Sweeney update

After a psychologically grueling week of auditions, I’ve landed the role of Judge Turpin… well, sort of.  I was probably the leading candidate for the role when a rather amazing talent from New York arrived to audition.  Jimy (Foreman, our director) liked my acting and the newcomer’s singing too much to pass on either, and so decided to split the role between the two of us. The other guy is likely to see the majority of our five scheduled performances, but that’s all right– as the weakest vocalist among the principals, I feel fortunate to have landed a major role at all.

The first day of rehearsals was at once humbling and exciting.  The intricate harmonies of the opening number proved a challenge to most everybody, especially myself and the rest of the untrained singers.  On the plus side, as a relative rookie to the Broadway production, I learned that the show is much funnier than I ever suspected… and that I might have one more song than I realized.

Until tonight I’d never heard any reference to Turpin’s “Johanna” (a.k.a. “Mea Culpa”).  Should the musical director decide to keep the number– and this is by no means a certainty– I will have a chance to perform one of the most skin-crawlingly creepy numbers in the history of musical theater.  Seriously: as it’s written, a partially-disrobed Turpin actually climaxes with the song.  Also, a whip is involved.

Opera To The Masses

I saw my first opera last Saturday– Verdi’s interpretation of Macbeth, at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Okay, not at the Met– from the Met. I was actually in a movie theater in Westlake, Ohio.

Beginning late 2006, the Met launched a daring program to broadcast select performances, live and in HD, to movie theaters worldwide. By all accounts, it’s been a huge success: 324,000 people attended movie theater operas last year, filling something on the order of 90% of all available seats. Met manager Peter Gelb has nearly tripled the number of participating theaters for the 2007/2008 season, and expects worldwide attendance from this year’s eight movie theater events to exceed the cumulative attendance of all 225 performances scheduled at the Met auditorium.

The opera itself was truly impressive. I dabble in vocals, and respect the talents of great rock singers, but I’m truly awed by the sheer power of a top-flight operatic voice. Maria Guleghina (Lady Macbeth) in particular blew me away, but I was almost equally impressed by the other principals. Visually, I was taken aback by non-period costuming– this production recast the action into a generic 20th-century conflict, complete with guns and jeeps– but once I got past a brief initial adjustment, I came to appreciate the different look.

(The above are my mature thoughts on the opera. The juvenile in me would like to point out that three hours is a long time to stay focused, and that I was occasionally distracted by Guleghina’s prominent cleavage. Also, opera fans are old; in a large theater filled to near-capacity, Teri and I were among perhaps ten patrons under fifty… and that includes our twelve year-old daughter, probably the only minor in the house.)

The experience itself was as much a highlight as the performance. Probably aware that no sound system can perfectly reproduce the full range of a live performance, the producers augmented the experience for theatergoers with “extras”. From closeups of musicians warming up, to live audiovisual feeds of set changes and directions, to backstage interviews with the stars between acts, the producers offered us insider glimpses that live attendance can’t duplicate.

(The movie audience got a real kick from a stagehand’s muttered “oh, crap” shortly before the performance began, and a blood-drenched John Relyea (Banquo) flashing a peace sign backstage between acts.)

This was a real kick. If you’re already an opera fan, this is your ticket to high-caliber performances, broadcast from a top venue, viewed amidst like-minded seniors folk. If you’ve never seen an opera but think you might give it a shot, this might be a good testing ground– the etiquette is a bit more relaxed when half the crowd is washing down their Twizzlers with 64-ounce sodas.

–Ray

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