TCO PRESENTS AN OPERATIC DOUBLE FEATURE

This month, as part of its ongoing Signature Series, Tri-Cities Opera pairs Menotti’s The Telephone and Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti.

“This is an evening about relationships,” says conductor Warren Jones. “About a couple of people before they marry and after they marry- sort of prototypical young people beginning life together and then experiencing its joys and difficulties as their lives grow and expand, both individually and bonded together.”

Pulitzer Prize winning Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti wrote The Telephone as a one-act comic opera in 1946. It tells the story of a young man attempting to propose to his girlfriend, but finding himself foiled at every turn as she takes one phone call after another. In our current culture, where people often appear unable to detach from their cell phones, the relevance of the story seems eerily familiar. Abigail Rethwisch, who plays the part of Lucy, agrees: “Substitute text messaging or face booking for a telephone call and it is instantly relevant to our society. This societal problem can be seen in a restaurant, coffee shop, or living room couch today- people looking down at their phones more often than they are engaging with each other.” Patrick Jones, who appears as Ben, echoes that thought, “People have become so dependent on their phones. I got in an elevator the other day, and it was so funny to notice that the five other people in there with me did not look up from their phones the entire time, even boarding and leaving the elevator.”

Trouble in Tahiti, on the other hand, portrays the difficulties found in a marriage of many years, an ironic turn as Bernstein actually wrote it at the time of his own honeymoon in 1951. “Tahiti,” explains director Carleen Graham, “looks at a troubled marriage through a bucolic lens that was so prevalent during that time [the 50s]. A jazz trio (Stacey Geyer, Quinn Bernegger, and Patrick Jones) acts as Greek chorus throughout.” The opera stars Mary Beth Nelson and Jake Stamatis as Dinah and Ben. “My character,” says Nelson, “has been struggling with her marriage for a while, is dramatic and passionate, however she is forced to suppress these traits. One of her biggest struggles as woman, spouse, and mother living in 1950s America is fulfilling her role as a homemaker when she longs for the life she sees on the silver screen.”

“Both of them are strong willed people who simply can’t communicate with each other,” Stamatis explains. “Sam wants to leave his mark. He is desperate to live a great life, but has found himself in a mediocre one, so he digs for something new. Something he can win.” Throughout the opera, the jazz trio sings about the American dream, including the addition of songs by Nicolas Slonimsky containing actual advertisements from the period.

For Carleen Graham and Warren Jones this will be their first time working with Tri-Cities. “We are utilizing the Tri-Cities Opera center in an entirely new and different way than ever before,” explains Jones. “The bulk of the production will be out in the center of the room, with the singers literally in the audience throughout the room, and with the orchestra/band on the stage- the opposite of how the room might be set up for “traditional” performances. Therefore, there will be a good deal of new looks and new prospectives for music making and for the drama and comedy to unfold before the public.” Sets for the production were designed by Amara Kopakova.

Concludes Warren Jones; “There are moments of comedy, moments of great sadness, and most of all, moments that we all will recognize as those moments from our own lives. This promises to be a wonderful evening of fun as well as thought-provoking drama. It’s a great reason to get out of the house around Valentine’s Day and experience some theatre!”

Tri Cities Opera is located at 315 Clinton Street in Binghamton. Show times are Thursday and Friday, February 18th and 19th, at 7:30pm, and Saturday and Sunday, the 20th and 21st, at 3pm. A preview of the show will be presented at 8pm Saturday, February 13th, and includes an overview of the show, along with musical excerpts. Tickets may be purchased at the Tri-Cities Box Office (contact 772-0400 for hours of operation) or online at tricitiesopera.com.

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Sometimes real life can be as dramatic and as romantic as theatre. Such is the case with singer Abigail Rethwisch, who plays the part of Lucy in The Telephone. When asked her favorite part of the role, her answer contained a surprise: “The proposal is my favorite part, musically and dramatically. I can relate to it on a very personal level, as I recently got engaged and married. Luckily, I wasn’t proposed to over the telephone, but it was on stage through a song!” Of course, after that lead-in, I had to ask for more details:

“My husband (Andrew Paulson) is also a singer, and he proposed to me in the middle of his graduate recital. He was performing Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson (a set of 9 songs), and before the 5th song, “J’ai presque peur, en vérité,” he asked me to come down from the audience and stand on stage with him. By the end of the song, he was down on one knee with a ring in hand- and of course, I said yes. It was at Florida State. We met on the first day of our Masters degree and were married a few weeks before we graduated!”

Fauré’s song was more than appropriate, as it epitomizes love at its start, with all the drama, passion, hope, and fears that go with it. Love at the point just before a couple embarks on a life together. It is also the jumping off point where Lucy and Ben find themselves in The Telephone. It is a hopeful time, the hope being that their precious love will survive the trials and tribulations of life in the years ahead.

Abigail provided a translation:

I am almost afraid, in truth, so much do I feel my life entwined with the radiant thought which took my soul from me last summer; so much does your image, for ever dear, live in this heart, entirely given to you, this heart uniquely anxious to love you and to please you; and I tremble- forgive me for telling you this so frankly- to think that just one word, one smile from you is henceforth my law, and that just one gesture, one word or one wink, would be enough for you to put my whole being in mourning for its celestial illusion. But rather, I only want to see you, even though the future were to be dark for me and prolific in countless sufferings, through a vast hope. Immersed in this supreme happiness of telling myself again and for ever, despite dismal returns, that I love you, that I love thee!