Author: Robert Wood

Dear Friends,

My quick trip up to New York was indeed quick, and quite dramatic. I knew that I would be racing the clock to take care of all the business I had hoped to accomplish up there and get on a train back to Washington before Amtrak shut down — but I did not anticipate that upon leaving my first meeting on a sunny Friday afternoon, I would encounter a man taping an evacuation order to the building I had just left.

Was this a sign? Well, yes, it was certainly a sign, but was it a SIGN?

Should I have halved my offer to the composer I had just met? Should I have insisted that he rewrite his opera for a recession-proof ensemble of upturned plastic tubs? (Wait, someone already did that.)

In any case, I had a wonderful meeting with composer Conrad Cummings, who (spoiler alert) will be featured on our upcoming April Festival.

The rest of Friday afternoon was stressful. After my meeting with Conrad, I returned to my hotel under completely different circumstances – transit was to shut down the next day, and what seemed like large swaths of the city were to be evacuated. The front desk clerk was reassuring European tourists that they had nothing to fear on the 14th floor, except for walking up to their room in case of an elevator outage.

“Well, it’s good for the exercise, isn’t it? Because the fitness center won’t be open if the power goes out.”

Right.

I managed to change my Amtrak reservation to an earlier train, and rescheduled the singer I was to hear on Saturday morning to 10:30. Poor guy.

Then it was off to the Fringe Festival, where I thoroughly enjoyed a play called Sammy Gets Mugged, directed by Noah Himmelstein, who (spoiler alert) will also be featured on our upcoming season. Then to bed.

On Saturday morning, I went to Penn Station early to print out my ticket (before the auditions — fortunately, I had booked a hotel within walking distance of the train AND the audition studios!) and it was a madhouse, everyone trying to escape avant le déluge. The electronic ticket kiosk was not cooperating, and the line was too long for me to still make it to the studio on time. I gave up, and went and heard a wonderful singer, which took my mind off hurricanes for twenty minutes.

Back to Penn Station — now it was eerily quiet, as if everyone who was left was resigned to there being no more lifeboats on the Titanic. I felt particularly bad for the ladies working at the only cafe in the station that was open — because the transit system was shutting down at noon, they were not going to be able to make it back to the outer boroughs where they lived. I hope their employer gave them cab fare! Although one really has to ask — was it necessary to shut the whole system down? It made me think of a line from an opera which (spoiler alert) we’re going to produce in April: “Damn you, Mayor Bloomberg!”

Once we had boarded the train, it was still touch and go. We were delayed for 15 minutes due to “mechanical issues”, which turned out to be a lack of hot dogs in the cafe. Once they were loaded on, we were released from New York — and proceeded mostly uneventfully until shortly after BWI airport, when we lost power. So close! Fortunately, we were able to move on before too long, and we certainly made up for lost time — we did the stretch from BWI to the District at 80mph. Yes, we want to get home, but IN ONE PIECE, PLEASE!

We arrived safe if a little frazzled.

Meanwhile . . .

I am now looking forward to a performance at the Harman Center’s Fall Arts Preview, which is part of DC’s Arts on Foot — click on “Activities” and then at the very bottom on “Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Fall Arts Performance Showcase”. We’re performing at 3:30 on Saturday, September 10th . . . eblast to follow shortly.

Hope everyone stayed as dry as I did!

Bob

Or riding, I should say, on Amtrak.

I’m headed to New York for a quick visit, meeting with composers, singers, and directors; there are just a few more pieces of the puzzle to put into place, and after this weekend, our plans for Festival 2012 should be solidified.

The weather is not cooperating, though . . . I’m scheduled to return to Washington tomorrow afternoon, which should be JUST when Irene is starting to make her presence known in Virginia. Hopefully Amtrak won’t need to shut the trains down until after I’m safe at home. I may have to stay in New York, though (darn!).

Deciding on productions is a complicated calculus, as anyone who has done it will tell you. For UrbanArias, there are quite a few things to take into account: does it fit our length parameters, do we feel it represents the brand of “Opera. Short. New.”, what is the quality of music and libretto, does the piece need any “tweaks” (oh, how composers love to hear that!), how many singers/actors, how many instrumentalists, does it lend itself to a small production in a black box theater, how much do the rights cost, is it something the DC public will be interested in seeing, how many people would we need to house, can we find the right directors who are willing to work with the same design team on different operas (and vice-versa), etc.

