Chris Tani cornered Maestra Chun in between rehearsals for The Rake’s Progress in early May…

Mary Chun: My parents emigrated from China. I’m their only child born in the United States. Before I can even remember, music really had a fascination for me. I think that it has to do with being bi-cultural. My mother spoke no English and my father spoke very little.

Living in a country where the language was unfamiliar, I started listening and was immediately taken with music. I was, of course, influenced by the Disney films, the cartoons and animation. The music that was used came straight from the classics. Pieces such as The Rite of Spring and Firebird by Stravinsky were used as background in some of the films. And in Bugs Bunny they were using Brahms and Liszt. This was just amazing to me.

I grew up in a small town in central California. I started piano lessons, and when I went to grade school I studied instruments. I was also a woodwind player. There was no doubt whatsoever that I was going to become a musician. I went to college and immediately majored in music. As an instrumental major, I studied all the instruments. I earned my degree in piano and then went on to get another degree from San Francisco State, also in piano, but with an emphasis on conducting.

When I was in college I hated opera! I really did not have any affinity for it. But by a fluke, I became Kent Nagano’s assistant at the Berkeley Symphony. Kent would do one opera a year, and it would always be a new opera or a neglected work, sometimes something composed in the 20th century. Through that exposure, I became hooked on opera.

I became really fascinated with the idea of the theater and the spoken text, and how text can be driven through music and how music can be driven through text. I also was intrigued with the drama of the opera, the internal drama as well as the external. I’m one of those people who loves adrenaline. So if things are going wrong, which in opera always happens, that’s really a challenge for me.

After assisting Kent Nagano, I went off to work with the Opera de Lyon. That’s how I became a full-time conductor. I worked my way up through the normal routes, as a pianist, a coach, and then as an assistant conductor. For awhile I conducted all around and all over. I had a really good break when John Adams asked me to conduct his little piece called Ceiling/Sky. I took that piece to Hamburg and Paris, and did a Montreal engagement with it, too. After that everything started accelerating. I just became a full time conductor and I hardly even play the piano anymore.

I’ve always had a fascination with new stuff, too, as result of that association with the Berkeley Symphony. My passion is really with new music and with opera. If I can get both together, I’m in heaven!

CT: Could you give us some insight in to your understanding of The Rake’s Progress?

MC: Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress is sort of like the birth, in my mind, of modern American opera. That is really what makes this piece very special to me. Before Rake’s Progress, opera had been seen as a 16th, 17th, and 18th century invention of Europe. But now I think it has gone through a big cycle in its evolution. With Rake’s Progress we see a new, fresh view of opera, the “American Opera.” And I know that Europeans, having lived there for several years and worked there — both Eastern Europe and Western Europe — have a great love of new works. This is true there much more so than here. I think that the American public is getting a little more open to it. But for a long time there was a resistance to the new things. People may think, “it’s modern, it must be ugly,” or “it’s modern so I can’t understand it, it’s so esoteric.”

This is a blooming period in American Opera. Libby Larsen is writing a piece for Sonoma Opera, with a libretto by Philip Patel, that I’ll be premiering in the fall. In my chamber ensemble, Ear Play, our repertoire consists almost exclusively of fresh ink or world premieres. Right before Rake’s Progress, I’ll be doing a premiere of a piece by Guillermo Galindo that I commissioned. He is a Mexican composer living in Oakland. He’s invented an instrument made out of recycled technological items, e.g. old CDs, turntables, and random items. It’s a “cyber totemic device.” It has a very primitive and raw sound, and at the same time, it is very technological. The piece he has written juxtaposes my ensemble, with its organized musical sound against his instrument, which is somewhat predictable, but not always. He is also adding the element of recording in it, so he is recording us live and at the same time processing the sound and playing it back in fragments. The entire piece is based on a Mozart sonata. There are four- or five-bar passages lifted from Mozart, but Galindo has taken his own composition process to deconstruct it.

My huge passion for new music and new art and theater and voice brings me to West Bay Opera to conduct The Rake’s Progress.

