Every so often, buried among the mezzo-sopranos, conductors and set
designers, an unusual credit line jumps out of a Metropolitan Opera
program.
There was the Square Dance
Caller when the Met did Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,” and the Sanskrit
Adviser for its production of Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha.” This
Tuesday, when the Met’s new production of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and
“Pagliacci” opens, the program will contain this credit: Vaudeville
Consultant: Emil Wolk.
What’s a vaudeville consultant doing in an opera house? It turns out
that not just anyone can choreograph a decent slosh routine, a messy staple of slapstick in
which whipped cream, custard or shaving cream is wielded as a projectile,
hopefully to comic effect.
So when the director of the Met’s new production, David McVicar,
decided to set “Pagliacci” at a 1948 truck stop and to make the traveling
performers at the opera’s core more like vaudevillians than a traditional
commedia dell’arte troupe, he turned to Mr. Wolk, a man of unusually broad
theatrical experience, to help him mount the crucial show within the show.
The new production at the Met sets the opera at a 1948 truck stop and
includes vaudevillian high jinks.
By Metropolitan Opera on Publish Date April 15, 2015.
“He originally wanted me over to do the slosh, which is the cream in
the face,” Mr. Wolk, a well-known actor and director, explained the other day
after a rehearsal. “We started discussing these old vaudevillian actors and
some of the routines, and how this should be entertaining in its own right —
not a token gesture.”
He based the opera’s prologue, sung by the baritone George Gagnidze,
on an old man-versus-microphone routine by the British comic Dickie Henderson
that he watched decades ago at Golders Green Hippodrome, a onetime theater in
London. “I was a stagehand, and I watched him every night in the Cinderella
pantomime, and I’d stand in the wings and he’d do this wonderful microphone
routine,” Mr. Wolk recalled.
During a stage rehearsal at the Met the other day, Donald Palumbo, the
Met’s chorus master, was keeping a close eye on his charges. Fabio Luisi, the
conductor, was working with the stars, Marcelo Álvarez and Patricia Racette.
And Mr. Wolk had turned his critical eye to the nonsinging members of the
vaudeville troupe — Andy Sapora, Joshua Wynter and Marty Keiser — as they
fought with whipped cream and flour and clowned with a chicken puppet that
could be a breakout star of the opera season.
“I’m very chuffed — is that a word that you have here? — I’m very
chuffed that the three lads have gelled so well together,” Mr. Wolk said
afterward, citing a British colloquialism meaning pleased.
From left, George Gagnidze, Andrew Stenson and
Patricia Racette in “Pagliacci,” on which Mr. Wolk was the vaudeville
consultant. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
His path to becoming a vaudeville consultant was a twisty one.
Mr. Wolk, 70, was born in Brooklyn but moved to London at the age of 6
when his father, the baritone Jess Walters, became a star at the Royal Opera House. Mr. Wolk
went in the opposite direction when a voice teacher was less than encouraging
about his talents, and decided to study mime and circus skills in Paris. He
learned many routines directly from old music hall and pantomime performers
during a career as an actor and director that has taken him from experimental
theater companies such as People Show
to opera houses to the West End, where he co-directed a production of “Animal Crackers,” based on the Marx Brothers
film.
One of his teachers was Johnny Hutch — who had a long, truly unusual career as an acrobat and comedian on British musical hall
stages early in his career in the late 1920s, then on “The Benny Hill Show” and
later in life at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was a coach.
“He gave me material, and would tell me the nuances of it — what made
things funny, the sense of timing,” Mr. Wolk recalled. “One of the great things
he really passed on was the fact that you never arrive looking like what you’re
going to do — so in a sense, if you’re an acrobat, you don’t come out looking
like an acrobat. It’s the element of surprise.”
Of course, adapting some old routines to a stage the size of the Met poses challenges. And the comedy in the show within the opera must work without overwhelming the drama playing out around it. The delicacy of striking that right balance was evident in rehearsal the other day when Mr. Álvarez, the tenor singing the role of Canio, a murderously jealous cuckolded clown, began singing the opera’s most famous aria, “Vesti la giubba.”
As he approached the climax, a giant, gaudy blue-and-gold curtain,
similar to the one used by the vaudeville troupe, descended behind him,
apparently catching him by surprise. Mr. Álvarez, vocal in his dismay as
perhaps only a star tenor can be, summoned Mr. Luisi and Mr. McVicar to the
stage, where they were joined by Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. There
was a tense consultation, followed by an agreement and an embrace or two. The
rehearsal went on.
The slosh routine — which involved three sous-chefs making a cake,
armed with a piping bag full of icing, a bowl and a spoon — went off without a
hitch. Mr. Wolk said that there were different schools of thought about what
makes the best slosh. He said that he had even read a recipe that Buster Keaton
used for his custard pies, but that he found shaving cream had the best
consistency. “It’s very important that it sticks to the face,” he said.
Some lessons he learned from Mr. Hutch
— whose acts had names like the Seven Volants,
the Herculeans
and the Half-Wits, and who wrote a memoir, “Somersaults and
Somer-not!” — might apply to opera singers as well as acrobats and
clowns.
“He said that technique should not really overpower character,” Mr.
Wolk recalled. “There was an idea that character was the most important, and it
was the technique that underpinned the character.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/arts/music/vaudeville-authenticity-at-the-metropolitan-opera.html?mabReward=A4
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