Hearing with the Eyes as Well as the Ears

Tenor John Christopher Adams as Rodolfo and soprano Danielle Walker as Mimi in the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's "La Boheme"

Opera is a visual as well as a musical art and that means more than sets and costumes.  It means singing actors, especially in today's visually-oriented world, where audiences hear with their eyes as well as their ears.
   Chuck Hudson, guest director for the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music's  Puccini's "La Boheme" May 15-18 at Corbett Auditorium, has made that aspect of opera his business.  The New York-based director is a specialist in stage movement.  A disciple of legendary mime Marcel Marceau, with a background in gymnastics, Hudson says his goal is "to re-discover the power of live theater."  (Visit Hudson at www.chdirector.com)
   "I do not look for a cinematic naturalism in my work, yet I remain committed to the creation of 'visually exciting' works.'" While working on "La Boheme," which closes CCM's main stage opera, musical theater and drama series for the season, Hudson has been in residence at CCM as a guest professor of advanced acting.  
   Puccini's passionate, youthful tearjerker (adapted as the musical "Rent" and in a 2002 Broadway production) is a good candidate for the dramatic treatment Hudson envisions:
  Three young bohemians (read starving artists) share a flat in Paris. One of them, the poet Rodolfo, meets and falls in love with a similarly impoverished neighbor, Mimi.  They all party on Christmas Eve at the Cafe Momus, where the painter Marcello meets his former girlfriend Musetta. She and Marcello re-unite, leaving her elderly escort with the bill. Rodolfo and Mimi quarrel but agree to stay together until spring.  Marcello and Musetta break up.  In the last act, Musetta arrives at the bohemians' flat with Mimi, who is dying of TB. All try to help.  She and Rodolfo reminisce tenderly. The grief stricken Rodolfo is the last one in the room to notice that she has died.  The music is Puccini at his emotive best.
   CCM's Mark Gibson will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra, with rotating student casts.  Performances, to be sung in Italian with projected English supertitles, are 8  p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday..
   The opera has been updated from circa 1830 to the1890s "Belle Epoche" "("Beautiful Era").  Hudson was attracted to that period because of its "artistic resurgence," he said.
   "Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel are sculpting, her brother Paul Claudel is writing, Isadora Duncan is dancing, Gordon Craig is revolutionizing theater, the Vienna Secession Movement is replacing the Impressionists and Gustav Eiffel is constructing his famous Tower for the Paris World's Fair."
   Society and everyday life were changing, too, said Hudson.  "The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, with electric lighting starting to replace gas, and  mid-nineteenth century Victorian Morality is colliding with the younger generation.  The loss of corsets and the more free-flowing shape of skirts allowed women to embrace more personal freedom simply by the way they could move through life."
  Hudson's search for meaning goes beyond the words.  "Here in the U.S. we often compete with television or film and we do not need to do that.  Theater arts are indispensable to the enrichment of life.  I believe in exploring various movement and performance techniques in order to re-shape the text, whether spoken or sung, to make the invisible visible."
   This value was instilled in him by his mentor Marceau,  "whose universal language of Mime allowed every audience who watched him to laugh at the same moments and to cry at the same moments.  This is precisely what music does.  Performers must have expressive control over their bodies much like musicians have over their instruments.
   "People here have commented that this is a very 'active' 'Boheme.'  There is a short fight sequence, a short dance sequence, then there is the 'behavioral life' of the people as they go about their lives.  The way people handle objects often indicates their relationship to the world around them. For that very reason, there is a great deal of 'prop juggling' in this production."
   This "La Boheme" also marks the final main stage production for two key faculty members who are retiring, Kelly Hale and Steve Waxler.  Hale, professor of opera and coaching, prepared the singers for Hudson.  Waxler, professor and chair of the department of theater design and production, oversaw all aspects of the production.
 

Kelly Hale

Hale, who has been "in the trenches" since joining the faculty in 1976 feels like he was at CCM "during the halcyon days.
   "The National Opera Association even wanted to do away with their competition because one school kept winning all the awards."  Hale worked with the NOA to make the application process simpler and friendlier and there are more entries and interest now, he said.  "We continue to win prizes but maybe only one or two a year, instead of four or five."
 

left to right: Jonathan Fuchs, Stirling Shelton and Steven Waxler

Waxler, who with former CCM faculty members Paul Shortt and Suellen Childs, developed the theater design and production department, has seen it grow from three faculty and 8-10 students to one of the largest departments at CCM, with 10 faculty, 8-10 professional staff and over 100 undergraduate and graduate students.
   Hale, who has been serving as interim chair of the opera department, leaves with that post, open since former chair Sandra Bernhard left in 2006, unfilled.  With CCM's newly appointed dean, Douglas Knehans, arriving in the fall, "let's hope that by the end of the year, it has been resolved."
   Tickets for "La Boheme" are $15-$27, available online at www.ccm.uc.edu and the CCM box office at (513) 556-4183.
The enterprising new chamber ensemble concert:nova has a splashy event in store at 9 p.m. May 19 in master chef Jean-Robert Cavel's new Twist Lounge, 127 W. Fourth St. in downtown Cincinnati (next to Pigall's restaurant).
   Dubbed "Sensual Sounds + Stunning Canvases," the music is hot and Latin, the canvases are by local artist Anya Gerasimchuk.  The lounge has a full bar and Petit Bites menu.
   The music sounds delicious all by itself, with Luigi Boccherini's "Night Music from the Streets of Madrid, songs by Joaquin Rodgrio, Manuel de Falla's "Spanish Popular Suite," Brazilian Villa-Lobos' "Bachianas Brasilieras" No. 5 for soprano and strings, the first movement of Argentinian Alberto Ginastera's String Quartet No. 1 and Ginastera's "Impressiones de la Puna" for flute and strings, tangos by Astor Piazzolla and New Yorker David Little's "descanso."  The evening will end with a set of jazz tunes from Paquito d'Rivera's "Wapango," an Afro-Cuban "Siboney" and "Cirando do Mundo" by Brazilian singer/songwriter Maria Rita.  Soprano soloist will be Ellen Wieser.
   Russian born Gerasimchuk will be there with her paintings, a mix of the real and the abstract, which make connections between dance, music and graphic arts.  Her Piazzolla and Falla-influenced paintings will "dance"  along with Piazzolla's tangos and Falla's Andalusian rhythms.  Learn more about Gerasimchuk at www.anyagerasimchuk.com.
   Admission is $10, $8 for students and Enjoy the Arts members at the door.  Information at www.concertnova.com.
   Concert:nova, founded in 2007, comprises musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Chamber Orchestras.  Their goal is "to evolve the traditional concert experience" by integrating dance, theater and visual media into their programs ("renegade works") and performing in non-traditional venues ("renegade spaces").  They have performed at Below Zero Lounge, Know Theater, Coffee Emporium (Central Parkway), Yoga Home (Oakley), Bell Loft and Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
    Members include

Tatiana Berman (left), Heidi Yenney (right)

violinists Tatiana Berman and Eric Bates, violist Heidi Yenney, double bassist Owen Lee, flutist Randolph Bowman, clarinetist Ixi Chen, bassoonist Jennifer Monroe, French hornist Elizabeth Freimuth, trumpeter Doug Lindsay,

Cristian Ganicenco

trombonist Cristian Ganicenco and percussionist Patrick Schleker.
   (Parts of this column appeared first in The Cincinnati Enquirer May 15, 2008).