If the cute girl standing next to you in line today in Northern
Lights refuses to speak to you, don’t take it personally.
There’s a good chance she’s just in an opera.
At the end of a week of nonstop rehearsals Wednesday, the cast
of Opera UCLA’s latest offerings were given this piece of
advice: save your voices. Stay off the telephone, and don’t
talk to anyone unless you absolutely must.
And you were worried it might have been your breath.
Rest assured that the sacrifice of a possible love connection
will only help to solidify what promises to be an unusual and
talent-packed evening of opera. The two one-acts to be performed
this weekend are Maurice Ravel’s “L’Heure
Espagnole” and “L’Enfant et les
Sortilèges.” The operas provide a terrific opportunity
for even the biggest of skeptics to discover that there is more to
opera than fat ladies hitting the high notes.
“Often people aren’t exposed to more than the
standard pieces,” said Kalil Wilson, a third-year
ethnomusicology student.
Wilson, who sings the part of Gonzalve in “L’Heure
Espagnole,” said that he blames the reliance on patronage in
opera funding for the prevalence of traditional tastes in many
performances.
But when the curtain goes up in Schoenberg Hall tonight, it
won’t be your grandmother’s opera.
The first piece, “L’Enfant et les
Sortilèges,” is a whimsical, though often dark tale of a
young French boy punished for his naughty behavior by a nightmare
in which his toys come to life to torment him. If the idea sounds
just a little bit trippy, it is. One sequence involving nine angry
human-sized numbers bears a striking resemblance to Sesame Street
on acid.
“L’Heure Espagnole,” the second half of the
production, might seem closer to garden-variety opera as it tells
the tale of a number of lovers. In this case, however, the lovers
all belong to one woman. What results is a comedy of errors just as
well-suited to a sitcom as it is to libretto.
Although these two operas were both composed in the early part
of the last century, their current productions here at UCLA have a
modern sensibility. According to the show’s director, many
opera houses nowadays are home to that same type of contemporary
culture.
“I think the opera world has changed a lot,” said
stage director Vera Calábria. “Younger singers like rock
music as much as opera. You wouldn’t have seen that 20 years
ago.”
After falling in love with opera at age 19, Calábria spent
10 years traveling with and learning from the late French opera
director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Her recent work includes productions
at the Los Angeles Opera and the Orange County High School of the
Arts.
Calábria said she thinks including the tastes of
today’s young people in opera is a good thing. She insisted
on using an all-student design team for this year’s opera, a
decision that may have cost her more time but no doubt infused her
opera with fresh ideas.
Having a talented group of students from which to cast an opera
is one of the most appealing aspects of working at UCLA for the
director ““ especially when compared with that other Los
Angeles university.
“The opera program (at UCLA) is very strong. At USC the
paying students have to be taken. Here, the selection is more
rigid,” Calábria said.
Two one-act operas by Ravel will be performed in Schoenberg Hall
on Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at
3 p.m. General admission is $20, student and senior tickets are
$10.