Inside Opera

Show notes:

Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello

Aida, Madama Butterfly, The Barber of Seville were featured in the 1952 season

Parsons references Samson et Delilah with Claramae Turner & Kurt Baum

Parsons tells a legend involving Kurt Baum in a Metropolitan Opera production of Il Trovatore

Parsons references Act II of Tosca (“Quanto?”)

Fausto Cleva was the conductor of Cincinnati Summer Opera for 29 years at the Zoo

Lucia di Lammermoor was performed in Cincinnati Opera’s 1954 season

Parsons mentions The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti

Alms Hotel is a historic Cincinnati hotel (and now a residential apartment building)

Parsons mentions the Vienna State Opera Ballet performing Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin with the Cincinnati Symphony during the Opera’s season at the Cincinnati Zoo

Sherrill Milnes, baritone

The tenor Parsons criticizes is named Eddy Ruhl

Sea Thorn by Henry Humphreys is based on the story of Phaedra

Parson quotes a section from George Santayana’s A Sense of Beauty

Nell Rankin, mezzo-soprano

Anthony Stivenelo provided costumes for many Opera productions in the Zoo days

The Magic Flute at the Zoo featured sets from Indiana University

L'amore dei tre re ("The Love of the Three Kings") is an opera by Italo Montemezzi

Parsons’ recommended operas:

Best opera to start: Carmen

Best opera for its simplicity: Madama Butterfly

Bestopera to portray everyday life: La Bohème

Parsons is currently rereading the complete works of T.S. Eliot

Parsons enjoys watching the National Geographic, SyFy and Food Network channels

Parsons enjoys Thanksgiving at The Golden Lamb in Lebanon, OH

Cleo Laine’s recording of “Send in the Clowns”

Parsons enjoyed learning Gregorian chant at CCM (University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music)

Show Notes

Roberto Devereux is an opera by Gaetano Donizetti

Beverly Sills

University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music (CCM)

Franco Corelli, Luciano Pavarotti, Martina Arroyo, Grace Bumbry, Joan Sutherland

Elijah is an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn

Sarah Bernhardt

Evans and Henri briefly discuss Cincinnati Opera’s 2018 production of La Traviata, which featured soprano Norah Amsellem as Violetta.

Pagliacci is a one-act opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo

Cincinnati Opera produced Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman in 2018

Henri mentioned that these were the most rewarding operas he has worked on: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Nixon in China, Elektra, Salome, and Fidelio

Norma and Ariadne auf Naxos

Lady Gaga

The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World

Google Maps

Rufus Wainwright

Hadrian

Mario Lanza

Supertitles

Lotfi Mansouri

Beverly Sills

Il Trovatore

The Coronation of Poppea

Cosi Fan Tutte

Hamlet by Brett Dean

Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli

L’Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho

Dead Man Walking

Margaret Garner

“Porgi Amor” is an aria from The Marriage of Figaro

CCM is the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music

Fage yogurt

The Twelve Caesars

One Dharma

Google maps app

Graeter’s Ice Cream

James Ivoryis a film director, producer, and screenwriter (known for the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name)

Michael Chekovwas a Russian-American actor,director, author, and theatre practitioner.

Costanzo's first operatic role was Miles in Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, which is based on a Henry James novella by the same name.

The Baroque opera Giulio Cesareby George Frideric Handel

Costanzo performed in Jimmy López's Bel Canto

Evans mentions contemporary composer Jake Heggie's Great Scott

Kabukiis a traditional style of Japanese dance-drama

Costanzo was the Executive Director of a dance company with Karole Armitage

Costanzo works with the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), a collective dedicated to creating new works

Costanzo recently hosted a Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performance of Luisa Millerby Giuseppe Verdi

Costanzo has been reading the novel Lessand the plays God's Ear and Eurydice

La Traviata is based on the novel La Dame aux Camélias

Amsellem was in the children's chorus for the 1984 film version ofCarmen, dir. Francesco Rosi, with Plácido Domingo

Amsellem studied withLorraine Newbauer & Dalton Baldwin

As a teenager, Amsellem sang "Casta Diva"in a short film about Maria Callas

Amsellem attended Westminister Choir College

Amsellem is currently readingA Nervous Splendor

Two of Amsellem's favorite singers are Ella Fitzgerald and Eileen Farrell

Annalisa mentions Suzuki training for string players.

Interlochen Center for the Arts is an arts education organization in northwest Michigan. www.interlochen.org

The viola da gamba is the instrument Annalisa plays.

Annalisa’s ensemble is the Catacoustic Consort.

The OED is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Catacoustic Consort includes Elizabeth Motter (baroque harp), Melissa Harvey (soprano), Joanna Blendulf (viola da gamba), David Walker (theorbo), and Michael Leopold (theorbo).

The term Early Music refers roughly to art music of the 16th to 18th centuries.

