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View Winners → POP Presents Donizetti’s Rare Opera ‘Viva la Mamma!’ Nov. 12-19
Arts Nov 05, 2015
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The ’80s called — Pacific Opera Project’s ‘Viva la Mamma!’ wants you! – Photo Courtesy POP
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Pacific Opera Project continues its successful run of presenting fun and exciting operas with a modern twist with Gaetano Donizetti’s two-act farce Viva la Mamma! This will be the seventh POP-Up production at the Ebell Club of Highland Park, offering table seating with food and wine in a party-like atmosphere for a moderate price. Viva la mamma! will be performed with a small orchestra and projected English supertitles.
The narrative runs parallel to POP’s own experiences as it focuses on a regional opera troupe trying to produce a new opera despite many unexpected obstacles.
A regional (and mediocre) operatic troupe is rehearsing a new work — Romulus and Ersilia—and faces numerous obstacles. The prima donna acts every bit the diva, refusing to rehearse. The German tenor cannot master either the lyrics or melodies. In the midst of much quarrelling, various singers threaten to walk out. The situation turns more dire with the arrival of Mamma Agatha (a baritone role), the mother of the seconda donna. She insists on a solo for her daughter and even issues detailed demands on the musical arrangement of the aria. When the German tenor refuses to go on, he is replaced by the prima donna’s husband. Despite the best efforts of the composer, librettist, and impresario, the show eventually collapses. Facing certain financial ruin and an artistic failure, the entire company decides to skip town under cover of darkness before opening night.
As one of the characters says just before the end, “It’s not an original idea, but a good one nonetheless. Run!”
The score is filled with wonderful music, unmistakably Donizettian, including multiple full-cast ensembles and showpiece arias for nearly every character. POP will use a patchwork version of the opera with material from the original one-act version and from subsequent revisions by Donizetti. The opera will be presented with recitative, not spoken dialogue, and will be sung in Italian with supertitles loosely translated by Josh Shaw, in typical POP fashion. The opera will be accompanied by a small orchestra and harpsichord arranged and conducted by Stephen Karr. Originally set in 1780s Italy, the production will be updated to a Los Angeles before smart phones and internet searches, a time when letters were still handwritten and delivered…the 1980s. Think of this fictional company as the LA Opera that didn’t make it.
Viva la Mamma!, also known as Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Conventions and Inconveniences of the Stage), was written by Gaetano Donizetti in the early 1800s. The librettist Domenico Gilardoni adapted the narrative from two plays by Antonio Simone Sografi, Le convenienze teatrali (1794) and Le inconvenienze teatrali (1800). Viva la Mamma!! premiered as a one-act at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples on November 21, 1827. Donizetti added new material and made revisions and it opened as a two-act piece at the Teatro alla Cannobiana in Milan on April 20, 1831. “Convenienze” refers to Italian opera rules established in the 19th century regarding the ranking of singers based on talent (primo, secondo, comprimario) and the amount of stage time they should expect to receive.
POP’s mission is to provide energetic, high-quality, accessible performances of a broad variety of operatic repertoire at various venues throughout Southern California. Co-founders Josh Shaw (stage direction and production design) and Stephen Karr (music director and conductor) team up for the company’s eighteenth production since its inception in the summer of 2011. Veteran costumer Maggie Green will design her thirteenth POP production.
This production features many of POP’s favorite artists from the past few seasons. Katherine Giaquinto (previously Musetta, Fiordiligi, Susanna) sings the prima donna, Daria Garbinati. Scott Levine (previously Schaunard, Ko-ko, Leporello) sings the disgruntled conductor Biscroma Strappaviscere. Ryan Thorn (whose last performance as a baritone in a dress was as Giove in POP’s La calisto), stars as the nominal Mamma Agatha. Amy Lawrence (previously Frasquita) plays his daughter, the seconda donna, Luiga Castragati. Phil Meyer (Sweeney Todd, Pooh-bah, Pistola) plays the impresario of the opera troupe and Kyle Patterson (Bardolfo, Ferrando, Nanki-poo) sings the leading Tenor as well as the Inspector.
Matthew Ian Welch (The Mikado) returns as Cesare Salzapariglia, the librettist. Carl King (Opera San Jose, West Bay Opera) makes his POP debut as the diva’s doting husband Procolo. Yilin Hsu Wendtlandt sings Pippetto.
Who: Pacific Opera Project: Los Angeles’s most accessible opera company is committed to fully professional productions of worthy masterpieces and daring new works of opera and musical theater produced with artists of the highest caliber in diverse venues.
What: Viva la Mamma! by Gaetano Donizetti.
When: Thursday, November 12 and 19 at 8 p.m.
Friday, November 13 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 14 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Tuesday, November 17 at 8 p.m.
Where: Ebell Club of Highland Park 131 S. Ave 57, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Tickets: $20 General Admission.
Table for 2, $65. Table for 4, $120. Tables include a bottle of wine and plate of appetizers.
For further information please visit www.pacificoperaproject.com, or write to info@pacificoperaproject.com. Here’s more about Viva la Mamma!
“I am not a fan, well, I’m not a fan of traditional opera; Pacific Opera Project — I love. And others like L.A. Opera are taking note and staging unconventional presentations of classics all around the country. Opera is reinventing, changing, and reaching for millennials. Shaw is bringing them in, hundreds at a time, along with the older opera crowd looking for something new and fresh… It’s fun to find something new, something groundbreaking, an expansion and growth of art that’s thriving; dreams being reached instead of dashed in a business of broken hopes. In five years the troupe will have their choice of stages and stars…”
–The Huffington Post, March 2015
