchestra a lot, and the chorus, and the public and the city!”
García goes on from here to sing Odabella again in San Francisco, and just as she feels she brings to this production more depth, more nuance to her Odabella than she had at La Scala, so she expects to bring yet more in San Francisco. This is a young woman whose voice, already notable, is likely to scale still more heights.
2012 is only a week old, but Seattle’s classical music scene is off to a fantastic start for the year with dozens of events around the city. Classical music critics Phillippa Kiraly and Dana Wen weigh in with their picks for this month.
Jan. 13 & 14 — Pacific Musicworks presents a semi-staged performance of Carissimi’s opera The Prophets at St. James Cathedral. This is a rare chance to hear a rare work with a stellar cast.
Jan. 14 – 28 — Seattle Opera performs Verdi’s Attila at McCaw Hall, with the great bass John Relyea in the title role. Experience a modern staging of one of Verdi’s early operas.
Ingrid Matthews and Byron Schenkman
Jan. 20 — Who doesn’t love Latin music? Viva la Música at Benaroya Hall features pianist Arnaldo Cohen and the Seattle Symphony performing works by Latin American composers.
Jan. 26 & 28 — Pianist Marc-André Hamelin joins the Seattle Symphony for Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. Also on the program is Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and a world premiere of a work by Nico Muhly.
Jan. 27 — Marc-André Hamelin and members the Seattle Symphony present a program of Russian quintets at Nordstrom Recital Hall. This is a chance to hear pianist Hamelin performing chamber music.
Jan. 27 — Now in its second season, Seattle Modern Orchestra explores the theme “Layers of Time” at Cornish College of the Arts’ PONCHO Concert Hall.
Jan. 28 — Seattle Baroque Orchestra presents Common Ground at Town Hall, featuring Ingrid Matthews and Byron Schenkman, two of Seattle’s best early music performers. The duo will play a program of inventive 17th century music with repeating bass lines.
Jan. 29 — Innovative string quartet Brooklyn Rider returns to Town Hall with works by Beethoven, Philip Glass, and John Zorn.
Classical music often gets a bad rap as being a status symbol for the wealthy. There’s a popular misconception that classical concerts are prohibitively expensive affairs attended by snobbish rich folks. Author and classical music critic Alex Ross sums it up well in his recent post in The New Yorker‘s arts & entertainment blog:
If popular stereotypes about classical music held true, the genre should have had no social or political relevance in 2011, one of the darkest and angriest years in recent American history. Classical music is, we are given to understand, the playground of the one per cent, the province of the super-rich. When concerts are depicted in the movies, you see élites in evening wear gazing snootily through archaic eyewear at misbehaving interlopers.
In reality, the price of a Seattle Symphony or Seattle Opera ticket is comparable to a seat at a rock concert or sports event. There are also plenty of free and nearly-free classical concerts that are every bit as exciting as the high-profile celebrity recitals and opera productions. Discounts and deals on tickets abound. Classical music is actually quite accessible to everyone–you just have to know where to look.
In this new monthly series, “Classical Music on the Cheap”, I’ll explore different ways of enjoying classical music in Seattle without breaking the bank. So whether you’ve resolved to spend less, get out more, or expand your musical horizons, be sure to check out Seattle’s vibrant classical music scene this year.
This month, I head to your local branch of the Seattle Public Library for a free preview of Seattle Opera’s production of Attila, the 1846 opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The previews began this week and continue through next week in preparation for the opening night of Attila on January 14. Several branches around the city will be offering previews, which feature a lecture, musical excerpts, and video clips. Learn about the history and story of the opera and get a behind-the-scenes peek at the Seattle Opera production.
If live music is what you’re after, SPL’s Central Library hosts a free monthly concert series presented by the Ladies Musical Club of Seattle. This month’s recital is on January 11 at noon and features works by Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn, Czerny, and Arutiunian. Violinist Candice Chin, clarinetist David Frank, and pianists Jim Whitehead, Risa Jun, and Yelena Balabanova will perform. If you work downtown or on First Hill, this concert series offers a great excuse to get out of the office at lunchtime. The Ladies Musical Club also offers free concerts at other Seattle venues, including the Seattle Art Museum, the Frye Art Museum, and local retirement communities.
The Central Library also hosts other free concerts and musical events from time to time. Check the Central events page for a schedule and more information.
Without backdrop, without anything but a suggestion of costume and set, without orchestra and no special lighting, Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program has achieved a riveting production of Massenet’s Werther. After five performances around the state this month, the young singers came to Nordstrom Recital Hall for their final show Saturday night. (Sadly, if missed it, you now have to wait until March for the program’s next outing.)
