NEW YORK—On Broadway today, the most popular plays imitate movies and pop songs—The Lion King, Wicked, and Mama Mia! to name a few—getting their ideas from somewhere else—the movie, The Lion King, the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, and the songs of Abba, respectively. For better or for worse, entertainment value takes center stage, and art a back seat.
Not so in opera. At the Brooklyn Lyceum on Sunday, the stage exalted the most refined sounds of beauty and the sublime that a human voice can create with a rendition of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos by the Brooklyn Repertory Opera.
While operatic singing has become synonymous with high prices (the Metropolitan Opera charges as much as $375 a ticket), the Brooklyn Repertory Opera serves up what could be dubbed budget opera. Tickets are only $20, and $10 for students and seniors, and seating is intimate, with only about 150 seats in the theater.
Of course, budget opera comes at a price. The theater currently is unheated (a warm coat is recommended), and at Sunday’s performance one nymph and her backup couldn’t be there. Her part was replaced by a flute.
Opera Newcomers
The Opera’s plot is a “play within a play.” Two very different groups are set to perform for the richest man in Vienna, one a traditional opera company and one a burlesque company. The opera company is miffed at performing with the lowbrow burlesque company, and doubly so when it turns out the two performances must be combined into one. Mayhem ensues in the first act and in the second the audience gets to see the combined show.
The show is accompanied by the Brooklyn Repertory Orchestra, which paints a superbly lush background in front of which the mostly excellent opera singers’ voices dance and do battle.
The Brooklyn Repertory Opera, led by Brett Wynkoop and Kathleen Keske, was founded in 2006, after a successful debut of an original production based on the life of Fanny Fern, the popular American columnist, humorist, novelist, and children's book author. Past performances include Orpheus and Eurydice, Verdi's A Masked Ball, The Marriage of Figaro, Hansel and Gretel, and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which premiered at the Lyceum last December.
The Brooklyn Repertory Opera’s Ariadne auf Naxos can be still seen at the Lyceum on Friday, Dec. 11 at 7:30 p.m. or on Sunday Dec. 13 at 3:30 p.m.
Tips for Opera Newcomers
1. Read the program carefully to get the story line. Many operas are in Italian German, or French, and even if they are in English, many of the words will be lost with the music.
2. Be Patient. Most movies and television today are as exciting as possible, which is great but also wears down your attention span. Sit back and be patient, and the power of opera can be felt.
3. Bring Binoculars. A major secondary facet of opera is the elaborate costumes and sets. If you are going to the Metropolitan Opera, or another major opera, you could end up in the nosebleed seats.