The DMMO Years
The 2016 Summer Festival – The Final Season
And now we come to the 2016 Summer Festival. This would be my nineteenth season, and as things turned out, my final one. When I began the season, I had no definite idea that this would be the case. I was expecting that I would probably return for the 2017 season. During the off season between the 2015 and 2016 seasons, I had pretty much wrapped up my affairs in Illinois, and moved to Rapid City, South Dakota. (More about this in a later blogpost.) My wife had been working there since October 2014, and during the year and three months that I remained in Illinois, wrapping up my commitments, made many trips back and forth between Joliet, Illinois and Rapid City. As a matter of fact, I went straight from Indianola at the conclusion of the 2015 Summer Festival and spent six weeks with the wife in Rapid City, staying with her in the rented downstairs apartment. As a matter of fact, knowing that I would eventually move to Rapid City, I signed on to substitute with the Rapid City School District, and also applied for a PRN position as a bookstore registration worker with the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. This way, I would have something to do when I made the move. I actually worked at the Rocker Shop for a whole week during the opening week of school at South Dakota Mines, and actually subbed twice in the school district, before returning to Illinois for the final months of 2015, in which I closed out most of my affairs, and sold the house. I actually moved to Rapid City full-time at the end of December 2015. When I got there and visited the Rocker Shop, the director of the store told me that they had just opened a downtown location which was devoted to the school’s clothing and other non-book items, with an emphasis on alumni gear. He offered me a three-week position manning the store, and that stint turned out to be nearly two-and-a-half-years until it closed in 2018. It was this job that had the biggest impact on my decision to close out my DMMO tenure in March of 2017. More on this in a later blog post.
The 2016 Festival Season had been announced, as usual, in the 2015 Festival Program Book. It followed the normal format of the standard three mainstage productions, plus a Second Stage production, to be performed during the festival season itself, and an off-season production, to be performed several months prior to the festival, in January 2016. There was also the annual “Stars of Tomorrow” concert to take place the final Thursday in the season up at Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium. The mainstage operas were as follows: Verdi’s Falstaff; Massanet’s Manon; and Gluck’s Orfee et Eurydice. The Second Stage opera was Philip Glass’s Galileo, and the off-season production was a one-man production of Schubert’s Winterreise, which featured David Adam Moore. I was not involved in either of these last two productions, as Galileo calls for a very small orchestra with one percussion and no timpani. Winterreise is, as I stated, a one -man show – soloist plus piano. So, I will concentrate on the mainstage productions.
My living arrangements were the same as before, and I had the Yamahas with me as I had for the previous four seasons. Load in, both in my dorm room and the theater went without a hitch, and overall, the season went extremely well. I even had the chance do another attempt at some episodes of “My Little Corner of The World” during the season. I actually made a two- part video dealing with how I was going to deal with performing Gluck’s Orfee et Eurydice. I include it here to give you an idea of my working conditions in the pit, and how I approached this opera stylistically. The first part was done from behind the drums, and I had the camera in one hand, and a stick in the other. The second part was done with the camera mounted on a small tripod, and I was free to use both hands. This is what I had to work with, so here is the first video:
And here is the second part, which is better, due to having both hands free to play and demonstrate:
The Operas
Verdi: Falstaff
The first production of the 2016 Summer Festival was Verdi’s Falstaff, considered by many to be Verdi’s masterpiece and finest opera. Arturo Toscanini thought so, and for a long time I tried to get my head wrapped around this opera. (This was before I performed it with the DMMO in 2003. After having played it several times as well as studying it in more depth, I grew to love it.) It took me to gain some musical maturity to appreciate the subtleties of the opera. This was Verdi’s last opera, and he threw his all into the composition of the opera. For this season, the DMMO reverted to the former practice of giving the first production of the season (in this case, Falstaff) six performances, whereas the second production, Manon, received five performances, and the last production, Orfee received four.
As I stated above, I had performed this opera in 2003 under Dr. Larsen’s direction. That was an excellent production, and if memory serves, it was quite successful, especially in the comedic elements. That was Dr. Larsen’s specialty.
The 2016 production was excellent in a musical sense. David Neely conducted a fast-paced, tightly knit performance, which was also well sung. It had a sense of motion, and it sparkled. Visually, the sets were impressive (as they always are) and Tomer Zvulun’s stage direction was quite good. That is what is important. I know that while I personally liked the comedic aspects of it a little better when we did it with Dr. Larsen’s production, I enjoyed this one very much, due to the positive qualities I mentioned! It is a fun opera, and I can see why Toscanini loved it so much! The cast was as follows:
Cast
Dr. Caius: Chris Carr
Sir John Falstaff: Waynes Tigges
Bardolfo: Ryan Connelly
Pistola: Matthew Scollin
Alice Ford: Kelly Kaduce
Meg Page: Megan Marino
Mistress Quickly: Maria Zifchak
Nannetta: Deanna Breiwick
Fenton: Jack Swanson
Ford: Edward Parks
Host at the Garter: Gretchen Krupp
Robin: Cameron Bennington
Here is a link to a playlist of one of my favorite recordings of the opera. Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. Enjoy!
