Cooking with West Edge Opera
The phrase Opera Medium-Rare (but well done!) conjures up visions of slicing up and forking into your mouth succulent steak, cooked to perfection, while the strains of glorious and dramatic music float across the white linen–covered table where you are indulging your culinary devotions. Heaven.
In reality it’s just as tasty: it’s West Edge Opera’s newest operatic outreach program. Last year was the pilot year for Opera Medium-Rare, and its success guaranteed its continuation and expansion. This series of concert presentations of lesser-known operas by better-known composers has all the wit and substance that its name implies.
Opera Medium-Rare (but well done!) is the brainchild of the company’s Music Director Jonathan Khuner. Khuner is a busy man in the opera world. He has worked as the assistant conductor at the San Francisco Opera for over twenty-five years and is their prompter, a difficult but crucial role in opera. He has also conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for over ten years and Chicago’s Lyric Opera. And he has been the musical director of the Berkeley Opera since 1988, playing the additional role of artistic director from 1994 up until 2009 when the company was reborn as West Edge Opera. Mark Streshinsky is the current artistic director of West Edge Opera.
Despite the name change and its ongoing search for an affordable and adequate venue, the company has remained true to its mission, which Khuner describes as presenting opera in “a less conformist way.” By that he means that the company’s choices are not modeled on the large houses, such as the Met or San Francisco Opera: there is no star system, no millions shelled out for elaborate productions. Instead, the company’s mission statement follows the radically democratic thought so typical of the Bay Area: “We want to break down the perceptions of opera as exclusive and distant and present the essence of the story.” Just the meat: tasty, nutritious, sustaining. And available to everyone.
The smallness of the company, however, means that full performances may be few and far between. The concert series, Khuner explains, helps potential audiences “realize the company is alive.” For this year’s series he has selected operas from the bel canto repertoire: Rossini’s Zelmira in February, Donizetti’s Poliuto in late March and Verdi’s I due Foscari in early May. Bel canto, he points out, is “a virtuosic art.” It truly is about the voice. In the past the company has showcased the many talented singers found locally, but it has branched out for its current season. “There’s more casting of who’s right for the role,” says Khuner. “Early Rossini has very high tenor parts. Most tenors these days normally have a big voice but not the higher notes in the range … Juan Diego Florés is revising the tenor role by singing more Rossini. You need specialists for the razzle-dazzle world of high tenor parts.” A young singer from Wichita, Brian Yeakley, will sing the high tenor role of Rossini’s Prince Ilo in Zelmira.
Singers are only part of the work of organizing the concert series: finding the music to sing can also be challenging, especially if you are looking for little known or unusual operas. “Verdi is easy to find and to rent,” confirms Khuner. But not Rossini. For a complete and usable critical edition, Khuner went to his friend Kathleen Hansell, the musicologist who researched Rossini’s original manuscripts at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in order to put together her critical edition of Zelmira.
Critical edition in hand, Khuner must then adapt the score to the requirements of the concert series. First, the concert versions are shorter than the full performance versions: “I do all the editing for my own shows.” When there is another conductor/ director – Alex Katzman, the musical and artistic director of the Livermore Valley Opera, is conducting Zelmira – Khuner makes a list of possible cuts and suggested changes. It’s then up to the conductor to shape the concert to his artistic preferences.
Khuner also does the instrumental reductions and provides the parts for the musicians. “It’s a pocket orchestra,” he says, “piano, of course, one woodwind and violin and cello.” Originally Khuner thought of accompanying the singers on piano only, but he opted for the “special effects” and “variety of color” that the additional instruments brought to the music. That range of instruments provides “orchestral support for the singers,” he adds. These seldom heard operas support the singers in other ways: “you can do something different,” Khuner adds, “you can make the music your own.”
Along with new singers, new interpretations and a more inclusive attitude toward the art form, West Edge is adding new performance venues to the concert series. Each of the three operas will be performed at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley and Rossmoor Event Center in Walnut Creek. Freight and Salvage seems an unusual venue. Khuner hasn’t worked there before. The venue has a sound system but as this true-blue opera director says, “I hope we don’t have to use it.” Not likely these young opera singers will need it.
– Jaime Robles
West Edge Opera presents its first Opera Medium-Rare (but well done!) Rossini’s Zelmira at the following times and places: Rossmoor Event Center,1010 Stanley Dollar Drive, Walnut Creek, Sunday, Feb 15 at 1 p.m.; Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, Tuesday, Feb 17, at 8p.m. $20 General , $40 VIP Tickets, includes a wine reception with the artists following the concert.