The production has been abridged so that it only takes two hours with one intermission. It’s been well done, and condenses the story, making it stronger, to my mind. Goethe intended his late-18th-century tale to take a cynical view of an extraordinarily self-centered young man gone overboard with his inappropriate passion.
More than a century later, Massenet took the popular tale and wrote his opera, an overload of physical chastity combined with bursting romantic tension spiraling downwards to disaster. Lugubrious as the story is, Massenet’s music is gorgeous, played here by guest pianist/coach Stephanie Rhodes on stage. Rhodes became the whole orchestra, doing an excellent job and supporting the singers.
Five of the Young Artists took part, with the title role taken by tenor Andrew Stenson returning for his second year with the program. The opera might have been chosen for him and for mezzo soprano Sarah Larsen as his unattainable love, Charlotte. The two have the lion’s share of the singing and carry the action between them.
Stenson, although his voice is quite different, reminds the listener of another young artist here who has gone on to a stellar career, Lawrence Brownlee. Not everyone is suited to French opera, but Stenson’s voice is ideal for this role. It is strong from top to bottom, perfectly pitched, no breaks between registers–in short a beautifully trained lyric tenor voice with gorgeous timbre. He is also able to inhabit the role and even elicit some sympathy, not easy since this is an unforgiving role to act—it’s hard not to get exasperated with Werther as he mopes around and disrupts Charlotte’s family, who all seem to love him nevertheless.
Larsen also has a beautiful voice, her middle and lower registers particularly rich. She too has a difficult role to put across, the chaste, gentle woman doing her duty and concealing a love for this importunate young man, and she acts it well.
Stage director Peter Kazaras has done a stellar job in directing this with so little by way of props to help him and getting get the story across. While both acts are good, the second is completely absorbing from the start and builds to the climax. Massenet milks the emotion for all it is worth in the long-drawn-out death scene, and the two singers command the attention throughout.
Of the other roles, bass Michael Uloth has only a cameo role but it’s enough to make one want to hear more of him. He has the lead in the YAP’s spring production of Don Pasquale. Baritone David Krohn, another returnee, has the role of Charlotte’s long-suffering husband Albert. He sounded better last year as Don Giovanni and this opera may just not suit him particularly. Soprano Amanda Opuszynski, as Charlotte’s little sister, gave an excellent portrayal of a young teen, good in every detail, though she sounded better as one of the gypsies in the mainstage production of Carmen earlier this fall than she did here.
Nordstrom Recital Hall is not kind to high tones at volume, where the sound often becomes hard and shrill. There is little reverberation to soften anything. Violins always suffer here, and it seems likely that the quality of Opuszynski’s voice, the highest, was undermined by these acoustics. Larsen also, in her highest register, had the same problem.
The singers, who spend twenty-one weeks in the Young Artists Program, get training in every aspect of being an opera singer, from everything to do with performance to life skills and budgeting. They are halfway through this course, and you will be able to see their progress at the production of Donizetti’s comic Don Pasquale, the end of March and in early April at Meany Hall.
Seattle Opera is an extremely well-run organization, financially almost always in the black, its artistic quality respected worldwide. The company’s harmonious tone, felt throughout the staff, comes straight from the top, from General Director Speight Jenkins and Executive Director Kelly Tweeddale.
But in the relatively near future, Jenkins, 75 in January, intends to step down.
To all intents and purposes, Jenkins is Seattle Opera, which he has led since 1983 and built to its current stature. Jenkins is not one of those commanders on an ego trip. All who know him know it’s the company, not himself, which is of prime importance to him. It makes sense to plan ahead for his departure, then, and it appears the company is quietly putting its ducks in a row.
While one wouldn’t describe him as a duck, in 2010, Aren Der Hacopian, now 35, was appointed to a position created for him, that of Artistic Administrator for Seattle Opera, and simultaneously Director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program (YAP), which he had managed since 2007.
Der Hacopian has an office directly opposite Jenkins’. His duties as Young Artists director include overseeing everything to do with the program: auditions, tours, productions, staffing, care and nurture of the young artists themselves, and the budget. Much of this he does in close collaboration and consultation with YAP’s music director, Brian Garman, and artistic director Peter Kazaras, both of whom have years of experience with young artists in their respective fields. The budget is his alone. (YAP used to be under the company’s education department. Now it’s a separate entity under the artistic department.)