CT: When you’re doing new works, is it the adrenaline rush that you enjoy most, or the knowledge that you’re breaking new ground?

MC: The most interesting part for me about doing a new work is the process. The actual performance is almost a let-down. The process of discovery is exciting and at the same time it is a very creative sensation. You are starting from scratch as to how to interpret a new work. There isn’t a body of references to consult as to how the piece should be interpreted. To discover exactly how the piece is to sound requires you put a lot of yourself into it, into building the work, making it yours. I spend a lot of time looking at new scores, an inordinate amount of time studying. Because for me, if you don’t really get it inside, if it doesn’t speak to you inside, then you shouldn’t be performing it.

Symphony orchestras, in particular, are fond of sticking a “new work” at the beginning of a program to just get it out of the way, and then go on to their Beethoven and Brahms. While this is helpful for the composer, it is where audiences get in trouble. This is when you hear “Oh, I didn’t like that” or “I didn’t get that” or “We have to sit through this horrible new work before we get our Mendelsohn Violin Concerto.” This is in part because the orchestra doesn’t have the time to devote to the new work. An orchestra and the conductor need to spend at least as much time on the new work as they spend on the familiar pieces. This lack of attention short-shrifts the composer, the audience, and the artist trying to make your craft. To give a new work its due, you have to spend a lot of time on it. And in the 21st century, new works are really difficult because, not only do we have all the traditional western European music, but we have the entire 20th century tradition to incorporate, such as 12-tone, chance music, aleatoric methods, and rhythmic permutations that never would exist in natural life.

CT: What is your favorite theme or thematic element that runs through The Rake’s Progress?

MC: There are several different things that are appealing to me about The Rake’s Progress: One is the polytonality of certain scenes, especially when Nick Shadow and Tom are talking to each other. Nick is being the devil’s advocate and Tom is being the sort of loose and free American. I know that it is set in England, but to me he really embodies the American spirit of “anything is possible and I’m going to do it.” There’s this sort of freedom and it is expressed as a freedom from harmony. If you analyze the piece there are two to three keys going on simultaneously. You can have the key of C happening at the same time you have the key of C sharp. It is very dissonant when you play them together but in a linear way you can hear the polytonalities. And in this way, you can hear the complicated psychology of the two people. That is a really fascinating compositional element.

And then I also love the absolute pure harmonies that Stravinsky sometimes writes. For example, in the final Bedlam scene where Tom has completely lost it and Nick Shadow has condemned him to continue his life alive, but insane. There are perfect octaves and pure perfect fifths. This is seen again when Tom is talking about Arcadia, the Gods, Persephone, and Adonis and Venus. It’s a kind of pure holiness. Here Stravinsky just writes in octaves, the chorus will sing in simple octaves. And sometimes there are passages that are complete progressions that are very logical or very listenable. You could almost hum them in a karaoke bar. Moments of concord as opposed to some of the discord and complication when Nick Shadow is involved. Those two diametrically opposed compositional elements are really intriguing to me, how he can use those to underscore and to give the psychological intention to the piece.

CT: Do you think Stravinsky is trying to say something deeper in the piece?

MC: The work is inspired by a series of lithographs by Hogarth. I think Stravinsky was really taken by the idea of going through that journey. For Tom Rakewell to go through that journey that anything is possible coupled with the unadulterated, unconditional, devoted love of Anne. That to me speaks of Stravinsky’s recognition of the human condition, of a feeling of connectedness, all through the opera as Tom is going through his journey to find his own person. To find his own happiness or money or satisfaction — all these journeys that he takes. Tom is always aware of the connection he has to Anne, and Anne is definitely devoted to him in a completely pure way, and that goes all the way through the entire opera. All the way to the end even as Tom is raving as a lunatic and Anne in her everlasting love for him realizes that she has to let him go because her love for him is so pure and strong that there is nothing she can humanly do for him. At that point, the best thing for her to do is just to let him be, keeping her love. It is a very interesting tale.

