In John Fennimoore Cooper’s “Leather Stocking” novels, Glimmerglass is a mysterious meeting place, located on Lake Otsega, far from the big cities of New York and Boston. Today it is a meeting place for opera fans. In 1987, a turkey farm there was converted into a musical theatre, and since then there have been four new productions summer after summer: a classic, a rarity, a musical and a contemporary American opera. The festival is accompanied by the renowned “Young Artist Program”, in which the participants, in addition to their master classes, are also employed in smaller roles and in the choir, sometimes even filling in for leading roles.
Francesca Zambello, full-time artistic director of the Washington Opera, has directed the festival for 12 years and is now preparing her final season. She relies on a self-confident American opera tradition emancipated from Europe. Artist in residence in 2022 is Denyce Graves, since her role debut in 1995 at the MET the most well-known Carmen in the USA. Now, however, the black singer is not on the stage, but behind the director’s desk: Bizet’s evergreen is primarily a conflict between police officers and smuggling immigrants.
Denyce Graves directs “Carmen”
In addition, two black women, Michaela (Symone Harcum), who is easily intimidated, and the self-confident Carmen (Brian Hunter), face off against mostly abusive machos. Ian Konzir is an uptight, self-insecure Don Jose. In the prelude he puts on a priestly robe as if he wanted to cast out the devil from Carmen, before killing her he shows her the Bible.
As a prequel to this “Carmen” you can see “The Passion of Cardwell Dawson” by Sandra Seaton. It honors – played and sung by Denyce Graves – the often forgotten founder of “The Negro Opera Company”, who fought hard to get her troupe to perform and fought against racial segregation in the audience. “The Passion” shows Dawson 1943 at rehearsals for a “Carmen” performance in Washington, while trying to defend herself on the phone against bureaucratic requirements and police orders.
With Rossini melodies on the cruise ship
Instead of a rarity, Francesca Zambello says goodbye in 2022 with a pasticchio: “Tenor Overboard”. She had Ken Ludwig write a libretto for musical numbers by Rossini (from “La Scala di Seta” to his “soireés musicales”), which is reminiscent of a shrill screwball comedy. The daughter and her friend flee from their father, a hot dog seller in Little Italy, on a cruise ship, where they meet a group of singers called The Singing Sicilians and a somewhat crazy movie star. To take part, they dress up as men. For Rossini, who often recycled old arias for new works, a pasticcio is definitely an appropriate procedure, the young singers can prove themselves with bravura arias, and the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra under Joseph Colonari impresses with energy and wit.
Contemporary opera is alive in America
Kamala Sakara’s Taking Up Serpents premiered in Washington in 2018 and is now available in Glimmerglass: memories and fears of a young woman traumatized by the abandonment of her family by her father, a violent drinker-turned-preacher. When her father is dying, she drives to him. “Grabbing snakes with hands” refers to a biblical passage and is one of the preacher’s rituals, whose performances are musical highlights of the composition.
Damien Geter’s “Holy Ground” provides a humorous contrast to the one-act play: four archangels are looking for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Desperately they surf for a suitable candidate until they are visited by the young angel Cherubiel: a woman full of self-doubt, always at odds with her mother about the role of women in society. The new Maria has been found. And contemporary US opera is still alive.