In the throes of financial meltdown, who would have the nerve to take an opera from regional to professional in the semi-rural reaches of Western Massachusetts?
Put a 33-year-old company started up by a fellow who ran a hardware store—Richard Rescia—together with a man with a passion for opera and for setting Shakespeare to music—Joseph Summer— and you get an artistic profile in courage that explains why local opera lovers may now be able to see first-class productions without making the trip to Boston or New York. At the same time, the company plans to keep up community-based traditions such as the free Messiah Sing-Along December 20 (see below).
The organization announced its move on June 22, and a few weeks later its newly appointed executive director, opera composer and founder of The Shakespeare Concerts Joseph Summer, spoke of impending plans to modernize the company and expand the opera's audience to include a younger crowd. Foremost among the plans to accomplish these tasks was the staging of more "relatable" productions. Its first scheduled show of the season was Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, a risque opera that tackles hot-button issues of lust and infidelity.
On opening night November 20 the company offered a bright, delightful version of the opera, one that married elegant singing in classic style with a smart modern set, to a disappointingly small but enthusiastic audience. Earlier the Advocate spoke with Summer about the bold decision that has given the area a new professional opera company.
"I saw an opportunity to create a new regional opera company in New England," said Summer. "I thought, this is a perfect starting place, an opera company that exists enough to build upon, to create a professional opera company that would serve all the areas that are now lacking. I [saw] it as being a very plausible financial scenario in which you save an enormous amount of money by taking Commonwealth, moving it to a level of professionalism and being able to take a production from city to city."
From its beginnings, Commonwealth Opera was supported by the efforts of well-organized volunteers, and Summer emphasized that the change to professional company in no way spells the end of volunteer involvement.
"I will encourage people to volunteer in a number of capacities," he assured the Advocate. "Volunteers I hope will participate in our opera world, but the product itself will be at a professional level." Summer himself at the moment is working without pay, as is his daughter Eve Summer, who was stage director for the Cosi performance.
The central problem of financing opera on a lesser scale than the major institutions such as the Metropolitan has spawned varied solutions in an unfriendly economy. Models for a regional opera company that tours are not easy to find, Summer said; some opera companies (the Boston Lyric Opera and the St. Louis Opera, for example) create shared productions in order to save expenses. Open-mindedness and inventiveness are key to the new venture; even more demanding than putting on a production, said Summer, is "working with the board and helping move us all to a new vision of the way we do opera. … The board appreciates that they are going to put out a more polished product. The end result is still opera, but yet it is an opera at a different level of performance and quality. So that requires some changes in attitude amongst everyone, and we're working through that, we're moving forward."
As entrepreneurs who moved here from other places have learned, the Valley is long on enthusiasm for culture, including opera—opera lovers here have fervently supported the Saturday afternoon opera broadcasts on National Public Radio, for example—and rather short on capital. The question is not whether the public here will welcome a professional opera company, but how far ticket sales, performance after performance, will go to help pay the bills.
The company also has foundation support—for this production, from the Mattina R. Proctor Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council—and some business support (helping out with Cosi fan tutte were Cooley Dickinson Hospital and Herrell's Development Corporation), as well as a few private donors.
Can Commonwealth Opera offer a quality of production that will induce Valley residents who go to New York or Boston for opera to stay home? The verve and polish of November's Cosi fan tutte suggests an affirmative answer and whets the appetite for the production of Lucia di Lammermoor scheduled for May; of course, the other part of the equation is price.
"I know that we're having much higher expenses, but I'm going to try to defray those expenses with our outlying performances and some fundraising," Summer told the Advocate. "I think that I'm going to be able to keep the ticket prices at pretty much where they were before—under fifty dollars for the front seats. (That) allows me to make opera accessible to people who don't think they want to spend $75 dollars on a ticket."
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Though only 40 to 50 percent of the house was sold for Cosi fan tutte, Summer says the production put the company on a solid footing in a very important way: by making a statement about the quality of its productions. The singing was flawless and the opera was well acted on the emotional and physical levels, reflecting a performance value Summer said is important to him. Too many productions, even in the best houses, he said, are like "vocal recitals" in costume, while the audience deserves a total experience. "I didn't want, nor did Eve nor did Ian, the audience to feel like they were watching musical calisthenics," he insisted.
Cosi received an enthusiastic reception from its audience on opening night and glowing online reviews; critic Stephen Hammer described the production as "amazing…brilliantly staged, beautifully sung and acted, touching, intimate, and hilarious. … [Summer] told me that the total cost for two performances of Cosi was around 60K." Hammer added. "How is this possible? Conventional wisdom is that a production of this quality would run a million or two at least at any big-city opera house, let alone the Met."
Besides good words, there was good news for the company at the bottom line. "We have increased our financial support for Lucia," Summer said. "The Proctor Foundation more than doubled their support for Lucia. … The Shakespeare Concerts is a fully funded project and we'll be doing that in Northampton, and all the ticket revenue will go to benefit Commonwealth."
Summer had yet another reason to be gratified after the newly professional company's maiden performance: the singers, with credentials from Opera Boston, Boston Lyric Opera, and companies farther afield such as Lyric Opera Cleveland and Houston Grand Opera, liked Northampton. They didn't commute but stayed out here all week, quartered either in hotels or with friends of the company, and enjoyed Northampton's restaurants and atmosphere, Summer said. Now, he added, "They all want to participate again. They weren't just mercenaries doing a job. … Everyone is anxious to get back to performing in Northampton." That's important because a congenial environment and a good production can lure singers here for modest pay.
"We can't afford to pay a singer fifty thousand, but we can get great singers," Summer explained. "We just have to prepare with great care so we can give them a high-level production with a minimal budget."
The company still has no room for complacency, Summer hastened to add. "We are struggling because it's the first year under our new vision and leadership and we had a paltry few people come to see Cosi, though my expectations were low to begin with. We still have a long way to go to put Commonwealth in the same position as your other major Massachusetts and American opera companies. We're not one of those companies where they can make decisions without thinking about every single penny."
Obviously a man with a well-developed ability to keep his sights above the details of production and contracts and the worrying demands of fundraising, however, Summer has a special dream for Commonwealth Opera.
"One of the things that I'm looking to do is bring some Wagner to Massachusetts," he says. "No one has produced a Wagner opera in Massachusetts in over 20 years. That's just stunning to me. It's a drought that is nearly as appalling as the Boston Red Sox drought in the World Series. So that's one of the kinds of things I think will be appreciated by opera lovers. I think we should be able to do a Wagner opera in the 2010/ 2011 season."
Commonwealth Opera will host its traditional Messiah Sing-Along at St. John's Episcopal Church in Northampton on December 20th at 7 p.m. Join opera singers Sol Kim Bentley (soprano), Glorivy Arroyo (mezzo-soprano), who appeared as Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, Ethan Bremner (tenor) and Jeffrey McEvoy (baritone), who appeared as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte. Admission is free, but attendees are asked to bring nonperishable food items to donate to the Northampton Survival Center.
On Friday, January 8 at 7 p.m., Commonwealth Opera will present Cosi fan tutte with Ian Watson on piano at the YMCA Family Theater in Cambridge.
On May 7 and 9, Commonwealth Opera will present Lucia di Lammermoor at the Academy of Music in Northampton, with Ian Watson as music director and Eve Summer as stage director.