Another big question for most companies in planning something is, “are the right singers available for the roles?” Generally, companies don’t program Salome without knowing that they have a Salome and Jochanaan lined up, for example.

UrbanArias, by virtue of being a start-up, can be fairly nimble, but we do need to plan some things well in advance — we could not have engaged Elizabeth Futral for our stunning performances of Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Euridice at the last minute. A one-person show needs very careful casting in any case, to ensure that the artist is not only capable of singing and acting the piece beautifully, but has the charisma to carry off an evening all alone onstage.

This year, we have a different challenge: one of the pieces I would really like to do has seven singers (!) and a lead role which is a) long (even if the opera is only 85 minutes long, if you’re singing for 70 of those minutes, you need stamina), b) vocally challenging in terms of range (how high and low the notes go) AND tessitura (where the role sits in the singer’s range for the bulk of the show) c) requires an excellent actor d) needs to read as a specific age and physical type, e) requires an excellent musician. That last is not to be discounted . . . as anyone who saw last year’s offerings can attest! We program pieces that can be very demanding on the brain (think of trying to memorize the difficult rhythms of Glory Denied, AND move and act convincingly). This particular opera relies so heavily on the abilities of one person that I’m unwilling to program it without the right singer in the role. Like Salome. This weekend will hopefully answer that question.

Supporting roles are terribly important as well – especially when they are of a vocal and/or physical type that is very specific. To give you an example: unlike more conventional opera companies, our audiences are so close to the performers that turning a young singer into an older one via makeup is pretty unconvincing. If our piece calls for performers in a specific age range, we need to adhere to that pretty closely.

We must also be careful in our first years not to bite off more than we can chew. I think our audiences and the press were really impressed by our maiden voyage last April, and we don’t want to disappoint by trying something too ambitious. That said, I clearly didn’t let that stop me last time . . .

So wish me luck as I complete the casting for next season, and try to get home on time tomorrow!

Bob Wood

p.s. We are very excited to be doing a preview performance at the Harman Center in Washingon, DC on September 10. Details on that in my next post, and via our eblast.

Dear UrbanArias fans and visitors,

I can’t believe it’s already been four months since our April Festival!

I was really pleased at how it turned out — it’s impossible to know the first time if everything will come together, and it certainly did.

I felt our artistic work was on a very high level (and the reviews agree!); we had a number of sold-out performances, and I was gratified to get so much great feedback from both seasoned opera fans and those who had never seen an opera before.

Many thanks, belated but heartfelt, are due to our wonderful singers, players, designers, crew, board, and supporters.

Over the next weeks, I will reveal the details of our 2012 UrbanArias Festival, which will again be in April, as well as upload information about other performances we’re giving this fall and winter. Plus, I will share some war stories about last spring . . . there are a lot of them.

More very soon, and I hope everyone is having a great summer.

Bob Wood

Rhetorical question. Doesn’t matter – just be flattered you have the interview, as someone who runs a brand-new, start-up opera company.

Classical WETA invited me over this afternoon for a very congenial session, which will be posted on their website soon (link to follow when I have it), and broadcast several times next week. This is a wonderful means of promotion for our evening of mini-operas next Friday! I couldn’t be more pleased. Nicole LaCroix was the animated and very informed hostess with the perfectly-modulated, soothing voice (not sure my radio voice is up to snuff, we’ll see). Deb Lamberton was the extremely capable, warm and equally informed producer. After my 9-minute fling at the microphone, Deb commanded me to retire to her studio for a “quiz”. Oh no.

She put a CD in the machine . . . “Do you know who that is?” she asked. German accent . . . the context indicated he was a conductor . . . sounded like he was an old-school maestro . . . “Is that Adler?” I asked. It was. Phew.

