Brian Dickie

Simulcast

Chilly or not some 2,000 turned up in the park last night and the stunning effect of the large screen together with the Pritzker Pavilion's remarkable sound system blew everyone away.  Apart from losing the first two minutes of subtitles there were no technical glitches.  All in all a terrific success and all credit to the director Bruce Bryant, and John Scheuruch who assembled the technical team. 

The cast took their bows on the Pritzker stage to wild enthusiasm - and this time did not get stuck in the elevator on their way up from the Harris stage as they had during the dry run on Tuesday!  I do so hope we do this on an annual basis.  Everyone learned a great deal from this - the only disappointment was the weather.  That we can not control.

And afterwards we all repaired to the Gage on Michigan Avenue.  Not home until well past midnight......

Today is the Pre Dress of Flowering Tree - a four hour rehearsal 1.30 - 5.30.  That should get it done.

Back to Orlando

Yesterday provided a chance to have a short look at Orlando rehearsals.  They are blocking away and I assume are on schedule.  Here you see a little musical interlude with Raymond Leppard (right) and Tim Mead (Orlando) Kate Mangiameli (Angelica) Justin Way (Director) with Michael Beattie at the piano. (Click pic to enlarge)

Meanwhile back at the Harris John Adams had six valuable hours with the orchestra and stage but without costume etc to divert attention from musical matters.  Another long but productive day. 

This evening we have the Simulcast, a live transmission of this evening's Don Giovanni performance onto a huge screen in Millennium Park.  This is a Chicago first.  How many people will show up?  The weather is cool which is not promising.  But we expect thousands nevertheless.

And this noontime we are off to the Gleacher Center of the University of Chicago for Stories Psychoanalyzed: A Flowering of Opera and the Mind - part of our India Blooms in Chicago series of activities connected with A Flowering Tree.  Here is an opportunity to see John Adams in person - and its all free.  Go here for details.  And try to make it downtown at noon - the Gleacher Center is behind the NBC building which in turn is behind the Tribune Building!

Now you can see more.......

I have put a sample up on the picture site this morning.  And now I have to get to the office for another long day.  We are getting there!

Piano Dress

So we have had a long day and I am not writing too much this evening - but there are a few photos on the picture site.  There will be more in the next 24 hours if I can get to them.  The production is ravishing as you may discern from these quick and dirty photos.  No time tonight to polish them up!

We have an exceptional chorus and nine great dancers - and just three principal singers.  So this is a fine company effort - and John Adams was providing the extra inspiration today.  Tomorrow we are with orchestra for another six hours.  This work needs the stamina of these youthful people to get it on at all.  Above you have Natasha Jouhl in the title role, and left her Prince Noah Stewart and our Narrator/Storyteller Sanford Sylvan - the only veteran on the stage.   And veteran indeed - he was the first Chou en Lai in Nixon in China in 1987. 

So that's all for tonight.

More AFT pictures

I have put a handful of more pictures from yesterday's Sitzprobe on the picture site.  There should be lots of nice things from the Piano Dress rehearsal this afternoon.  I hope to get a sample up by midnight.  A long day ahead for all.

Meanwhile today pop down to the Cultural Center at 12.15 to hear a recital in the Myra Hess series given by our Masetto, Ben Wager - one of the gifted young singers emerging into the profession via COT.  Ben comes from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.  Should be worth the trip.

The composer is here

John Adams (seen here with Nicola Raab this morning) is with us now and had his first rehearsals with our already excellently prepared cast and orchestra.  We had a Sitzprobe this morning (the principals are seen seated below) and got through the whole opera comfortably in the three hour session.  So we are in good shape and John is relaxed and all set to see Don Giovanni this evening.  But it is a long day tomorrow with Piano Dress starting at 1.45 and continuing until 9.45 with a two hour break between sessions.

It is of course a huge thrill to hear the orchestra and singers together at last.  And I am more than ever convinced that we have a stunningly beautiful new opera to enjoy when it opens next week.  It is indeed a major delight to be responsible for bringing this moving piece to Chicago.  It sure does make ones job worthwhile!

This evening we have the third Don Giovanni.  I will be roving around backstage to see how the Simulcast Director, Bruce Bryant, is getting on making the necessary adjustments to make this bold production reasonably acceptable to a family audience.  And I will also be monitoring the cameras to see that they do not interfere in any way with the paying public's enjoyment.  This first Simulcast in Chicago is a wonderful pilot project and we hope so much that it can be a regular event.  All Chicagoans who are not in the house on Friday should be out in Millennium Park to enjoy Don Giovanni on the big screen!