Brian Garman, Peter Kazaras, and Aren Der Hacopian (Photo: Alan Alabastro)
As Seattle Opera’s artistic administrator, Der Hacopian helps Jenkins with casting for the mainstage opera season, which nowadays always tries to include the current Young Artists in at least one production. Jenkins hires the stars for each opera several years ahead of time. It’s Der Hacopian’s job to whittle down the possibilities for the other roles to a couple of singers and then take those to Jenkins for final decision. Jenkins auditions singers in this country and abroad every year.
“The whole purpose of these two positions,” Der Hacopian says, “is to be devil’s advocate. We do all the auditions in New York and here together. If I see something wrong, I say so. But my job is regarding singers, not stage director choices, though [I do weigh in on] some conductors.”
When Jenkins steps down, Der Hacopian will be there with a few years under his belt in working closely with Jenkins. Whatever position he ends up with in a new administration, he will be an informed artistic administrative bridge between the old and the new.
It’s a good thing Der Hacopian is young, because the workload he describes with such enthusiasm is phenomenal.
“I’m heavily involved in choosing the young artists. In my living room, there are fourteen big mailboxes with 590 applications (for the YAP) for next year,” he says. Asked if he listens to every tape, he says that the only ones he listens to throughout “are the ones that grab you at the start.” He checks the resumes for performance history, listens to maybe four measures. “My ears are kind of trained, you hear the echoes that may have been added to cover any flaws in the voice, and there’s the rare gem of a singer who has done no performances. You have to balance it out.” He weeds out most, then consults with Garman and Kazaras to reach a small group of possibles, and Jenkins joins in for the final say.
At the same time, Der Hacopian has to be aware of what will be playing on the mainstage that season, knowing that each of the Young Artists is meant to have a role. He is listening for voices with the potential for the mainstage, but who are also young singers at the start of their careers.
“It’s a huge gamble, hearing them sing one or two or three pieces and hiring them to put on the main stage. We have an Armenian saying, ‘It’s not baked yet’”—which is a decision he has to make about some of the voices.
(left to right) Artistic Director Peter Kazaras, Artistic Administrator Aren Der Hacopian, Joseph Lattanzi, Lindsay Russell, Christopher Lade (pianist/coach), Sarah Larsen, Michael Uloth, Amanda Opuszynski, Music Director Brian Garman, and Andrew Stenson (Photo: Alan Alabastro)
Der Hacopian says that he has basically set up the Young Artists Program as a small opera house.
“It functions with extreme help from Brian and Peter. I’m overall director. I basically have the say, with their agreement, but I stay out of the way as much as possible. If I see the budget going too far to left or right I step in. Brian has a vast history with YAPs. I’ve been blessed with these two helping me run this program. We do have disagreements, but if Peter explains, it’s my choice to accept his decision. He’s done a phenomenal job with Werther.”
(The latest tour, of Massenet’s opera Werther, ends Saturday with a performance at Nordstrom Recital Hall, having been seen in Bellingham; Kirkland; Ellensburg; Courtenay, B.C.; and Walla Walla over the past 16 days. This one has minimal costumes and props and has piano accompaniment. A full production of Don Pasquale, with orchestra, comes next spring.)
Der Hacopian makes all the arrangements for the tours, finding, inspecting and booking the venues, negotiating terms, hiring a tour manager, production assistant and design coordinator: “I have to find the right individuals who can do everything.”
He doesn’t usually go on the tours but a week after a performance, he contacts all of the venues, gets feedback and asks the all-important question, “Do you want us back?”
Part of the responsibility of the program is helping these young singers understand what they are getting into. “What is the real opera world like? You have to be ready, prepared, there is always someone better than you. You can’t have excuses or stage problems, your personality, body language, diva behavior, the way you sing which has to be beautiful and with taste, all come into it. Students come out of school not realizing they must do research, listen to CDs, captivate people from the very first moment they enter the room.”
Once accepted to Seattle Opera’s 21-week program, the Young Artists get a stipend, and for their mainstage appearance, they are paid AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists) rates.
Der Hacopian began his new dual job on July 1, 2010, and immediately found himself up to his eyeballs. Omigod, he says he thought, we have to cast Porgy and Bess: “a challenge and an unbelievable joy.” They only had one year before the production, a very short lead-time in opera.
“Speight found Gordon (Hawkins, for Porgy) and Lisa (Daltirus, for Bess). I did everyone else, I’d say, ‘This one or that one?’, and he’d say, ‘This one.’ It was a great way to establish trust. Sometimes I’d say, I think this is an amazing voice but you may not like the stage presence.”
The new job relationship was as new to Jenkins as to Der Hacopian, who would like to shoulder more of Jenkins’ multitude of responsibilities for him. “Many times I think he should unload on me, but he hasn’t yet,” Der Hacopian says.