Kurt Herbert Adler was the legendary General Director of the San Francisco Opera for many years — before my time, it’s true, but when I was working there, I ran into a handful of people who had known him, and they all spoke of him with reverence. The Adler Fellowship, a rigorous training program for young singers at the San Francisco Opera (and now for coaches and directors as well) is named for him. So I acquitted myself adequately in the quiz (or as the young people say, I “represented”. My former home town San Francisco, that is. Not sure if that is really meant to be conjugated in this context. Oh well.)

The point is, we’re excited about the publicity, and the show next week is going to be fantastic. Our cast is excellent. Quick, musical, and good on stage. And, I went nude.

Kidding, just seeing if you read it all.

Bob

Hello all,

We’re ringing in the New Year with another performance: on January 14, UrbanArias will return to the Black Box Theater in Artisphere to present an evening of mini-operas.

This will be our usual mix of the irreverent and the thought-provoking — we’re reprising Jonathan Sheffer and Robert Patrick’s comic take on video communication, Camera Obscura; we also have a delightful gem by DC-area composer Lori Laitman called The Act (about knife throwers); Again, a provocative look at abusive relationships and how they are enabled by Jake Heggie; Jack Perla’s Betty Box Office, which spoofs the degree to which there is a hidden performer in almost every employee of an arts organization; and three short pieces from Seymour Barab’s new cycle of mini-operas, In Questionable Taste.

When I was assembling the program for this evening a few weeks ago, I already knew I wanted to do Camera Obscura again, as we got such a great reception for it in October.  I also knew that since I had already programmed Tom Cipullo’s delightful Lucy twice, I should probably look for some pieces that the DC-area public hasn’t seen yet.  Although, it would be fair to argue that there are many thousands of people in the area who did not see Lucy.  But still.

I generally ask composers with whom I already have a relationship if they have anything that suits our needs, and most of them have files ready to go at a moment’s notice.  Jack Perla wrote Betty Box Office for the opening of Tapestry New Opera in Toronto, and he had that and four other mini-operas to me within a few days of my request:  they’re all good, but we’ll start with Betty because it lends itself to performances by start-up companies.  A few text changes (sanctioned by the composer, of course), and it’s about UrbanArias.   It’s amusing to insiders and outsiders alike; it’s extraordinary how many people you run into in the administrative offices of opera companies who are former performers of one kind or another.  We all know “Betty”.

I ran into Lori at a party in December, and she mentioned that she had a five-minute opera, which she sent along the next day — I’m delighted to be doing it, although I’m calling our insurance agent about the knife-throwing.  Actually, we don’t have an insurance agent yet (!), so I’d better put obtaining one on my list first, and then use conceptual knives.  We’re new and edgy, we can get away with a lot, right?  Anyway, it’s the director’s problem.

Jake has been very kind in giving us permission to do a couple of his songs and arias at various gigs, and I find his 9-minute opera Again very intriguing.  The libretto, by David Patrick Stearns, dissects the relationship between Ricky and Lucy Ricardo (yes, THAT Lucy and Ricky).  Is it screwball?  Or screwed up?  It’s amazing what you can do in nine minutes — this one leaves you feeling thoughtful, and perhaps a little unsettled.

So after I assembled all of that, I still needed a few more pieces to bring us up to a performance that would be about an hour long.  Enter Seymour Barab, whose work I have admired for years.  Edrie Means, one of our cast members last October, and a returning artist for our January show, knows him, and has sung a number of his works — she also, as it turns out, has his phone number.  (He prefers to speak to a person rather than communicate by email, which is what the youth mean, I think, when they say “Kicking it Old School”; although possibly they mean something else.)  Mr. Barab is very charming in person, so I’m glad I called; he told me he had a whole cycle of mini-operas/musicals that are brand new, called In Questionable Taste.  I told him it sounded right up our alley.

Well!  I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.  They’re all jokes, expanded, staged, and set to music.  They’re very funny (although some of them are a little coarse for us; after all, we do hope to get NEA funding some day!) — even more so if you already know the punch line.  Watching the characters get to the inevitable is a reward in itself.

I have chosen three of the cleaner ones, although I won’t spoil them for you here; you’ll have to come on the 14th.  I will tell you, though, that the cast burst out laughing as they read through each of them.