Hell week again

This is as bad as it gets.  We have three performances of Don Giovanni - all a pleasure I am sure I hasten to add.  We have the first "Simulcast" from the Harris, the first such thing for opera in Chicago - that is on Friday.  We have our last week of Flowering Tree rehearsals - and a bunch of committee meetings of our Board.  All in all its a 85 hour week!  Meanwhile Orlando is also in rehearsal.

So A Flowering Tree has been on stage all day.  I am afraid I left early - at 8.30.  My 12 hour day was over.  But I am still at it bringing you some hastily cobbled together pictures.  They are now on our picture site.  Those of you who can not find it can click this.  And I will add others as and when I can so check back from time to time.  Above you have a glimpse of the all important elephant getting his parts sorted out this evening.

But the real excitement will be the Piano Dress on Wednesday.  Then you will see the full beauty of this production by Nicola Raab in George Souglides' ravishing sets and costumes.  And those of you near enough to Chicago need to make the journey to see a performance the first of which is Wednesday May 14.

John Adams is in town and will be in charge of the Sitzprobe tomorrow, and most of the rehearsals from now on.  However there is no doubt that the great man will defer to his outstandingly gifted alter ego Joana Carneiro from time to time.  She has been preparing things up to now and will conduct the last three performances.  We are indeed fortunate.

Some Sunday notes

We had the second performance of Don Giovanni last night - another full house and ecstatic applause.  Once again rather experienced people saying that it was the best Don Giovanni they had ever seen.  Well we can make allowances for some exaggeration - but it is gratifying to hear that!

Much of yesterday afternoon was spent in Felicity Lott's masterclass where she put five of our great young sopranos through their paces.  It has been such a treat to have her here on her way from San Francisco to the east coast on her recital tour which is also taking in Washington and New York.  Anyone in either of those two cities in the coming week would do well to try to get to hear this quite wonderful artist. 

It was a great privilege for these young people to spend an afternoon with her.  And I have to report that she was thrilled with them too.  And she was at Don Giovanni as well of course - and was bowled by it.  She was a pretty distinguished Elvira (you can get her recording here) - and she loved every minute of this one! 

We are about to start another hard week - A Flowering Tree will be dominating our days and evenings.  All the news fit to print will appear here!  Meanwhile if you go to the picture site you will see a few more informal pictures of life at Flowering Tree rehearsals.

A quick one

Just a quick appetizer from this morning's stage rehearsal - we look forward to more lovely images from A Flowering Tree in the coming days!

Running to keep up

Yesterday was crazy, compounded by my two early morning starts preceded by late nights which managed to reduce my energy level somewhat.  And the monsoon-like rain dampened, indeed soaked, us all.  It was a day for umbrellas and there was a pretty picture outside the Art Institute yesterday morning as the crowds  with a colorful assortment of them lined up Michigan avenue and around the corner into Monroe Street. Too wet to jump off the bus to get a photo!  I was on my way down to the Orlando rehearsal which are proceeding nicely in Curtiss Hall. 

At noon yesterday I was at the Pianoforte Salon Series/WFMT event in the Fine Arts Building to join Peter Whorf with two of our very best young company members Greer Davis-Brown and Jin Hin Yap who delivered a terrific program live to WFMT listeners.  It was a big omission by me not to alert you to this so that you could tune in to an enjoyable program reflected huge credit on the young singers and COT.  And in particular on our Director of Musical Studies Scott Gilmore who prepared them and who presided at the piano with great brilliance.  I was proud of them all!

I tried to have a short break in the afternoon but that was wrecked by another crisis about which more perhaps later, depending on how it all turns out.  And then to the Harris for A Flowering Tree, on the stage for the first time.  It looks great and we are on track.

And the evening was spent at Symphony Center with the CSO under the magisterial Bernard Haitink.  There was an extraordinary performance of Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs by a glorious mezzo Kelley O'Connor.  Remarkable young woman.  And Mahler 1 by a master conducting a great orchestra in top form.  Where do we go from here?

I will have to catch the blog up tomorrow.  Today is crazy again but full of pleasures.  More Flowering Tree rehearsals in the Harris, Felicity Lott gives a masterclass this afternoon, and we have the second Don Giovanni this evening.  So little time for hunching over my blogging machinery!

Can't object to this!

Here is the Sun-Times review of Don Giovanni.