Catacoustic premiered the opera “La Fete du Ruel” by Marc-Antoine Charpentier on June 4, 2016.

Cincinnati Opera presented “La Calisto” as part of its 2014 season and will present Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea” in 2018.

Annalisa mentioned two composers whose operas she’d like to produce: Jean-Philippe Rameau and Francesca Caccini.

Evans mentioned two others: Lully and Grétry.

The recording Annalisa mentions is titled Lamentarium; it’s by the group Atalante. http://www.atalante.co.uk/lamentarium.htm

The video associated with the album is available here.

The book by Alison Crum that Annalisa refers to is titled The Viol Rules. Here’s a link: https://www.amazon.com/Viol-Rules-Alison-Crum/dp/0952822040

The restaurant O Pie O is located on Madison Road in Cincinnati. www.opieo.com

Cory Henry is a jazz and gospel organist. Learn more at www.coryhenry.com.

Annalisa mentions the instruments pardessus de viole and lirone.

Show Notes

Wainwright’s opera Hadrian is being premiered by the Canadian Opera Company and was workshopped by Opera Fusion: New Works

Glenn Gould

Luciano Pavarotti

Beniamino Gigli vs. Vera Lynn

Piano composers: Chopin, Satie, Beethoven

Herbert von Karajan – conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic

Quebec sovereignty movement

“Liberty Cabbage” is a song composed by Wainwright when he was 16, and he continues to perform it

Georg Solti conducting Salome with Birgit Nilsson

Verdi’s Don Carlo with Placido Domingo and Shirley Verret

The film Diva

Prima Donna was Wainwright’s first opera

Maurice Ravel’s ballet piece Bolero

Maria Callas

Memoirs of Hadrian, the novel that inspired Wainwright’s opera Hadrian

Manchester Festival

Hase was Lighting Designer at Giessen State Theater (Stadttheater Giessen)

Hase was Lighting Designer for open-air ballet called The Shadow of Gobustan in front of Gobustan Mountains in Azerbaijan

Hase mentions that stage lights range from 750-5000W

Hase pioneered programmable moving lights in opera

Each light uses a 20A circuit (household breaker boxes use 15-20A)

History & literature degrees; Masters in Aesthetics (from the Institute of Theater & Design in Cologne, Germany)

King Louis

Tosca

La Boheme

A Doll’s House at the Abbey Theater in Dublin

A gobo is a dark plate or screen used to shield a lens from light.

Bonn, Germany

Fulbright Grant

Die Meistersinger

Cologne State Theater

Opera Cologne

Meredith Monk

World Premiere of Waiting for the Barbarians by Philip Glass Erfort, Germany

Tony Award-winning Company at Playhouse in the Park in Cincinnati

Frida

Triumphant march in Aida

The Demon (opera) in Barcelona

1,200 lighting units for Cincinnati Opera’s 2018 season, avg. 800-900 lights/season

Giessen State Theater

Single-source lighting

Lighting cues

Moving lights

Wash lights

CAD = Computer-aided design/drafting software

LED = light-emitting diode

Tungsten lights

HID (high-intensity discharge) lamps are used in moving lights

Aronoff Center for the Arts

The Magic Flute

Hase wants to work on The Rake’s Progress and Wozzeck again, as well as The Flying Dutchman

La Boheme at San Francisco Opera

Ice (opera based on the Lundberg novel)

Cincinnati Opera Brat Fry: invented by Hase; Miesfeld’s brats flown in from Sheboygan, Wisconsin for staff, cast, and crew

Gary Kidney (technical director)

In the Garden of the Beast

Sherlock

The Bridge

NextFlight app

Arnold’s Bar (Cincinnati)

Frank Rich

Hase mentioned Gilbert Hemsley and Hans Tolstead as two of his mentors

Frida

CCM - The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

Unions

Supernumeraries

Raptor inAida

Aronoff Center for the Arts

Stage management jobs in opera

Music scores (see image above)

Makes Marcus cringe: Director of Artistic Operations

Fellow Travelers

Ensemble Theatre

Desperate Landscapeson HGTV

Oakley

Zone bar

Handmaid’s Tale

Game of Thrones,Scandal,West Wing

Bakersfield

La Mexicana in Newport

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

System of a Down

Crossfit

"I’m a duck, so things roll off my back, and I'm always calm on the surface (even though my feet might be going a mile a minute underneath)"

Sue Ellen Childs

Soprano Anna Netrebko

Milacron

“Cyrano de Bergerac” is an opera by Franco Alfano. Michigan Opera Theatre’s David DiChiera also wrote an opera titled “Cyrano” that premiered in 2007.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company

Cincinnati Ballet

Pittsburgh Opera

Correction: The plantation referred to was Maplewood plantation in Boone County, Kentucky. Margaret Garner, an enslaved African-American woman whose story inspired the opera “Margaret Garner,” was born and lived in servitude on this plantation.