Chris Tani interviewed Mr. Revon about his background and set design in early May…

Jean-François Revon: I grew up in Paris. I thought I was going to be a photographer. To enter the National School of Photography in Paris you have to do one year of drawing. That’s how it goes, so I did my one year of drawing. During that year I took hundreds of photos, so many that I got fed up with being in the darkroom. I realized that it wasn’t my thing, so in a way, it was a good that they made us do that. One of my teachers talked to me about set design. I never had any interested before that. He was the one that pointed out to me that I was really good with three-dimensional stuff, and that’s how I became a set designer.

I went to school to get my college degree. In 1984, I came here to visit my host sister as an exchange student. I loved San Francisco, and just couldn’t leave it. Then I started designing and it just snowballed.

CT: What most influenced your design for The Rake’s Progress? What was most challenging?

JFR: The story of degradation — how much a person, if they don’t hold on to what is important in their life, can really deteriorate. When I was working on the design, I focused on that, on how you can lose track of what is essential to you, and when you lose track of what is essential and important, you just fall apart. The brick wall falling apart upstage is to me the representation of Tom falling apart. I took it literally and had fun with it. As dark as it is, Rake’s Progress is a really fun dark opera! On the other hand, Menotti’s The Consul is a very dark, dark opera.

The most challenging part was that there were so many instants where Tom is pretty much alone, maybe with one or two other principals. If we did a very sparse design, which is what stage director Jonathan Field first wanted, you would have a stage that was nearly empty.

CT: How do you see your role as scenic designer?

JFR: I work for the director, always, pushing his ideas. I love the fact that often there are directors who have ideas that I do not agree with at the beginning, but I will never tell them. I think it is interesting to take those ideas and push them to make the whole production complete.

CT: What is your favorite moment in the show?

JFR: The top of Act Two. Visually, it is the pivotal point for me. This is when I think everybody realizes it’s really not going to work for Tom, he’s going to go down the drain.

What draws someone to sing in an opera chorus, in particular in the WBO chorus? And what makes him come back? WBO chorister Philip Schwarz joined us last winter in Manon Lescaut and has returned for The Rake’s Progress.

Chorus Corner: What led you to audition for Manon Lescaut?

Philip: I had seen several productions of WBO and enjoyed them. However, my work schedule included working weekends. I had to work on Sundays and needed to take off from work just to see a production. My work schedule at present is Monday through Friday without any weekend work, so as soon as I got this job I was able to finally be in a production. Being able to sing with WBO was one of the biggest motivators for changing jobs.

Philip Schwarz (far left) in Manon Lescaut

CC: What other experience do you have singing in opera productions? What about other types of musical performance?

Philip: I had never sung in opera in California, but I sang in several productions with Madison Opera in Wisconsin. Before operas had supertitles, we performed many of the productions in English. My first opera was Faust, followed by Aida sung in Italian at the opening of the Madison Civic Center. We also performed La bohème, Cav/Pag, Tosca, and Carmen. In the fall, the Madison Opera performed several musicals.

CC: Had you seen many operas before? What attracted you to singing in opera in the first place? And why did you keep performing?

Philip: My oldest sister was living in New York City when I was about age 15. She took me to see a Metropolitan Opera performance of La bohème. It was sold out, but we got standing-room tickets. There were about ten other people who got these types of tickets. We had been given two spots that had a post between us, which we could lean on; nobody else had that. I enjoyed it very much.

A few years later, I saw a production of Die Fledermaus on TV, performed by Madison Opera. My dad and mom have always been huge opera fans. A few years later, my dad wanted to sing with Madison Opera, so he asked if I wanted to join him in the production of Faust, which I did. My dad played a bartender (kind of supernumerary and chorus singer). I played a townsperson who had to be the first to try the wine that Mephistopheles broke open.

CC: Do you do other musical things outside of opera?

Philip: I do a lot of singing when I am not with WBO. I have been in Schola Cantorum since a year after I moved here in 1997. I also sing with our temple choir. I have played piano for a number of years and do that a lot when I am at home.

CC: Is there some characteristic of The Rake’s Progress that you find notable with no counterpart in Manon Lescaut?