So we have a nice, varied program, and a great cast, and we have two short weeks to put this all together.  Now I know why arts organizations don’t schedule performances so soon after the the holidays — no one is around to work.  UrbanArias is scrappy, though, and I’m sure will pull it off with aplomb.  After all, they’re only ten-minute pieces – how hard can they be?  (This is a question I have been asked, and the short answer is: very.  The long answer is for another post.)

I hope you can join us on January 14 and a very Happy New Year to everyone!

Bob Wood

UrbanArias had a fantastic debut at Artisphere — it’s hard to believe it’s already a month ago!

We presented two “mini-operas”: Lucy by Tom Cipullo and Camera Obscura by Jonathan Sheffer. We had excellent casts, excellent direction, and a great pianist, and the audiences really responded. In fact, both shows were packed — standing room only. We performed for close to 300 people (a few came twice), and not only did people really get what we’re about as a company, but we also made a number of converts — people who are not necessarily opera buffs, but who will come back now that they know how entertaining and accessible an art form it can be.

As a result of everyone’s positive feedback and interest, we decided to add another evening of ten- to fifteen minute mini-operas in January (there are a surprising number of these pieces!). We’ll do two performances on Friday, January 14 (details to follow). UrbanArias is thrilled to be so popular, and this added performance will serve as a terrific bridge to our festival season in April.

Can’t wait to see everyone!

Bob

We have lots of news!

First of all, I’d like to welcome Kate Mesches to our Board of Directors. Kate is a fantastic businesswoman and restauranteuse, and we’re delighted to have her expertise and good advice. Plus she is a lot of fun, so she fits in well with the rest of us. Kate was won over by our successful performances at Artisphere on October 10 — more about those in the next post.

Dear friends,

After a hot and languid summer, we’re suddenly humming with activity.

We have another performance coming up:  Artisphere, Arlington’s new cultural center and our new home, has invited us to perform at their open house on Sunday, October 10.  I can’t wait to get in the new space and see what it’s like!

We’ll do two 10-minute operas:  Tom Cipullo’s Lucy, which we also did at the Kennedy Center last April, and Jonathan Sheffer’s Camera Obscura, a wonderful gem from about 30 years ago.  Lucy is the story of an elderly lady who imagines a handsome young man sitting on her television; he sings to her, of course.  Camera Obscura is a witty take on the then-new technology of video phones . . . and their attendant time lag.

UrbanArias is delighted to have Edrie Means Weekly, Ethan Watermeier, VaShawn McIlwaine, and Colleen Daly starring at Artisphere!  They will also sing a few excerpts from other recent operas . . . the audience should get an excellent feel for the kind of work we do.  We’re also very excited to have Chuck Hudson join us from New York to direct these mini-masterpieces.  (We’re making him take the bus, though.  Tight budget.)

Our fundraising also proceeds apace — we have an event coming up on October 2nd at my home, also featuring Mr. Watermeier’s fine baritone, and we’re planning two evenings with our 2011 season composers, Ricky Ian Gordon and Tom Cipullo.

And I want to extend a special welcome to Mary Hynes, of the Arlington County Board, who has recently joined our Advisory Board!

Finally, we’re nearly ready to announce casting for our 2011 season, and I’m really thrilled about the artistic teams we’ve assembled.  (Some of whom may also have to ride the bus.)

More soon!

Bob Wood

Sounds like us!  It’s now time for me to give Ms. Midgette a call!

Anne Midgette’s article on New American Opera

This week UrbanArias received its Letter of Determination from the IRS, which means we are now a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

We’re delighted that we have achieved tax-exempt status, which is retroactive to our incorporation last October — it makes our lives much easier on the business side of our operation.  We can do all sorts of things now:  apply for foundation grants, accept donations on the website (which I’ll set up shortly), even get our web hosting for free courtesy of DreamHost!

Our website will soon undergo a major update, as we announce repertoire and dates for our April, 2011 UrbanArias Festival, and as the “support” and “about” headings get fleshed out with new material . . . plus, we have some great pictures from the Lucy rehearsal process we will upload, thanks to photographer and friend Karen Redmond.

We look forward to keeping all of you informed!

Bob Wood