Massenet: Manon
The second mainstage production of the 2016 Summer Festival was Jules Massanet’s Manon. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, after a novel by the Abbe Prevost. I was no stranger to Massanet’s music, having performed two of his operas previous to this occasion, which was my first encounter with Manon. My very first opera (in the role of timpanist) was his Cendrillon (Cinderella) which I played as a freshman at Manhattan School of Music in 1971; the second Massanet opera was Werther, which I played at the Lake George Opera around the early 1980s. I must confess that I was a little ambivalent about this opera. While I enjoyed performing the first two operas, this one left me a little cold while first listening to it. French music in general (at least for me) is not straightforward. It is elusive in the sense that it has a lot of subtleties and therein lays one of its charms. Massenet is more straightforward in his writing than say, Debussy or Ravel or Roussel, but he has his subtleties, nonetheless. It took me a rehearsal or two to get used to the style, and to make some necessary tuning changes, but overall, by the time of the first dress rehearsal, I had gotten used to the music and began to actually enjoy performing the opera. The part is not technically difficult, but musically it is subtle. It begins with timpani roll leading to the introduction which seems at first to be a little “off kilter” but settles down into a delightful prelude. The opera itself is quite nice. Giacomo Puccini wrote his own version of the Manon story, in which he titles it Manon Lescaut. I suppose this was to differentiate his version from Massanet’s. Once I found my footing, I enjoyed the five performances we gave of the opera. The cast was superb, and David Neeley conducted a spontaneous and lively performance of the music. Kristine McIntyre was the stage director, and her direction was up to her usual high standards. The production was televised by Iowa Public Broadcasting, and in addition to the statewide broadcast later that fall, it was rebroadcast during the DMMO’s Virtual Festival in 2020. That was during the COVID-19 pandemic when there were no physical performances during that summer. I had the chance to listen to the production and found it charming. Apparently, many people agreed with me, because it won the 2017 Upper Midwest Emmy. It was interesting hearing it again several years after the fact. I have to say that it was a really excellent production in all respects. The company just seemed to get better with each season, and here was the proof. The cast was as follows:
Cast
Manon Lescaut: Sydney Mancasola
Poussette: Ashly Neumann
Javotte: Emma Sorenson
Rosette: Antonia Botti-Lodovico
Chevalier des Grieux: Joseph Dennis
Comte des Grieux: Julien Robbins
Lescaut: Michael Adams
Guillot de Morfontaine: Brian Frutiger
de Brétigny: Troy Cook
Innkeeper: Spencer Reichman
Guardsmen: Lee Steiner, Nathaniel Mattingly
A Maid: Aurélie Veruni
Sacristan: Chris Carr
Sergeant: Christian Sanders
Street Performers: Deborah Giddings, Steve Giddings, Rebecca Mauritz
Here is a link to a video which is a short time-lapse of the setting up of the production of Manon. The prelude provides the music for this short clip, and it gives a taste of the music. Enjoy.
Here is another preview with commentaries by the general director, conductor and lead soloists:
For those interested in the entire opera, here is a link to the same:
Gluck: Orfee ed Eurydice
I have to admit that I was not exactly thrilled with the news that the DMMO would be producing Gluck’s Orfee ed Eurydice as its third production of the 2016 Summer Festival. I was even less enthralled when I found out that I had a total of eight minutes of playing time in the entire opera. I listened with interest in any case and tried hard to get into the opera. Gluck was, as I knew from my opera music history class a very important figure in the history of opera, but as much I tried, I couldn’t get all that excited. I decided that things might change for the better when we began rehearsals. And, to my surprise they did indeed. Our conductor for this production, Gary Thor Wedow, had some new ideas. He added about five more minutes to my part – mainly effects in the “Dance of The Furies” in Act II, as well as beefing up the finale. So, I would up with something to challenge me, even slightly. I was grateful for that.
As I mentioned earlier, Gary Thor Wedow was the conductor for the production, and I must admit that he did a fine job crafting the musical side of the show. His attention to detail and generally high caliber of musicianship made this an excellent production. I actually became quite involved and looked forward to each of the four performances. The stage director was Chas Rader-Sheiber, and he had a good sense of style. Scenery was of high quality, and the cast was superb. Like all good productions, by the time we reached the end of the run, we all wanted “more!”
The cast:
Cast
Orphée: Jennifer Johnson Cano
Eurydice: Susannah Biller
Amour: Cree Carrico
Dancers
Jillian Foley
Isaac Lerner
Megan McCarthy
Tariq Mitri
Here is a link to a playlist of the opera conducted by Karl Richter:
At the beginning of this blog post, I mentioned that this was to be my final season with the DMMO, but I didn’t know that for sure when the season ended, although I did have Jim Holland help me out by coming out to pick up the Yamahas and take them back to Illinois. That was a pretty good sign that this would be the case, as I had already closed out my other musical commitments and sold the house in Joliet. I was now free to drive out to Rapid City without any further commitments in Illinois. I did not actually resign until March of 2017, when I knew that I would be running the Downtown Rocker Shop of the School of Mines in Rapid City for the summer of 2017 and 2018. I’ll have more about that and my free-lance career in future blog posts. The next blog post or two should be a summing up of my nineteen summer seasons with the company. Stay tuned.
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