Philip: The unique thing about this production is that almost every move is choreographed. In Manon Lescaut, we ran onto the stage and would improvise once we got there. With Rake, it feels like rehearsing for A Chorus Line. I even occasionally hear the director say, “five, six, seven, eight.” Also, moves are totally unpredictable in The Rake’s Progress because of the irregularities in the music.

CC: Yes, Stravinsky seems to delight in upsetting expectations. Can you describe something particularly memorable that happened during a rehearsal?

Philip: The most memorable thing that happened at a rehearsal is that the principals in Manon Lescaut actually wanted to know my name. They came up to me and introduced themselves to me. This had never happened to me before. I think they are wonderful singers and wonderful people, in general.

~ Interview by Joanne Bogart, Chorus Manager
~ Photo © Lucinda Surber

At West Bay Opera, we not only strive to present great opera to the faithful, but also to invest in developing the next generation of opera lovers through our Opera In The Schools program. By the end of this school year, nearly 19,000 elementary school children throughout the Bay Area will have seen our abbreviated version of Donizetti’s comic opera, The Daughter of the Regiment. In each school, student volunteers were included as actors and many schools formed a chorus to sing with the performers. Our miniature production for the 2006-07 school year will be Engelbert Humperdinck’s classic opera, Hansel and Gretel.

Next year, we will be able to augment our long-standing program of going to many schools with a new feature. Thanks to a grant from the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund, we will add an in-theater performance of Hansel and Gretel so that the many children who don’t attend one of the schools receiving our OITS program can attend a performance with their parents. The Weekly’s grant allows us to develop this pilot program to assess community interest.

This is the second yearly grant from the Holiday Fund. Last year’s grant allowed us to expand our offering in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto as part of WBO’s 50th Season celebration. The Holiday Fund’s grants are highly competitive and our back-to-back awards are a tribute to WBO’s efforts to expand our children’s cultural horizons.

Your contribution to the OITS program will allow us to bring opera to even more schools next year and continue our search for other ways to build WBO’s audience for its second 50 years. For more information about the in-theater production of Hansel and Gretel, email Michele Sullivan. For information about next year’s in-school performances, email Opera in the Schools.

Our 50th  Season has been exhilarating! We began our Golden Anniversary celebration with a birthday party in September, where we shared the history of our wonderful company, a glimpse behind the scenes, including make-up design and costumes, a concert of arias performed by some of West Bay Opera’s singers, ending with a presentation of a special Opera in the Schools  production of The Magic Flute. We were delighted to see longtime members of the WBO family as well as many new faces.

This season, we returned to three full opera productions: Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. We were pleased to see so many young audience members, showing that opera is an accessible and inclusive art.

Our “Golden Opportunity” Gala was held in March at the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto. Guests were entertained with a champagne reception, caviar bar, dinner, live performances of operatic arias, and silent and live auctions, and were sent home with souvenir gift bags.

This year, we began an informal, mutually supportive relationship with the Stanford University Music Department. Two hundred Stanford students attended our productions, and in turn, WBO patrons were invited to an intimate concert and master class taught by the renowned countertenor Brian Asawa.

On June 10, in conjunction with the Henry and Maria Holt Scholarship Fund, we are presenting a master class given by Luana DeVol, who sang her first major professional operatic role at West Bay Opera. Ms. DeVol has had a very successful career in Europe, primarily as a Wagnerian soprano. She sang the role of Susan B. Anthony in The Mother of Us All, to open San Francisco Opera’s 2003 Season. This season, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Ortrud in Lohengrin.

This spring, we launched the formal search for our new General Director. The Board of Directors expects to announce our new General Director this summer.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure to introduce West Bay Opera’s 51st Season:

The season curtain goes up with Verdi’s Macbeth. We have not performed this opera since 1975. Based on one of Shakespeare’s most compelling tragedies, Verdi’s music matches the play’s terrifying power. When Lady Macbeth risks everything, vocally and emotionally, in her great sleepwalking scene, it is clear that Shakespeare and Verdi compliment each other. In this timeless tale of ambition, greed, and lust for power, Macbeth and his wife soon find themselves entangled in a power struggle and awash in blood. Music Director, Sara Jobin; Stage Director, Daniel Helfgot.

