Opera UCLA has no problems stepping outside the traditional view of how opera should be produced.
“(We do) not present opera in what I think is a very stereotypical, outdated view of what opera is,” said James Darrah, a graduate student of the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and assistant director of the upcoming production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff,” which runs at Schoenberg Hall from Friday through Feb. 17.
Written during Verdi’s later years, the composer’s final opera strays from the precedent set by his previous work. “Falstaff” marries music by Verdi to a libretto adapted by Arrigo Boito from William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and scenes from “Henry IV.” For the comic opera, which follows the romantic exploits of Sir John Falstaff, a lovable scoundrel determined to make a cuckold of rich men and reap the pecuniary benefits, Verdi ditched the accessible songs that his public had come to expect in favor of musical fragments that reference his entire career as a composer.
Peter Kazaras, director of this season’s “Falstaff” at UCLA, aims to do credit to this departure for Verdi by deconstructing preconceived notions regarding how “Falstaff” should be performed.
He takes his inspiration from the lines of the opera’s final piece: “All the world is a joke, man was born a clown, and everyone likes to make fun of everyone else. But he who laughs last, laughs best.”
“No matter who we are, we are still all people, whether we are kings or whether we are all beggars or whether we are presidents or popes or something else that begins with a “˜p.’ I don’t know, … playahs,” Kazaras said.
“And if you get a false sense of your importance, you’re basically doomed to disappointment. The idea is very much about remembering that we are all one; we’re all human.”
In keeping with this theme, “Falstaff” blurs the lines between audience member and actor as the performers dress, prepare and socialize on stage, in plain sight.
“Seeing people come on and put on their costumes ““ it really identifies with the equality of students here at UCLA and students who are performing the opera,” Darrah said.
“You go out at intermission and you see someone who reminds you of someone in the opera because you’re not drawing these very distinct barriers here.”
Kazaras hopes to further involve audience members in the production ““ and diverge from traditional presentations of opera ““ by keeping his sets to a minimum.
“There are several ways to go in theatre,” he said. “One is to sort of give (the audience) everything. Another is to make them work a little bit.”
Inspired by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, set designer Donald Eastman adorned the stage with a few pieces of minimalistic furniture. Above the stage, floating chairs tipped at every angle fragment the view of a blank canvas, sustaining a fresh slant on Shakespearean sets.
“Shakespeare was performed on an essentially bare stage, and he took people around the world and through time because they listened and made the leap into true imagination, as opposed to most opera production that spells everything out in the conventions of the 19th-century pictorial theater,” Eastman said.
Though Kazaras entrusts blank spaces on stage to the imagination of the audience and the significance of the floating chairs to their deduction, he insists his production of “Falstaff” is straightforward.
“The theatrical premise of this show is that we show you all the tricks, and then we still get you anyway. There are no surprises, but you’re still surprised,” he said.
Darrah’s presence in the opera production, an art form often left to the care of the department of music, is indication in itself of this production’s capabilities for pushing boundaries. Darrah’s participation marks the growing collaboration between UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music and School of Theater, Film and Television. The directing student believes the union between the two schools benefits students of both music and theater.
“There’s a lot to be learned through the study of music and how much music impacts things on stage,” Darrah said. Kazaras agreed, acknowledging the influence of music in the role of director.
“(The audience) can’t hear it, but he is directing to a score in his head. … The text becomes like music because it is such beautiful poetry,” he said.