Pelleas, Pelleas

This opera has a very special place in my mind and my life for purely random reasons.  It was the first new production in my first season at Glyndebourne, my first "proper job" in 1962.  The director was Carl Ebert, one of the founding fathers of Glyndebourne, the conductor Vittorio Gui who had known Debussy, and the Melisande Denise Duval who had created the roles of Therese in Poulencs's Les Mamelles de Tiresias, Blanche in The Carmelites, and the Woman in La voix humaine (seen here right).  A piece of history indeed.  And this last production at Glyndebourne by Ebert, so ravishingly designed by a young man from Verona, Beni Montresor, later to become a celebrated painter and illustrator as well as a much loved theater designer, had an indelible impact on me.  So of course I love this opera, often derided as intolerably tedious......

This evening I was at one of the later rehearsals at the Canadian Opera Company's beautiful opera house in Toronto of a production that can be discussed (by Nicholas Muni) but with an assumption of the role of Pelleas more perfect than one could dream of - the extraordinary Russell Braun.  He had been a member of the COC chorus when I was General Director of the company in 1989.

And the rest of the cast was not shabby.  Isabel Bayrakdarian was there taking on the role of Melisande for the first time, and Pavlo Hunka was a powerful and convincing Golaud.  And controlling all this in the pit was Jan Latham Koenig who had conducted our Beatrice and Benedict at COT in 2007.

Earlier in the day I was at the farewell recital of the 2008 graduating members of the COC's "Ensemble" - essentially the company's training program for young singers which has produced such wonderful talent over the years.  We have two of its less recent graduates, Michael Colvin and Krisztina Szabo, in our COT Don Giovanni which opened last night.  May the current crop do as well!

I will be back at O'Hare tomorrow at 8.30 am with a full day ending with the infinite pleasure of Mahler at the CSO conducted by our beloved Bernard Haitink.  Can you imagine better than that?  There are other good things too - including getting Flowering Tree on the Harris stage for the first time.  More in due course - but enough for tonight!

Opening report

What a wonderful evening we had yesterday.  The full house stood and cheered a really good performance, everyone was well and on top form, the wrinkles were all ironed out, and the animation in the house was a great thrill after all these weeks of preparation.  We had a celebration in the Fairmont afterwards - so the 2008 season is off to a great start. And at last I have a photo of one of the more jolly parts of my job - partying with the girls who finally gave the Don his comeuppance.

I will be in Canada today just for 24 hours.  My 7 am flight was canceled but my very kind and helpful airline rebooked me on an Air Canada flight so I should not be delayed at all.  Sigh of relief having awoken by force at 4.30.  Bravo American Airlines!

More reports later.

Opening Night

There seems to be a more than usual buzz around on our opening night this year, not to mention a virtually full house.  I think that the positioning of our season as a quasi Festival season makes a difference.  And a Mozart opera is always a good kick off event to be sure.  We have a pretty glittering cast in the audience as well as on stage with visitors from far and wide including a good many who took the Air India cheapo flight from London yesterday!  So this is the beginning of an exciting run I feel sure.

At lunchtime today we had another of those very successful and enjoyable events at the Arts Club - this time a conversation with Diane Paulus and our lighting designer Aaron Black on the subject of new productions and the process involved.  The "audience" of members of the arts Club were lively and inquisitive.  I hope that we gave them some insights, as well as some information on what IS a new production.  There appears to be some difference of opinion around about that.  In my book it must new sets, costumes, and all physical elements.  They must not just be new to Chicago, nor can a new "staging" within sets and costumes bought or rented from another company qualify for this description.  No, it has to be new from the bottom up - nor can it be a copy of an existing physical production newly fabricated......

So now that we have got that straight we can say that COT does new productions almost exclusively.  The most recent exception was Nixon in China which was a co-production with the Opera Theatre of St Louis but by the time it came here in 2006 it had already been seen in the theaters of two of the other co-producers.  I hope we made that clear at the time!

All is reasonably quiet as we wait for this evening.  But Flowering Tree and Orlando are hard at it.  It will be a long day.  It started for me with a breakfast meeting at 8.30.  If I am home by midnight I will be surprised.  And I have a 7am flight tomorrow........oh dear!

Orlando begins

So we are on to the third opera.  Raymond Leppard is at it with this small but perfect cast.  He arrived fresh from a week in Bilbao and a week in Geneva.  That's a nice prelude to six weeks in Chicago.  And in Bilbao he had the pleasure of a program of John Adams and Dvorak.  How American can you get?

Anyway you see here the first rehearsal on the little rehearsal room at the Harris Theater which is just perfect for the initial musical ensemble rehearsals.  Here we have Raymond with the delightful Dorinda, Andriana Chuchman, together with her colleagues Kate Mangiameli and David Trudgen.  We are there for two days and then in Curtiss Hall for the rest of time until Orlando moves into the theater after the opening of Flowering Tree.  So we are talking another 18 days or so.

