By MICHAEL COOPERDEC.
A few weeks ago, a little
more than three years after New York City Opera declared bankruptcy and was
left for dead, its unlikely reincarnation was proceeding in a rehearsal studio
near Herald Square.
Eyeglasses pushed up on his
forehead, the theater legend Harold Prince was back in his director’s chair
and, at 88, leading the recently resurrected opera company in its first
rehearsal for his new production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” a work he
had made a hit for the old City Opera three decades ago.
“I’m so excited that we’re
actually working at City Opera again, which is where we should be,” Mr. Prince,
whose Broadway hits include “Cabaret,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Evita” and “The Phantom
of the Opera,” told the assembled cast.
Joseph McKee in City
Opera’s 1986 production of “Candide.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Just getting to this point
was a coup for the fledgling company, which still has only six full-time
employees — fewer than the City Opera Thrift Shop on East 23rd Street. It was
less than a year ago that it emerged from bankruptcy under new management after
a bitter court fight and began staging operas again. Now it must woo back
audiences and skeptical donors, and navigate a cultural landscape that has
changed dramatically since the heyday of the old company.
Bernstein’s effervescent
setting of Voltaire was not a success when it had its premiere in 1956. It was
Mr. Prince who helped re-establish the reputation of “Candide” by reworking it
and mounting a string of successful productions in the 1970s, in Brooklyn and
on Broadway, and then, in 1982, at City Opera. Now the new version of the
company is looking to him to help re-establish its own reputation as it works
to recover from bankruptcy, and to dispel the lingering bad taste left by the
extraordinary financial mismanagement that led up to it.
The “Candide” gamble seems
to be paying off, at the box office at least: The company extended the run,
which opens Jan. 6 at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, to 10
performances from the originally planned six after it got on track to sell 80
percent of its tickets.
Michael Capasso, the
impresario who put together the plan to reorganize City Opera and bring it out
of bankruptcy — beating out several more-established suitors despite the doubts
of some in the opera world — said that he marveled that things had come so far.
“When you think of where we were a year ago, I pinch myself when I get up in
the morning,” said Mr. Capasso, now the company’s general director. “I’m going
to rehearsals for this ‘Candide,’ and Hal Prince is in the room, and we’re
operating. A year ago, we were this close to the whole thing blowing up.”
Beverly Sills, second from
right, backstage at City Opera in 1986. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Watching Mr. Prince run
rehearsal was like a mini master class in direction. He used flattery: “I
probably shouldn’t be saying this, but this is certainly as good a company as
we’ve ever had.” He used humor, telling the cast (five and a half weeks before
opening night): “I will do my damnedest to learn all your names — just give me
about six weeks.”
And he grew serious.
“Within the confines of the
material, you’ll find that you’re playing real people, as outsized as they may
be,” he said, growing animated. “The bottom line, seriously, is you play those
people. They’re grotesque, they’re flamboyant, but they’re real — they’re real
within the structure. It’s funny, it’s a very thin line between playing people
you believe in, and at the same time performing. But it’s very important: You
don’t make fun of them.”
The company hopes that its
new “Candide” — which stars Jay Armstrong Johnson in the title role; a
newcomer, Meghan Picerno, as Cunégonde; and Linda Lavin as the Old Lady — will
prove a turning point. A few weeks after emerging from bankruptcy last year,
City Opera returned with an uneven production of Puccini’s “Tosca” that cheered
longtime fans happy to see them back in business, but did not win over
skeptics. Some of the company’s subsequent presentations were better received,
and “Candide” will be its biggest production yet.
In many respects, the opera
company must be rebuilt from scratch: Most of what the old company did not sell
off during its fiscal crisis was later auctioned off during bankruptcy.
“Candide” cast members,
from left: Jessica Tyler Wright, Keith Phares, Linda Lavin, Gregg Edelman and
Jay Armstrong Johnson. Credit Ian Douglas for The New York Times
“We’ve got to buy
everything: stage managers’ boxes and wardrobe dollies and clothes racks,” Mr.
Capasso said in an interview in his new office in Carnegie Hall Tower, where he
said the company had gotten a great deal on a sublet. “We don’t own instruments
anymore — everything was liquidated. We have to rent percussion, rent a harp. We
had to buy a coffeepot.”
Perhaps more challenging,
it must find its niche at a difficult moment for its art form. The Metropolitan
Opera continues to dominate the city’s opera scene, attracting superstars and
mounting opulent productions. It faces financial challenges and box-office
struggles of its own but has worked to slough off its old reputation for
stodginess, staging new works and rethinking old ones — territory once
dominated by City Opera — alongside a flowering of smaller, scrappier companies.
On the same night that “Candide” is set to open uptown, the New York premiere
of Missy Mazzoli’s well-reviewed new opera “Breaking the Waves” will be
presented downtown by the Prototype festival, which has established itself over
the past few years as a cool, vital presenter of new work.
Mr. Capasso said that he
had programmed City Opera’s first full season as a sort of template of where
the company hopes to go. He included a popular favorite (the season opened with
Leoncavallo’s beloved “Pagliacci,” paired with a little-done Rachmaninoff
opera, “Aleko”); a past rarity (Respighi’s “La Campana Sommersa”); an opera in
Spanish (“Los Elementos,” a Baroque work by Antonio de Literes); and a
contemporary work (it will give the New York premiere of Peter Eotvos’s “Angels
in America,” based on the Tony Kushner play, on June 10). “Candide” will be the
first in its series of seminal American pieces with ties to City Opera’s
history.
The finances of opera
remain tough. One reason some doubted that Mr. Capasso would succeed in his
plan to take City Opera out of bankruptcy was that his old company, Dicapo
Opera Theater, closed owing money to its musicians and singers, and was sued by
the musicians’ union over back pay. But Gail Kruvand, the chairwoman of City
Opera’s orchestra committee, said that all payments to musicians have been made
on time and that “in general, orchestra members are very happy to be working
together again as a part of the company.”
Mr. Capasso said that City
Opera expected the company’s budget to be slightly more than $7 million this
year, down from the roughly $10.5 million that it had planned to spend in the
season that was curtailed by bankruptcy. (The Met, by comparison, spends close
to $300 million a year.) He added that while the company’s coffers were
starting off relatively full, thanks to a multimillion-dollar bequest, it was
working hard to raise money. The company’s board, whose chairman is Roy G.
Niederhoffer, an investment manager who was a member of the old City Opera
board, now has 10 members and is looking to expand. The company has raised
$800,000 this year toward a $1 million matching gift from an anonymous donor,
Mr. Capasso said, and this fall it hired its first development director.
But all-important
foundations are still watching and waiting. “They all say they’re happy we’re
back,” Mr. Capasso said. “They’re happy to see what we’re doing, they like the
programming, we seem to be going in the right direction — ‘and get through this
year and then come and see us.’ Which is reasonable. I can’t expect people that
were giving a half a million dollars a year to this company historically to
just go back and do it all again without seeing some kind of a record.”
Of course, there is no
better testament to the dangers of naïve optimism than “Candide.” But the opera
ends with “Make Our Garden Grow,” an uplifting paean to the virtues of creating
a future through simple hard work.
This finale is one area,
Mr. Prince said, where he has something new in mind.
“It’s Lenny’s glorious
anthem, it’s really gorgeous, and you’re all in it,” he told the cast, as he
explained his determination to connect with the audience in a new way. “It’s
going to have a very different read from any time previously. And I think it’s
a good time for it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/arts/music/new-york-city-opera-leonard-bernstein-candide-preview.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Fclassical-music-reviews
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