This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 1, 2011 - Next weekend after smoke has cleared from July 4 fireworks, Union Avenue Opera plans vocal and dramatic pyrotechnics of its own as the company fires up its 17th summer season.
Sure to sparkle will be Giacomo Puccini's final opera "Turandot," which runs July 8, 9, 15 and 16.
Even many who claim to know nothing about opera can hum the Act III aria "Nessun dorma" ("Let no one sleep"), which tenor Luciano Pavarotti took into the world of popular music.
This 1926 fantasy opera about spoiled Chinese Princess Turandot rejecting - and beheading - suitors who fail to answer her three riddles is considered the last of the "grand operas," which called for a large chorus, arias that show off several soloists to great vocal and dramatic advantage and often comic relief.
Two American singers in their 30s who sound as though they are on the brink of stardom add to Union Avenue's excitement about this "Turandot" production.
Soprano Alexandra LoBianco who sang Leonora in UAO's 2009 production of "Il Trovatore," returns this season in the elaborate silken Chinese robes and outrageously long fingernails of Princess Turandot. Calaf, the man who finally makes the princess swoon, is sung by Adam Herskowitz.
Neither LoBianco nor Herskowitz has had a smooth, golden road to the opera stage. Both have worked hard without having great scholarships for master's degrees or hours of free singing lessons in perk-filled, opera company apprentice programs.
In their late 20s as their voices matured, each was individually challenged by teachers or mentors to change their vocal roles.
Herskowitz went from a baritone to a Heldentenor. The baritone is the typical male singing voice, not reaching as high as a tenor. While many tenors' voices can be rather thin, the Heldentenor has an extremely powerful voice that can conquer the orchestra's percussion section. Most of Wagner's operas feature a Heldentenor.
LoBianco also recently climbed up the vocal scale from a mezzo-soprano to a soprano. Mezzo roles often are written for dramatic, colorful bad women. While LoBianco said she still aches over missing those "juicy" mezzo roles she had been dreaming about and learning, she knows that they rarely have the starring roles.
These vocal repositionings required much study and work. Both singers had to drop most music from their repertory - all those longtime, well-rehearsed, personal favorites they used to sing easily for last-minute auditions. Both began from scratch to study all new roles and new audition material.
Since LoBianco and Herskowitz share a New York singing teacher, Mitchell Cirken, they'd met casually. Then, in January both won high prizes in the prestigious Liederkranz Vocal Competition. LoBianco took first in the general division, and Herskowitz won second in the Wagner division. The judges only consider the singers' voices and are barred access to their resumes or academic preparation. The contest is closely watched by U.S. and European opera managers.
Herskowitz, a New Jersey native, thought he might teach music and play piano, entering the University of Indiana, Bloomington, as a piano student. When he decided to study voice, he transferred to University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. After graduating with a degree in music education, he became a grade school music teacher in Newark, N.J., teaching K through 8th grades. After hours, he got an master's in vocal performance at the Manhattan School in New York.
He had won a Met regional competition as a baritone. So, it took some courage to follow the advice of his mentor Metropolitan Opera character tenor Anthony Laciura to become a Heldontenor. Herskowitz learned the new repertory and, after just six months as a tenor, was a district winner of the Metropolitan Opera Competition and the Met signed him to a contract.
At the Met, Herskowitz has sung the Captain in "Simon Boccanegra" and the Messenger in "Aida" as well as smaller roles in "Fanciulla" and "Ariadne auf Naxos." When he arrived in St. Louis for UAO rehearsals, he was jet-fatigued from a trip from a three week tour in Japan. "I saw my wife for a few hours in New York - my wonderful wife," he said. She is an emergency-room physicians' assistant at a New York veterans hospital and has been "incredibly supportive" of his career, he said.
He's enjoying UAO small friendly company "after the spotlight in New York" and the generous hospitality of company patrons who provided him with a guest room. "I love St. Louis humidity; it keeps my voice moist," he said.
Lo Bianca, a Florida native, graduated from Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., in 2002 with a major in vocal performance. For several summers she acted in musicals and nonmusical plays. And she listened to lots of great opera recordings.
Gradually she got opera gigs. In recent years, LoBianca has sung with small American opera companies from St. Petersburg to Tulsa; from Opera Carolina to Nashville. In February the newly sprung soprano, sang Princess Turandot for the first time with the West Bay Opera in the San Francisco area. She'll sing the role in a concert version in Baltimore later this year. She revels in Puccini's beautiful music and contends that the princess does not hate men at all, but is fearful of losing her power.
Since her Liederkranz win, Lo Bianco said her agent is combing over a couple of contract offers from "big opera companies." She can't talk about them yet but she feels she is "on the brink of a wave of success." One hint: She expects to make her European debut in the near future.
When the company presented "Turandot" seven years ago it sold out and set company records. Lise Lindstrom, the soprano who sang Princess Turandot, went on to sing it at the New York Metropolitan Opera. She is making her debut at Teatro alla Scala in Milan as the Chinese princess. Listening to Herskowitz in rehearsal and to LoBianco practice in the church's choir room, one can't help but wonder whether Union Avenue Opera will become known as the farm team for Puccini's Chinese princess and her prince.
