This week I bring you a little interview with our most recent chorusmaster/assistant conductor candidate, Francesco Milioto. I was curious about what it's like to come in and have what essentially amounts to a month-long audition. Francesco was great to work with, and I appreciate the time he took to answer my questions.

Where are you from?

Born in Toronto, Ontario CANADA but I now live in Chicago.

What's your background? Where did you go to school, and what did you study?

My background, Sicilian.  Started playing piano at 6 or 7. Came home from school and my father had bought me an upright piano and put it in my bedroom. I never asked to play an instrument, never played one. He had already signed me up for lessons. I guess it worked out. I went to the University of Western Ontario for my undergrad in piano performance where I studied with Ron Turini, a former pupil of Horowitz. Then for a Masters in Orchestral Conducting and Opera repetition at the University of McGill in Montreal.

You came to join us mid-season, and were thrown right in. You didn't meet the Tosca chorus until the first rehearsal, and then hit the ground running with chorus rehearsals, staging rehearsals, artist coachings, previews, a recital. Can you tell me a little bit about this experience? What is it like? Is there a particularly unique challenge to this situation, or is it pretty much par for the course for anyone who guest conducts?

Today's blog title is a tiny shout-out to our Maestro, Joseph Colaneri, who yesterday before the matinee asked me if I could send our concertmaster to chat with him, because he had "just a few dribs and drabs" to adjust in the strings before the performance.

I was hoping to have an interview for you today with our current interim Chorusmaster & Principal Coach, Francesco Milioto, but that didn't work out -- maybe next week! Instead I have an assortment of Tosca-related notes that I've been compiling during this past week of rehearsals and performances.

Trials and tribulations of running supertext

A Tosca primer, in diagram form

During Don Giovanni, a 15-year-old friend of the opera, Natalie Karcher, was inspired to draw us a diagram of the action which was both hilarious and incredibly accurate. We liked it so much we asked her if she'd be interested in making one for Tosca too. She obliged, and IT IS AWESOME. If you have any questions about the plot, this probably will clear them up.

Great, right? She nails it. Natalie is attending our Thursday evening performance and hopefully will be reporting back on her experience.

A quick and dirty overview of the 2013-14 season

On Thursday, January 15, we announced our 2013-14 season! I'm one of the lucky folks on the staff who's in on the secret of which operas we're programming (or considering), which is both exciting and challenging -- it's so hard to keep quiet! This year it was particularly difficult because I am so, so excited about the season. We'll have much more info about these shows on our webpage soon, but in the meantime, I thought I'd give you the quick and dirty summaries of our 2013-14 shows.

Portland Opera's Big Night

If you haven't been around for previous years' concerts, there's a street fair outside the Keller where you can eat hot dogs and ice cream and maybe learn how to swing dance, and then we have a concert of great opera tunes! If you don't get a ticket for inside the concert, you can sit in Ira Keller park (they turn off the fountain so you can even sit in the fountain) and watch the show, which we broadcast onto a giant screen on the front of the Keller. Afterwards we show a movie on the screen. I always wear a very good dress, observe:

Lucia di Lammermoor

Lucia is basically a Hatfields & McCoys/Capulets & Montagues-type tale about two families in a long feud. The fortune of one of the families is dwindling, so the lovely but sort of off-balance Lucia is married off by her brother to a dude with a lot of money. Only secretly Lucia has fallen in love with, and sworn to be married to, a member of the opposing family. Unfortunately she is a lady at a time when ladies didn't really get to choose for themselves, so regardless of her wishes she is married to the wealthy guy. She gets married, but then as all the guests are downstairs at the reception, Lucia stabs her bridegroom and then comes down to the reception hall covered in blood, clutching a knife, and sings an amazing (and famous) aria, colloquially called the "mad scene."

Then her brother (the one responsible for marrying her off) and her lover fight a duel, and in the middle of the duel Edgardo learns that Lucia has died (presumably of grief. Or maybe of crazy?) and so he pulls out a dagger and kills himself. Typical cheerful opera!

