Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
It’s Tuesday as I’m penning this column at the splendid Victorian home of Robert Nelson and Van Ramsey in the heart of picturesque Cooperstown, New York. I am their guest, together with my dear friend Robert Ainsley, and for three glorious days, the four of us have been attending the Glimmerglass Festival, enjoying live performances of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and works by Richard Wagner.
How, you might ask, can that be possible? Isn’t the country battling yet one more spike in the coronavirus? Yes, that is true, but let me refer to the title of this column - Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way.
When the challenges of vaccination, COVID-19 testing, masking and distancing wreak havoc with preparing for a summer season of opera and musical theatre, what is the solution? Think out of the box – way out of the box. That’s just what the leadership team at The Glimmerglass Festival did, starting nearly a year ago, when the world was heading into lockdown mode. If there were an “Ingenuity Award for Live Performance in the Time of COVID-19,” I can’t think of a better recipient than Glimmerglass.
The major creative solution? An outdoor stage, designed by the renowned English theater set designer, Peter J. Davison, who has been a long-time collaborator at Glimmerglass (Show Boat, La Traviata, West Side Story, Porgy and Bess). He flew in from the UK to oversee the building of the stage, in collaboration with Abby Rodd, the Festival’s Director of Production. Working through the winter and into the spring, the Glimmerglass production staff built a wooden raked stage, fronted by a staircase, and topped with a lattice of black steel beams to frame the space and provide lighting. Two speaker towers, one on each side of the stage, brought sound from the singers onstage and the orchestra that played remotely in the enclosed theatre normally used for productions.
A small grove of tree trunks, upstage right, provided a flexible multi-purpose set for each production, and an array of multi-colored lightbulbs hanging from the black steel cross beam afforded limitless effects: the Magic Fire (Die Walküre), the blazing furnaces of the Anvil Chorus (Il Trovatore), and the trials of fire and water as well as the starry firmament (The Magic Flute).
Thanks to the numerous feedback monitors, screens, maestro cams, headset mics, and the sure baton and guiding hand of Music Director Joseph Colaneri, the ensemble effect between singers and orchestra was all but flawless. In deference to both COVID protocol and the environment, a QR code took each attendee directly to program information online,
And thus was created – GLIMMERGLASS ON THE GRASS.
Despite the compressed performances – 90 minutes without an intermission – the integrity of the two full operas was preserved through the genius collaboration of dramaturg, Kelley Rourke, Maestro Joseph Colaneri, and General and Artistic Director, Francesca Zambello.
Having not seen a live opera in eighteen months, I found myself dabbing away tears in the high drama and passion of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, thanks to a world-class cast that included Raehann Bryce-Davis as Azucena, Michael Mayes as the Count di Luna, Gregory Kunde in the role of Manrico, and Latonia Moore as Leonora.
The Magic Flute was a wonderful vehicle for the Glimmerglass young artists, bolstered by the special guest appearance of artist-in-residence, Eric Owens, as the narrator, and the two leads Tamino and Pamina, performed admirably by rising stars Aaron Crouch and Helen Zhibing Huang.
Gods and Mortals, a brilliantly selected compendium of Wagnerian favorites, featured Alexandria Shiner, last year’s winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions and the equally impressive Raehann Bryce-Davis, as well as Eric Owens, Mark Delavan, Aaron Keeney, and Ian Koziara. I was exhilarated to see Allie, as I had had the great honor of having her sing at my house for a Christmas party, shortly before COVID brought all artistic activities to a sudden halt.
How, one might wonder, was the audience accommodated? The broad expanse of open lawn in front of the stage was partitioned into “SQUARES”, each of which could accommodate a pod of four and were appropriately distanced from each other by six feet. “Lawn Leaders” aided attendees who brought their own blankets or chairs. At the far end of the lawn, additional seating was provided by sixteen Festival Boxes. In total, the lawn was able to accommodate nearly 600 ticketholders, or about 65% of the 900-seat capacity of the Festival’s Alice Busch Opera Theatre. The “en plein air” scene was reminiscent of picnicking at the Esplanade on the banks of the Charles River in Boston, or at Tanglewood.
Cooperstown, situated between the Catskill and Adirondack mountain ranges, can produce an array of weather on short notice and the staff at Glimmerglass left nothing to chance, hiring a professional weather forecaster, whose role it was to protect performers and audiences alike. If a rumble of thunder was detected as much as ten minutes away, a performance was halted. We were lucky that our experience with thunder and rain came at nighttime. A medical staff is also available on the campus for the entire season.
The flawless execution of three days of glorious music belies the immense complexity of accommodating countless requests for tickets – rather like handling the seating chart for a banquet gala every day and sometimes twice a day, but Caryn Kerstetter Reeves made it all look simple.
The Glimmerglass Festival will run through August 17, so there is still time to take it all in, including a number of performances we were unable to attend – Songbird, a new adaptation of Offenbach’s La Perichole, as well as The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, a new play by Sandra Seaton with original music by newly-appointed Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon, and starring Denyce Graves in the title role.
I encourage you – if you live within a few hours of Cooperstown – to find an open day or two in your schedule, buy tickets online and treat yourself to one or two or even three inspiring musical performances. You will not be disappointed.
With Rob Ainsley in a Festival Box