Tucson Weekly: The Combo Deal (January 15

Arizona Opera, Ballet Arizona And The Phoenix Symphony Collaborate On "La Gioconda."
By Margaret Regan
THE SEAMSTRESSES for Arizona Opera were hard at work one day last week, crafting glittering 17th-century Venetian costumes for this weekend's La GiocoRev2: ing machines, the soprano of leading lady Janine Bogardus drifted in from the neighboring practice space, where the bundled-up leads were deep into their first week of chilly rehearsals.
At least some of the costumes under construction, though, like the dainty dress with jeweled bodice pinned onto a slimmer-than-slim mannequin, didn't have a chance of fitting around the ample bodies of the singers on the other side of the partition. That's because the teensy dresses were for ballet dancers, not opera singers. For the first time, Arizona Opera has invited both Ballet Arizona and the Phoenix Symphony to collaborate on one of its productions. Instead of putting together its usual freelance orchestra, the opera has hired the Symphony intact. And a team of 17 Ballet Arizona dancers will perform in "Dance of the Hours," the famous 15-minute-long showpiece in Act III of the 1875 opera. Six of them will dance again for "Furlana," a 3 1/2 minute piece in another scene.
Review "This got started at the invitation of Glynn Ross (the opera's artistic director)," said Gray Montague, executive director of Ballet Arizona. "We were very grateful. It's the first time we've performed with them."
Working for the Opera dovetails nicely with the dance company's current goal of reaching out to new audiences, Montague said, and he expects the new relationship to continue, adding, "Next season we're scheduled to do Aida with them." Artistic director Michael Uthoff said he's worked in opera in the past, even directing entire productions, and he's pleased with the new collaboration, since especially tight budgets often force opera companies to edit dances out of the scripts.
The steps will be "classical ballet, but at a very fast tempo," Uthoff said. The dancers will perform only to instrumental music, not during any singing. "We're not there to take away from what opera is." For the production, he's deploying a combination of some of his most able dancers, including Bonnie Rich, who recently played the young girl in Días de los Muertos, along with some of his younger apprentices.
The four-act opera by Ponchielli, a contemporary of the better-known Verdi, has fallen out of favor in recent years, though in times past it served as a vehicle for sopranos of the likes of Maria Callas. It is sung in Italian with English surtitles projected above the stage. The work tells an elaborate story of love and death in olden-days Venice, complete with a jealous husband, a poisonous potion, a shipboard fire and a suicide. Sopranos Bogardus and Pamela Kucenic, who performed in Arizona's Il Trovatore last season, alternate in the part of La Gioconda (Italian for "the joyful woman"), a street singer who falls in love with Enzo, a nobleman in disguise. Tenors Robin Reed and Gary Bachlund rotate the part of Enzo, who still loves his long-ago sweetheart, Laura, a woman who's since married another. Mezzo-sopranos Ann Plagianos and Korby Myrick are the two Lauras. The love triangle is the heart of the narrative, which is based on a story by Frenchman Victor Hugo.
Reed, a Los Angeles singer who has hired on with Arizona Opera in three previous productions, said his character has the opera's most famous aria, "Cielo é mar" (sky and sea), Enzo's big number in Act II. But the music best-known to the general public is played during "Dance of the Hours," when the ballet dancers will perform. That's because Alan Sherman borrowed its tune for the silly '60s parody that begins "Hello, Mudduh, Hello, Fadduh. Here I am at Camp Granada."
The congenial collaboration among the three arts groups is reminiscent of what Reed was used to in Germany, where for five years he was a full-time employee of the Bremerhaven Opera.
"People in Germany experience opera, the symphony, ballet and theatre all their lives," Reed said during a pause before his own rehearsal. In Bremerhaven, a small port city, four such companies shared a single building equipped with a small and large theatre, and performed together and separately much of the year. Reed, like the other artists, was a civil servant in the employ of the state, enjoying a full-time salary, benefits and eight weeks' paid vacation, a situation practically unheard of in this country. And they enjoyed the luxury of playing parts in repertory, with plenty of time to develop their characters.
Arizona Opera's short, intense rehearsals, and relatively short production runs are typical in America, where most opera singers work as itinerant freelancers. Reed combines voice teaching and bicycle repair with intermittent singing jobs to support his family. Still, he said, "To find the thing that you love to do and do it--that's how you get a happy human being...This is not something I chose. It chose me. It's truly a gift."
With that, Reed broke into the first few measures of the lovely "Cielo é mar," singing the words with such quiet sweetness that even the seamstresses paused to look up from their machines.
Arizona Opera's production of La Gioconda will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, January 16 and 17, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, January 18, at the TCC Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. (Kucenic, Reed and Plagianos will sing the leads Friday and Sunday; Bogardus, Bachlund and Myrick on Saturday. The performances are repeated the following weekend at the Phoenix Symphony Hall). Tucson ticket prices range from $14 to $56. They're available at the TCC box office at 791-4266. For more information, call the opera offices during regular business hours at 293-4336.

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