Der Hacopian was 31 when he was hired to manage the Young Artists Program in 2007, very young for what was already a prestigious program with young singers worldwide competing for a space. However, the unusual journey life had led him over the previous couple of years prepared him well.
In 2005, a graduate student, he was three weeks away from singing the baritone lead for Opera UCLA in a new opera by Ian Krouse, Lorca, Child of the Moon, and Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. He woke one morning, he says, with no voice in the middle, and just croaking top and bottom. Doctors found a black tumor on his vocal cords, luckily not cancerous. He was given specific exercises to do. “I didn’t speak for one month,” he says, and he resigned from the opera production.
Not wanting to have nothing at all to do with the production, he says, “I offered to help…. Lo and behold, I am really good at this! I had some connections and I was like the producers, and it was loads and loads of fun.”
Opera over, he went back to the ENT doctors, who found the tumor had disappeared, but his voice needed work. He was advised to see a heldentenor in Germany, William Johns.
“He’ll fix your voice,” Der Hacopian was told. “So I took all my savings and went. We did a lot of personal work. He taught me daily. I had to learn to hear ‘This is good singing, this is bad singing.’ And my voice is back.” Hacopian feels this time-out developed character he wouldn’t otherwise have had, and he also learned a great deal about listening to voices.
He returned to UCLA and completed his Master’s in Arts. He then got a call from Los Angeles Opera, which was starting its own Domingo-Thornton Young Artists program. Would he be interested in working for it?
Der Hacopian found himself being interviewed by Placido Domingo, general director of L.A. Opera, during which interview, he says, Domingo asked him why he might be interested in the job.
“If I can’t be a famous Verdi baritone,” Der Hacopian says he answered, “I want to be a general director.” Domingo’s response, he says, was, “I’m impressed. You’re hired.”
Surrounded by great singers, Der Hacopian learned a great deal that year. It was an amazing experience, he says, but by the end of a year he decided it was not the right fit for him. He resigned his position, moving to Seattle without a job in order to continue a personal relationship that had been going on long distance from L.A. Maybe he could at least volunteer to ferry artists from the airport or otherwise help out at Seattle Opera, he thought, until he could land a job.
He mentioned all this to Peter Kazaras whom he knew. Kazaras suggested they go and have coffee with the late Perry Lorenzo, then education director for the opera, whom Der Hacopian knew slightly.
Not suspecting anything other than coffee, Der Hacopian enjoyed reconnecting, but gradually realized he was being interviewed.
Lorenzo ended telling him, he remembers: We’ve been interviewing for this job, you are well suited to it, the right candidate. You need to take this job. To which Der Hacopian asked: What job?
“It fell into my lap. I couldn’t say no. I came in to Seattle Opera and it felt like home.”
You already know a good half of the music, so why aren’t you at Seattle Opera’s production of Carmen? This production is quite classic, and in this case, familiarity breeds comfort, rather than contempt.
From opening to close, Seattle Opera’s Carmen is solid operatic entertainment. Everything to love about opera is here: a believable cast, some surprisingly funny moments, superb orchestral accompaniment, melodies you’ll hum at intermission and on the drive home. This production also features Bizet’s original spoken dialogue instead of the usual recitative, making it all the more authentic. The singers handle the spoken French flawlessly.
Anita Rachvelishvili, who plays Carmen on Wednesdays and Saturdays, had a very good vocal hold of the role. Her voice is rich and dark and sexy. She seemed a little nervous or unsettled during her opening aria, but delivered a strong, even, and beautiful performance for the rest of the show, especially considering her constant presence on stage. My only complaint is that the sexiness of her voice did not transfer into a physical sexiness. Rachvelishvili’s physical presence was more torso-driven than hip- and/or pelvis-driven, which detracted a bit from the music and from her voice.
Luis Chapa was a revelatory Don José. He had a certain handle on this vocally demanding role, and his voice was backed up by his action. Chapa’s José was a man consciously choosing unrequited love, knowing that in the end he may be driven crazy. No victim of circumstance, he was a willing and active participant in his own destruction.
Norah Amsellem was a perfectly sweet Micaëla. Her voice was bigger than I was expecting, but was well matched by the rest of the ensemble. Amanda Opuszynski and Sarah Larsen were lovely as Carmen’s comrades Frasquita and Mercédès, providing a lighthearted foil to Carmen’s heavy moodiness, especially during the Card Trio. Michael Todd Simson’s Escamillo was a swaggering presence, appropriate for the bullfighter. His lower range got covered up by the orchestra at times, but his middle and upper registers sparkled.