Our second production, and a West Bay Opera premiere, is Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, based on the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin’s novella. The tragic fate of Gherman is predestined from the beginning. He is obsessed with love for an aristocratic young woman engaged to a prince. He is even more obsessed with the secret of the three cards that have the power to win a fortune. The motifs of fate, gambling, and love are intertwined to the inevitable ending, and Tchaikovsky’s sweeping music superbly expresses the drama. Music Director, Ernest Knell; Stage Director, David Ostwald.

The romantic conclusion of our season is Lehár’s The Merry Widow, a perennial favorite and his first international success. It is a delightful Viennese operetta, and another West Bay Opera premiere. The Merry Widow brings to life the fabled Paris gay nineties with its high society balls, romantic intrigues, and a decadent visit to Montmartre’s Maxim for the Can-Can. The country’s leaders scramble to protect their most valuable asset, the wealthy, beautiful, and recently widowed Hanna Glawari. As the ambassador tries to marry her off and keep her fortune in their bankrupt kingdom, the audience will become consumed by the hysterical mayhem. Music Director, Jindong Cai; Stage Director, Yefim Maizel.

Our 51st Season, offering new productions of opera masterpieces, with English titles, is designed to awaken your senses and fill your hearts with glorious, sensual music. It is guaranteed to entertain and inspire each and every one of you, our West Bay Opera friends.

~ Riva Bacon, West Bay Opera Board President

Riva Bacon, President
Richard Bogart, Vice President
Jeraldine Johnson, Secretary
Pat Campbell, Margaret Haneberg, Pat Markevitch,
Lea McIntosh, Nan McKenna, Stan Ulrich

Poster for The Rake’s Progress designed by Nina Ollikainen

The poetry of W.H. Auden can sometimes sound strange to our ear. We hope  this glossary will help you enjoy the text:

“Now is the season when the Cyprian Queen” – Of Cyprus, ancient pagan devotion to the worship of Aphrodite; the Cyprian Queen is a frequent reference in ancient Greek and classical literature.

“Let’s fly to husbandry and make it grow” – Farming term for the management of resources; breeding.

“since born in indigence…” – Poverty; want and neediness.

“all that dazzles or dins…” – Stun with noise; impress by wearying repetition.

“A toast to our commanders, then, from their irregulars” – Not belonging to a permanent military force.

“curious viands” – A stock or supply of foods; a choice or tasty dish.
“Oporto and Provence” — Wine-growing centers; a seaside city in Portugal (Porto, whence port wine), and a region in the south of France.

“before they learn of the green sickness” – Chlorosis, a form of anemia affecting girls near puberty that gives the skin a greenish tint. Alleged to arise from being a virgin too long, and the “female sperm” stored up.

“I have not visited Saint Giles Fair” – A street fair in Oxford that dates back to 1625. In the late 1700s, it was a toy and carnival show to entertain children. Held the first Monday after September 1st to commemorate the feast of Saint Giles.

“the withered bondsman sits” – A person obligated to serve without wages, a slave.

“He’s converting Jewery” – He’s converting to Judaism.

“He’s but a shuttle-headed lad” – Device used in weaving to carry the wool back and forth between the warp threads.

“Nick forgives your dilatoriness” – Tendency to delay; procrastinating.

“a track of cloven hoofs” – A sign that the devil has been there.

Chris Tani convinced Mr. Battle to put down his sketch pad and fabric samples, and talk about designing, in early May…

Richard Battle: I’m a designer — costumes, scenery, etc. I’m from Michigan, Detroit to be exact. I did my undergraduate work at Wayne State University, and my graduate work at San Francisco State.

CT: What influenced your designs for The Rake’s Progress?