Last night

The Dress rehearsal went splendidly - enough still to do for Wednesday but not so much that it can not get done.  So we remain on track.

There was a nice nugget of information that came out of my conversation with the team at Opera Bites.  Our set designer Riccardo Hernandez was born in Cuba.  His father was a singer - and sang Masetto in the Havana Opera (left)to Cesare Siepi's Don.  Well how about that?!  It certainly pleased the older opera fans who often cite Siepi as the finest Don they ever saw.  So there was naturally an intake of breath and a ripple of applause.

It will be good to see whether, when Cuba returns to the old normal, the Opera House regains its international status.  Certainly a gig in Havana would be attractive!

A propos Siepi - yes I saw him as the Don at Covent Garden in the then new Zefirelli production in 1962.  The Zerlina was the twenty something Mirella Freni and Georg Solti, the recently appointed Music Director of the Royal Opera, conducted.

Freezing rain!

Where are we?  Its brutal out there. 

But anyway I tripped off this early afternoon to the Flowering Tree rehearsal.  I was glad to see them all and when I received a rash of compliments on my haircut I realised that I had not seen them for a week. This last week of Don Giovanni rehearsals has been all consuming; but it all comes to an end this evening with the Final Dress preceded by Opera Bites - our board and donor get together before the rehearsal.  Diane Paulus and Jane Glover will show up to answer questions, as will our two designers for sets and costumes, Riccardo Hernandez and David Woolard.

So we are in for a long evening.  But it should be something special.

I said I would keep you posted.......

Regular readers may remember this post from March 18th.  Well it arrived, I used it for the first time this morning, and it worked!  If you want to know what I am talking about you have to click the link above.  So now I am a true Chicagoan with my Permanent Resident's Card, my Costco card, and now this!

More DG pictures

I added a dozen or more this afternoon to the picture site and there may be others later.  I have also removed the old ones from the rehearsal room but requests for copies from company members will be responded to.  And there will be CD's available with a selection of all the best pictures for those who would like to have them for their own websites, cvs etc or any other non commercial use.

Meanwhile it is Sunday and a day of rest - well sort of.  We went for a family walk to the Lincoln Park Zoo and back on this cloudy morning.  But the peace of a Chicago Sunday is evident above.

Pre Dress

I am home after the Pre Dress and really not up to doing too much about the blog!  But over the coming 24 hours I will add photos to the picture site.  Meanwhile be content that we had a wonderful last rehearsal before the Final Rehearsal (!) - and here above you can get a sense of the enjoyment being shared by everyone at COT!  And a huge audience on Wednesday?  We hope so anyway.....

Day of music

These two stage and orchestra rehearsals today concentrated on musical aspects.  So it was Jane Glover in charge (above) and she got through everything in her usual calm efficient way.  Pre Dress tomorrow afternoon and then we should be ready for the Final Dress on Monday.  Meanwhile Flowering Tree proceeds and Orlando begins next week.  Its all go.

80 degrees in Chicago this afternoon.  Down to 40 next week. 

More on yesterday

For the last six years or so we have had the annual Andrew Patner lecture series as part of our Education and Outreach program.  We cater for all ages and levels of knowledge.  The Patner series, normally on the Thursday preceding opening of each production, is definitely for "grown ups" - both in terms of age and prior knowledge and understanding.  We always get an excellent turn out and the quality of the questions and the general interaction tells us that this is a smart bunch.  But do not be intimidated.  Andrew Patner is a most informal and spontaneous host and his legendary intellect is in no way intimidating.  So if you missed yesterday make up for it with the two remaining lectures details of which can be found here.  And Andrew's blog also covered these events yesterday. His blog has developed really well over the couple of months since he started.  And he is now posting most days - worth regular visits for a variety of wit and wisdom.

And today we have another marathon - 1-45 to 9.45 - two rehearsals with a two hour break for refueling.

Another dozen

So I managed to salvage a dozen or more amusing pictures from the Piano Dress last night.  You can get a sense of what is happening to the Don here!  If you are in any doubt click the pic to enlarge.

They are now on the photo site and feel free to download and use as you wish for free and with my compliments - as long as there is no commercial gain in which case you make a contribution to the honesty box and the proceeds go to COT.  You do that by clicking on the button to the left or here.

Tomorrow I really will go to see how Flowering Tree is getting along.  And then for the afternoon and evening we are in the theater for the next polishing stage of Don Giovanni.

Piano Dress pictures

I have put a handful up on the picture site.  But the lighting was difficult and they needed a huge amount of work to be presentable.  I will try to get more there this evening (no rehearsal!).