OPERA PREMIERE: SIZE IS IMMATERIAL
The future of opera in America points more than ever to small, mobile, no-star troupes like Opera Parallèle. Consider the financial pinch of the vaunted major companies like the Metropolitan Opera (pressed despite orchestra seats running close to $500 a night), and now the San Francisco Opera, which just recently laid off 10 staffers. Here in the Bay Area, the fire is lit by lesser-known, versatile troupes in compact theaters, like the local Opera Parallèle in a rough-and-tumble 240-seat theater selling out in advance every single show of the run—for a world premiere, yet.
The trifecta of painter Georgia O’Keeffe, woman composer and female-leadership production clearly struck a responsive chord, attracting ticket-buyers galore to Laura Kaminsky’s new chamber opera “Today It Rains,” with (or despite?) an understated plot focused on musings between two women during a lengthy transcontinental train trip.
It was all about the real-life O’Keeffe (1887-1986) who produced richly colored and greatly enlarged paintings of individual flowers, inspired by the open spaces and bright sunlight of the Santa Fe area, while escaping New York City, which had “not enough nothingness.” A self-described omnisexual in real life, she helped establish the independence of and the role of professional women in society by way of her talent and her noncomformity, particularly challenging in an art world where gallery owners, critics and painters alike were men.
Kaminsky’s operatic music ranks perhaps closest to Samuel Barber’s mellow, soft-focus stage works. Her music is consonant and tonal, emphasizing the clarity of voices throughout, alongside the 11-member orchestra with its gentle percussion receding aptly to the background.
The lion’s share of the singing goes to O’Keeffe (played by mezzo Blythe Gaissert), who leaves the hot-and-cold husband Alfred Stieglitz (baritone Daniel Belcher) to seek an unfettered life. The other close friend, traveling companion and perhaps lover is Beck Strand (Marnie Breckenridge, with a radiant soprano voice). O’Keeffe has two soliloquies—to me, the strongest part of the opera—as well as duets with Stieglitz, Beck, and the train conductor Wells (tenor Nathan Granner, in a much-needed upbeat scene involving whimsey and clarinet-playing).
The production by Brian Staufenbiel was ingenious in its efficiency, with multiple moving panels to provide walls, windows and trains, some of these manipulated by the discreet four-member chorus. The surprise lobby entertainment for the aficionados featured several electric (model) trains running around, suggesting The Journey yet to come, along with copies of O’Keeffe’s eloquent and voluminous letters coming from the wild, wild West. Too bad that this eloquence was not matched in the every-day libretto. The company’s artistic director, Nicole Paiement, led the ensemble with her accustomed never-drag-never-lag efficiency.
Opera Parallèle had commissioned Kaminsky for this project and, in the process, showed all the other modest troupes how to do it with imagination and mobility if you lack a million-dollar production budget—provided, of course, that the other producers ever managed to get a ticket. The opera ran 85 minutes, with no intermission.
Composer Kaminsky, 62, has been best-known for her opera “As One” (2014). She teaches at SUNY-Purchase (NY).
Kaminsky’s sold-out chamber opera “Today It Rains,” produced by Opera Parallèle in world premiere. Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco, through March 31. For Opera Parallèle info: (415) 626-6279 or go online.