RWB: Basically it was Jonathan Field, the stage director. Speaking to Jonathan about the show, he was talking about Nick Shadow. He and I started playing back and forth with these combinations of words. It was the name “Shadow” that threw me in a certain direction. When he said he was going to set the opera in the late 60s, early 70s, that started to inspire me and gave me the idea of which way I wanted to go in terms of the period.

But in terms of coloring the show I didn’t quite know where I was going to go, because I knew we didn’t have the resources required to do the kind of show that I first had in mind. That was the main reason why I’ve gone the way I’ve gone: all the people in show, with the exception of Tom, Anne, and her father, are people controlled by Nick Shadow. In my mind, I call them “Shadow people” and when I applied that term to them, I realized that I could see it as a modern show. I could in fact go towards colors that we associate with shadow — dark grays, blacks, a gradation pallet from black to white. And so that is what I decided I would do with all of our choristers and anybody else in the show, including Baba and Mother Goose. These people really were the ones influenced by Nick Shadow, and they were the ones who really were the reason Tom falls from grace.

Now what am I going to do with the three principal characters? — Shadow, Tom, and Anne. I decided to apply a basic color scheme to them, a true, honest-to-goodness red, yellow, and blue. Anne is yellow, Tom is blue, and Shadow is red. And the accents for all of them pull from each other. Some blue is on Anne’s costume, such as the rick-rack and buttons. Anne’s last name is Trulove, so I wanted a heart shape to be applied to her. We have hearts on practically everything that she wears. Some are blue, some are red, some of them are magenta or pink. She wears an apron at the beginning of the show, and when you see it, you’ll see that it has a heart shape to it. I think I’ve stretched as far as I possibly can with hearts, but that’s her motif.

Anne in her basic yellow gets three costumes. At the beginning with an apron, then she goes into her pajamas, but it’s going to be a shirt that goes down to her knees. Her second act costume that she wears right straight through the rest of the show is a jacket and a skirt with “dangerous” shapes. The show is schemed this way intentionally, so that these people have color and everybody else is just background.

Tom is my blue character. The story really tells you how we are to deal with him. He’s a commoner who has come into a large amount of money he doesn’t know what to do with. He becomes a very dislikable person and also one who is maneuvered by this character, Nick Shadow, who is to become our devil image. I’ve given Tom different types of blue — just about everything that he is going to be wearing, including his tuxedo. I’m going to see if I can find a dark blue tuxedo for him to wear. His distressed clothing will be whatever I can get and then I think I’ll spray it blue. For the final scene in the asylum, Tom’s supposed to have this Jesus-like image to him. Initially I designed a garment that had the kind of wrap that we associate with Jesus. Then the director and I had a conversation the other day and, while he didn’t say it, all of a sudden in my mind it popped: Tom needs to be in a diaper. So that’s what he’s going to have. It’s going to be a diaper-like device, its going to be dirty, and then he puts his asylum robe over the top of that.

The first time we see Nick Shadow, he’s sneaky. He comes in wearing basic black, but his hair will have red streaking. We are doing a piece that we comb right into his own hair. It’s red Mylar and red hair to give the audience the feeling that his hair has a tint of red to it. His second costume is basically the same thing, except he changes to a brown coat that we’ve sprayed red along the bottom, and it is uneven. The last coat Nick wears, in the third act, is red, with a brilliant red lining. That second coat also has a red lining. We’re revealing him a little bit more as we go along.

Anne	Tom	Nick Shadow

CT: What about the other characters, and the chorus?

RWB: For Baba, she is a very exotic person and her garments will be white and black, and her hair is either going to be feathers or else a black piece of material that’s used on part of her garment. Her hair stacks up so that a lampshade can go over the top of it.

Mother Goose is going to have high boots, thigh-high boots with a slight heel because we are working on a raked stage. The boots are going to be black, and her hair is going to be white, with Mylar woven in it and some jewels on the hair. It’s a wig, of course.

Mother Goose		Baba

The chorus ladies, who are her working women will have black hair with some black Mylar woven into the hair. Their outfits are all gray and black. And naughty to me is when I have people who can go on stage and be naughty. These are supposed to be whores, and I've worked with this group long enough to realize how far you can go before people start dropping out of the show. As I get older I get more conservative. The nastiness is gone out of me.

