Like anyone else, opera fans get tired of the same old thing.
So, in the summer, when they have a chance to travel, the last thing many want to see is another “La Traviata” or “The Barber of Seville,” works they can routinely enjoy in their theaters back home.
They crave something different. And such summer opera festivals as the 73-year-old Central City Opera, which draws 20 percent of its audiences from outside Colorado, are willing and able to oblige them.
“At most summer festivals, a large chunk of their season – at least half usually – is devoted to pieces that nobody knows,” said Pat Pearce, Central City Opera’s general director.
“We are in a position financially, because of the way that summer festivals are set up, to take risks and are expected to take risks and be sort of the sounding board for the field.”
In a season of “B’s” – “Butterfly,” Barber and Britten – Central City Opera will offer, as it always does, a stalwart of the repertoire. This time, it will be Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” which opens Saturday evening in the 127-year-old Central City Opera House.
But, using a now-familiar formula, the company will follow that much-performed classic with Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa,” a still-underappreciated American masterwork, and a piece unknown even to most opera fanatics – Benjamin Britten’s “Paul Bunyan.”
“It’s going to three different wells where I usually go to look for pieces to put together a season for us,” Pearce said. “All three of the selections, in their way, are perfect examples of each one of those areas.
“‘Butterfly,’ obviously, is a masterpiece that everyone knows. ‘Vanessa’ is an extremely important American work that we needed to do. And ‘Paul Bunyan’ is something off the beaten path, from the cache of things that are outside the standard rep, that should be seen.”
After assembling a season lineup, Pearce always subjects the combination to a gut check.
“And this one felt right to me,” he said.
Here is a look at this season’s schedule:
“Madama Butterfly”
After 33 years of singing in many of the world’s great opera houses from Chicago to Milan, celebrated soprano Catherine Malfitano is turning at least part of her attention to directing.
In many ways, she said, it’s nothing new. To enhance her performances, she has always considered how her character fit into the totality of a production and has even collaborated with directors in shaping stagings.
“This is a natural progression of my whole career,” Malfitano said. “I’m feeling like, ‘Oh my, gosh. I have been a director inside this singer person for a long time.’ It just didn’t have the opportunity to show itself completely.”
To kick off this new facet of her life and bring her career full circle, Malfitano has returned to Central City Opera, where she made her professional debut as a singer in 1972.
Originally, she was set to direct a French opera. But when that fell through, Pearce asked if she would tackle “Butterfly,” and she agreed. Having sung the lead role of Cio-Cio-San more times than any other, she is undoubtedly familiar with the opera.
But Malfitano has never been completely pleased with the many stagings in which she has been involved, and she welcomed this opportunity to put her own stamp on this tale of unwavering love and callous abandonment.
“At first, I wasn’t even completely sure,” she said, “but then I thought about it more and more and realized this is a golden opportunity to do ‘Butterfly’ in an intimate setting the way I would love to see the story told.
“I see inside the story of ‘Butterfly’ a truly intimate story, and elements that don’t get highlighted in big productions.”
Based on a David Belasco play, which Puccini saw in London in 1900, this opera revolves around a Japanese woman who marries a visiting American naval officer for life. But he views their union as temporary and sets its aside when he returns home.
The fledging director did not want to share details about this production, but she did say she has kept it largely in its original setting of the early 1900s.
“But the production itself is not in a kind of rigid way in a certain year or period,” she said. “It has more fluidity than that.”
“Madama Butterfly” runs Saturday through July 30.
“Vanessa”
If “Vanessa” has still not become a fixture in the standard operatic repertory, it is coming closer all the time.
“I would put it up in the top 10 American operas with ‘Susannah’ and ‘Baby Doe,”‘ said stage director Michael Ehrman. “It has had several productions just this past year.”
Not only does the 1956-57 work boast a lush, lyrical score by Samuel Barber, who is best known for his “Adagio for Strings,” it also has a lucid, well-assembled libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, a major opera composer in his own right.
The psychodrama, which is set in an unspecified northern country, centers on a woman who waits 20 years for her lover, Anatol, to return only to discover that the man who does appear is his son. He has the same name as his father, who is dead.
Although the younger Anatol seduces and impregnates her sister soon after his arrival, he and Vanessa carry on a courtship that leads to marriage. As the two are leaving for their honeymoon in Paris, the sister Erika settles in to wait for his return, just as Vanessa did before.
“There is a touch of Miss Havisham from ‘Great Expectations,”‘ Ehrman said. “And there are elements even of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ and gothic ‘Jane Eyre’ sort of mysteries.”
If anything, he said, the story has gained appeal with contemporary audiences, who are used to unconventional dramas on cable television and elsewhere.
“The sort of bizarreness of the story is something that holds a bit of fascination,” he said. “It’s like a gothic mystery, and I think the strangeness is something that people find interesting.”
“Vanessa” runs July 2 through Aug. 7
“Paul Bunyan”
The folk tale of Paul Bunyan might be familiar to most Americans, but Benjamin Britten’s inventive 1939-41 adaptation of it is anything but conventional.
More an operetta or even a musical revue than a standard opera, the work contains arias more akin to songs from a Broadway musical, and there are even elements of what might best be described as early country-western music.
Steuart Bedford, a British conductor who is one of the leading authorities on Britten’s music, said the piece should appeal to most audiences, as long as they bring an open mind to it.
“They’ll only not enjoy if they have absolutely fixed and unvariable ideas of what an opera ought to be,” he said. “If their only idea of an opera is ‘Traviata,’ then either they change their viewpoint or they give it a miss.
“It is a musical entertainment of great variety and tremendous charm.”
Although the W.H. Auden libretto contains many appealing elements, the pairing of Britten and the esteemed poet and dramatist, both expatriates in New York City while they were working on this piece, can sometimes be an awkward one.
One of its most challenging facets, especially for novice audiences, is the 15-minute prologue, which is meant to set up the rest of the opera but can be baffling on first hearing.
The curtain rises on a chorus of singing trees – old ones who want things to continue as they are and young ones desperate for change – and they are soon joined by a trio of geese who announce the birth of a giant who is about to inalterably change their world.
Although the music is often light and entertaining, stage director Ken Cazan believes “Paul Bunyan” has an “intensely serious” message. He sees it as the need of childlike individuals and society as a whole to let go of their recent history and be willing to change and, in essence, grow up.
In his view, the mythological Paul Bunyan symbolizes anybody or anything that sparks major and sometime cataclysmic upheaval in the status quo, much as World War II did at the time this work was being created.
In the same way, Cazan believes the work is keenly relevant to Americans today in large part because of the extraordinary transformation of society in the aftermath of the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Once 9/11 happened, we all became teenagers finally and had to really take a step forward in our intellectual world awareness and growth,” he said.
Given the big themes this work engages and its sometimes awkward structure, Cazan acknowledges that “Paul
Bunyan” is difficult to stage. But he is convinced it is possible to bring a coherent flow to it and fully realize its appeal.
“Paul Bunyan” runs July 16 through Aug. 6
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