The Company
That church basement rehearsal area is a bland room with puce-colored enamel wall tiles, speckled, beige vinyl floor tiles and lots of brown folding chairs. Singers are in hot weather causal baggy shorts and T-shirts, running shoes and sandals. After just a bit, despite the air-conditioning, a lot of hair and faces are "moist." But beautiful music and the cast's joyful delight in the Puccini's work make the whole scene seem joyful.
"Puccini is a lot of fun and a lot of work for the chorus," said Melissa Payton, who is in her fourth year in the UAO chorus. Like most in the chorus she hurries to rehearsals from a day job. She teaches voice at Mozingo Music, a retail store in O'Fallon, Mo. Payton also sings in the Bach Society Chorus and is a former member of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus.
The opera features three comic high-ranking palace officers Ping, Pang and Pong whose acting style comes directly from the Italian, stylized improvisational comedy known as Commedia dell'arte. The three singers had the rest of the cast laughing hard.
The Story
The opera is based on a 1762 Venetian play by Carolo Gozzi called "Turandote" and is the Italian's idea of a fairy tale about a princess: The spoiled Emperor's daughter, Princess Turandot, gets her father to vow that he won't make her marry anyone who can't answer her tricky three-part riddle. Any suitor who comes to the court to win the princess and fails to correctly answer her riddle is beheaded - off-stage.
Chinese near the Imperial Palace sings about how horrified they are when she orders the death of a Persian Prince who answers her riddle incorrectly. They beg her for mercy but she refuses. Another stranger, secretly known as Calaf, arrives. Away from court observers, he reunites with his lame, blind, elderly father, Timur. The father and son had not seen each other since they were separated in the battle that cost Timur his throne.
Calaf falls in love with Princess Turandot and sings of her as a heavenly beauty. When he tries her riddle, his love for her enables him to answer it correctly.
The fearful princess begs her father the emperor not to give her to the stranger despite his correct answer. She sings about a female ancestor who was dragged from the palace and raped by a suitor. Turandot concludes that "No man will ever have me" - "Mai Nessum m'Avira."
Another challenge is posed before Turandot and Calaf declare their love for each other.
Music scholars consider this Puccini work a perfect fusion of story, music about love and its power to do good. The opera's final scene was not finished at the composer's death. Puccini, a cigarette smoker, was diagnosed with throat cancer one month after "Turandot" librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni gave him lyrics for the final love duet. When he died two months later, Puccini left notes that the music should resemble Wagner's duet for "Tristan and Isolde" but did not write the music. Composer Franco Alfano wrote the last 11 minutes. From the first, "Nessun dorma" was a hit and the opera has been regularly performed.
About UAO and the Season
Each of Union Avenue Opera's three summer productions run two weekends in the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 N. Union Blvd., one block north of Delmar Boulevard. The Italian Romanesque building is in the National Register of Historic Places. Guards are on duty at its fenced parking lot.
Opera founder and artistic director Scott Schoonover is the church's music director. [Union Avenue Opera started with a job interview ] Comfortable theater seats have replaced pews in the 1909 church's auditorium. The first two operas this season will be sung in Italian, the third in English.
One dependable UAO strength is the company's fine chorus of St. Louis singers.
Second Opera - "la Cenerentola"
After Puccini's 1926 Chinese fairytale, the company reaches into the 19th century for the family-pleasing "La Cenerentola," Gioacchino Rossini's opera based on the Cinderella story. Schoonover hopes families who have made Union Avenue's winter production of Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors" a holiday tradition will return to see "Cenerentola" July 29, 30, August 6 and 7.
"It's certainly for adults, too," he said. "It has such beautiful music, a delight for the ear with wonderful patter songs. They are difficult to sing but we try to make it look easy."
Third Opera - "Dead Man Walking"
The season concludes with Jack Heggie's and Terrance McNally's 2000 "Dead Man Walking" based on Sister Helen Prejean memoir of the same name about helping a man on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph, will attend some performances and talk to the audience on the set at a free event at 8 p.m. Aug. 18. The opera will be performed Aug. 19, 20, 26 and 27.
"Dead Man Walking" is a risk," Schoonover said. However, his board stands strongly behind the choice, he said. It's extra risky because contributions are down in the current economy as they are at many nonprofits, he said.
He hopes that it will bring in new audiences who enjoy contemporary music or are interested in the story. Prejean "is really excited that it's being performed in a church," Schoonover said.
A few UAO longtime patrons who usually buy subscriptions, this summer limited their purchases to the first two productions, said Emily DePauw the company's administrative director.
The opera plot - well known from Tim Robbins' 1995 movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn - is not the issue, DePauw said. It's the contemporary music that some UAO traditionalists find challenging, they tell DePauw.
Tickets range from $32 to $52. Student rush tickets are $15 for any remaining seats available 15 minutes before curtain.
Patricia Rice is a freelance writer who has long covered music.