Salome

We're back in biblical times. Salome is King Herod's pretty hot stepdaughter. Herod has captured John the Baptist (called Jokanaan in the opera) and is keeping him prisoner in a cistern, because Herod is afraid of Jokanaan's prophecies. Salome becomes weirdly, creepily fascinated with the prophet, and when he is brought up from the cistern (at her command), she goes on at length about how she is essentially lusting after his skin, his hair, his eyes. Jokanaan is not interested and decries her before going back down into his cell. Herod then tells Salome he'll give her half his kingdom if only he'll dance for her. So, she does. If you're interested, you can see it here, with Catherine Malfitano and Bryn Terfel. Fair warning: there is no actual nudity but Malfitano is wearing sheer clothing which can in a few places be seen through on top.

Then, when Herod asks Salome what she wants in return, she says she wants the head of Jokanaan on a silver platter. THE BEST. You just keep on with your crazy self, girl.

Herod is obviously horrified, but, bound by his vow, he orders Jokanaan's decapitation. When the head is brought forth, Salome makes out with it, to the horror of ...everyone? To put everybody out of their misery, Herod has the guards crush Salome between their shields. And that's the end of the opera!

Great, right?!?!?! Granted, I tend to like my opera bloody and scandalous.

The big question when anybody does Salome is, will she or won't she? That is, will she take off all the veils, and be totally naked onstage? The answer: we don't know yet. We're creating the production from scratch (our first new mainstage production since Cenerentola!) and we haven't ruled out nudity yet. It's hard to say.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Britten opera! A Britten opera on the centenary of his birth!! YAY.

Midsummer is, as it would seem, drawn from the Shakespeare play. The libretto was adapted by Britten's partner, Peter Pears, but draws straight from the original work. The plot is convoluted and actually kind of hard to summarize, so if you're not already familiar with the play, I'll just tell you that there are fairies and human lovers and a troupe of bumbling actors, and there are love potions and misadventures and everything turns out all right in the end. The Metropolitan Opera has a great in-depth synopsis if you're not familiar with the play.

This will be our Resident Artist opera, staged in the Newmark, and as usual built from scratch for this production. Kevin Newbury, who directed Galileo Galilei, will return to direct. There is a lot of beautiful orchestration, a children's chorus, and MAGIC. Seriously, guys, magic.

The Pirates of Penzance

Frederic is a young man who was given over to a band of pirates as a young child, sent to be their apprentice until his 21st birthday. When we meet him, he's just about to celebrate his 21st year and leave the piratehood. The pirates he lives with are pretty nice guys, and so he feels bad that duty requires him to hunt them down and get rid of them once he's no longer a pirate. Bummer, pirates.

Their ship comes ashore and Frederic, in the midst of a nice afternoon walk, accidentally stumbles into a cluster of pretty ladies who think they have the beach to themselves. He explains that he really needs a girlfriend to help him recover from piracy, and after a little bit of debate among the girls, Mabel steps forward to take the job. In true theater style, they immediately fall in love. The pirates arrive and attempt to take the ladies prisoner, but their quick-thinking dad (the Major General) lies and says that he's an orphan, because he knows the pirates have a soft spot for orphans, and they let him go.

Then it turns out that Frederic was actually born in a leap year, so even though he's been alive for 21 years, he still has 63 more years of servitude with the pirates. He begrudgingly agrees to go back (telling Mabel to wait for him!), but before he can, the pirates, intent on smuggling away all the pretty ladies, lay a siege on the Major General's house, only to be badly thwarted by the local police. Eventually it comes to light that the pirates are all actually noblemen gone astray, and everybody lives happily ever after. Theater!

That was kind of a long synopsis, sorry. It's hard to be brief with these things. Gilbert and Sullivan are comically convoluted. Pirates is coming to us from Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where it premiered last year. It is SUPER charming and a wonderful way to close the season.