The men who will be at the brothel will be in their basic garment, a suit actually. They will be wearing black pants, black shoes, and T-shirts. And the shirts we can do anything to them. We can dirty them up or leave them almost pristine white or we can make them a look like they are a little bit grungy.

From that point on the people, the choristers, will be in their basic garment — a suit for the men and, for the women, a 1960s A-line dress. Also hats and some will have a purse. If they have to become something else, for example, we add a chauffeur’s cap for one fellow with his black suit. Aprons, if they have to become waiters, or whatever, it is just added to the basic garment.

CT: How do you see your role as costume designer?

RWB: I think that if we want to tell a story for the stage, whether it’s musical theater or the straight stage, drama or comedy, it is very important that we establish something for the audience from the first sighting. And that “establishing thing” could be the time, the period, the time of day. We can establish location. In Rake, our location is England, but  in England and America the look was basically the same at that time, though a little more pronounced in England. Our approach to the show is one of those ambiguous things — it could be here, it could be there.

I think costume design is very important to a show. Whether we’re doing a fully staged show or a concert show. We need to establish a look that’s going to be consistent. In a concert version, we decide do we want everyone to be wearing blue, or black, in formal or informal wear. Once we’ve established that, that is what the show is going to look like. And then the audience will come in and sit down and say, “Oh, I see where they are going with this.” So, yes, we’re pretty important to the look of a show or establishing the feel for a show.

CT: What was your favorite costume to design?

RWB: For this show my favorite costume is for Mother Goose. I like to do corsets, so we’ve done a gorgeous corset that is really trashy. Then the thing that goes over the top of it is one that cinches her in but she can open it and do her thing with it and with those boots. I like my approach to trash. You know, it’s like motion pictures in the 50s and 60s with the code saying we don’t want to see any belly buttons and we don’t want to see…. That sort of thing. But they established the trashy look on characters just by the cut of the clothing and the type of fabrics. With Mother Goose it was establishing the character just through the cut of the thing and by doing some of the elements of design that I like to play with.

Out of all the shows that I’ve done, I think probably the one that I enjoyed the most was either Die Fledermaus or Merry Widow, primarily because they are operettas bordering on musical comedy. It can be highly stylized, because the music is that way, the show is written that way, so the costumes can be that way. The first time I designed a Merry Widow was I think for The Lamplighters. I wanted all of the women in green and all the men to be in lavender or purple. Formal wear, tails. I was called to the office and told we can’t go this route: “First of all it will cost us a fortune and … men in Purple!?”

Carla López-Speziale (Baba the Turk)

I’ve always liked music, and music (though not always classical) has always been part of my life. When we were growing up, my mom was always singing to my sister and to me. When my sister started studying music in school, she would teach me how to play the recorder and the guitar, and how to read music. We would sing together, she’d play the guitar and we would sing in harmony (as much as we could, at least we tried!). But I was not particularly interested in opera. It was not until I entered the conservatory that I started really knowing what it was and since then I loved it.

Originally I wanted to be a classical guitarist, since that was the one instrument I thought I could play. But by the time I had to decide on a major, I was already 18 and the only way to enter the Conservatory in Mexico with no previous musical training was to enroll as a voice major. So I did, thinking that if I were accepted I would switch to guitar. However, I had to take some voice lessons before I could change majors. Once I started studying and hearing other singers, I just couldn’t let it go. It was so different from other instruments, so intimate and at the same time so extroverted, so passionate, so yourself, that I liked exploring what could be done through singing.

At home we had a recording of Joan Sutherland that we listened to often. I liked it and tried to sing like her. The first opera I watched was Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production of Le nozze di Figaro, with Kiri Te Kanawa, Mirella Freni, and Herman Prey. I couldn’t stop watching it. It was so funny! I realized that it was that what I wanted to do, and from then on, over smooth or rough roads, “Here I stand!”