Phew. So that's a wrap. I am really excited. The orchestra can't WAIT for Salome, which is so tricky that I've agreed to let them have the music this spring, so that everyone has ample time to learn the part. I honestly can't decide which of the shows I'm most excited about.

One more thing

I have a great dress for Tosca and we're taking votes on our facebook page for how I should do my hair. Help a girl out.

Next week on the blog: More from Tosca, and a chat with our current Chorus Master/Assistant Conductor candidate, Francesco Milioto.

A dispatch from the rehearsal room

I just came upstairs from our staging studio, where I listened to Roger Honeywell, our Cavaradossi, sing e lucevan le stelle in rehearsal. Holy cow, that aria! We've just begun rehearsing Act 3; the first two acts are staged. The rehearsal hall was bustling all weekend with full chorus (48 singers), children's chorus (almost 20 kids), full cast and staff. Next door in our music studio, there are two electric keyboards (one to play the organ, one to play the lowest church bells), four racks of chimes, cymbals, timpani, a giant bass drum (for backstage cannon), a celeste, a harp, and about a million chairs and stands, mostly scattered. The orchestra had their first reading Saturday morning; we've now read through the whole opera once, making a lot of tweaks and adjustments along the way. We have a final reading tonight, and then the orchestra has a few days off, returning on Friday for the first rehearsal in the theater. This is opera!


Tosca rehearsal notes


Choices, choices: testing out the various Scarpia-killing devices

Frequent readers of this blog know that I am very fond of rehearsal notes. I find them to be a constant reminder of just how unusual some of our jobs are. Some people in the world worry about spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, business meetings; others worry about the exact shape and heft of stage daggers and the most expedient way to drag a body on and offstage.

It takes all kinds.

Here are some recent highlights from the notes, sent out daily by our Production Stage Manager, Jennifer Hammontree.

POGO

The singers for the outreach arm of our company, Portland Opera To Go, have been in the building for the last couple of weeks, working hard in rehearsals. This year's touring production is an English-language version of The Magic Flute, cut down to about 50 minutes. The production, last used in 2005, features a giant 'pop-up book' as the main set piece, with all the things any self-respecting pop-up book should feature: things that slide out, open up, and unfold from its 'pages' -- including the dragon in the opening scene. As always with our outreach tour, the small cast of singers are responsible for everything on the road: packing up the set, loading it into the truck, driving the truck (and our passenger van) to whatever school or alternative venue they're visiting, unpacking the set, building the set on site, and so forth. They are a really special group of people, who are not only talented singers but also excellent educators and poised ambassadors for their craft (and this company). Some of them are local; the rest come from cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Happy new year, blog friends!

The period between Thanksgiving and New Year's is a funny time here at the opera. For many of us (particularly those of us who aren't involved with our Broadway series), it's the only "dead" time of year we have. It's the longest period during the season when there isn't a show going on. We put Giovanni to bed (pun intended) and then: almost two full months before rehearsals begin again. And every stinking year I get lulled into a false sense of "I have plenty of time to get this done," when in fact, those almost-two-months are chock full of preparations for this latter part of the season, where, frankly, we hit the ground sprinting and do not stop until we close in May.

To that end: TOSCA!

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Tosca!

Tosca who?

Toscaloosa!

This week, we begin rehearsals for our February production of Puccini's Tosca. The artistic folks -- cast, conductor, director, designers -- are in transit, the set is loaded in to our rehearsal space, and we are (more or less) ready to go.

Tosca is particularly special to me, and marks a watershed moment in my career, because it was the first opera I ever worked on with this company, back in 2005. In fact, it was more or less my first opera; although I had seen Carmen with my french class in 9th or 10th grade, I had no recollection of it at all save that I missed the bus we'd hired to transport our class there and had to frantically get my mom to drive me down to the theater in Baltimore in time to make the show. So: not much.