Gerald Seminatore (Tom Rakewell)

As a teenager, I was not especially interested in opera, and we didn’t have a single opera recording at home that I can remember. Early on, most of my singing experience was in choral groups and in a friend’s garage band — which allowed me to imagine myself as both an artiste and a rebel at the same time.

My path to opera was through seeing plays and musical onstage, and developing a love for theater. What really kicked it off for me was attending a live performance of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, sung by real opera singers, accompanied by a terrific orchestra, and played out in a magical stage setting. The first piece following the overture was a number called  “Jazzbo Brown’s Blues” played onstage on a honky-tonk piano with dancers behind a scrim. Following that number, the strains of “Summertime” came wafting off the stage, and I was hooked. A few years later, I became acquainted with Figaro, Susannah, and the Count. Once I learned how to sing notes above the staff without feeling like I was strangling myself, I could imagine myself singing and acting at the same time. But it wasn’t until graduate school that I finally fixed my sights on the opera stage. It’s not exactly a typical career choice — I guess there is still a bit of the artiste mixed with some rebel in my approach to singing and to life — funny how that hasn’t changed over the years.

On March 26th of this year, the Holt Memorial Scholarship Auditions were held at the Palo Alto Arts Center. The judges heard 14 young singers auditioning for awards totaling $5,000. The four winners were:

• Liisa Dávila, soprano, age 24, from Sacramento, won the Henry and Maria Holt first place award.
• Christie Hageman, soprano, age 22, from San José, won the Ellie Silver second place award.
• Brett Ruona, soprano, age 25, from Burlingame, won the Ralph and Betty Apperson third place award.
•  Joanne Young Um, soprano, age 23, from Daly City, won the Young Artist Incentive Award for fourth place. 

Judges for this audition were: James Schwabacher Jr., founder and chairman of the San Francisco Opera Merola program; Wendy Hillhouse, mezzo-soprano and member of the voice faculty of the SF Conservatory; José Luis Moscovich, conductor of West Bay Opera’s Die Zauberflöte;  and Wendy Hartman-Carr, soprano and frequent performer with West Bay Opera and other companies.

During the past 36 years, annual Holt Scholarship Auditions have auditioned over 1,000 young singers and awarded 100 scholarships. We are supported exclusively by donations, with virtually every penny received used for awards.

~ Ben DeBolt, President, Holt Scholarship

On March 17, a group of volunteers from Castilleja School visited West Bay Opera’s office for their annual Community Service Day. The volunteers came ready to lend a hand with repairs and organizing of our costume and prop stock, and were eager to get an inside look at the running of an opera company. The students were given an introduction to the role that West Bay Opera plays in their community, as well as information on how to participate more in our productions. They asked thoughtful questions and were very motivated to assist in various ways. The students helped tremendously and we are very grateful to have such a wonderful group of volunteers.

Castilleja Students at WBO Rehearsal Hall
during their Community Service Day

~ Heather Patterson, Costume Shop Supervisor

Our Guild’s mission is to support West Bay Opera. We are a group that passionately loves opera. The Guild manages the front-of-house tasks—taking tickets, selling refreshments, and putting on an enormous party for the cast and orchestra on opening nights—and hosting the opera previews. We also roll up our sleeves and work with fundraising projects that benefit West Bay Opera. Our membership administers and supports West Bay Opera’s fantastic Opera in the Schools program that reaches about 20,000 children yearly.

We celebrate with three annual events for ourselves and our guests, including performances by West Bay Opera singers, so we can get to know them “up close and personal.” The perks of Opera Guild membership include free dress rehearsals, meeting with dynamic guest speakers or entertainers, the Opening Night Cast Party, and Holiday, Year-End, and Overture parties.

Annual dues are: Active Members $25, Sustaining Members $50, Patrons of the Guild $75.

For more information, please contact one of the Guild Officers listed below or print and mail our application.

Download the Spring 2006 Newsletter in PDF format (requires Adobe Reader software)

Newsletter Editors: Lucinda Surber, Stan Ulrich, Michele Sullivan