Recently, I sat down with Katherine Benfer and Beth Pensiero, two of City Opera's chorus members.  It was incredibly fun chatting with these two longtime choristers who love their job and had some great things to say.  And they were very gracious with a novice interviewer!  Afterwards, they gave me a backstage tour and took me around the State Theater.  I snapped a few shots (below) as we ran around before they got ready for Tosca.

 

 

Beth Pensiero:  There's a range of reactions.  Some people are impressed... and some people are just bewildered, they're not sure what it means.  They don't understand what the job entails, what the schedule's like.  Some people will be impressed, some people will be like, "...oh...you sing, that's nice"

 

Katherine Benfer:  A lot of times they ask you if you get paid for that!  Oh yes you do, as a matter of fact! [laughs]

 

 

Beth Pensiero:  Depends on the complexity of the show.  If it's a big show and there's a lot of chorus in it, they might take a few weeks to work us into a show little by little till production week, which is intense.  If we're singing offstage most of the time and maybe sing onstage for ten minutes, they won't spend much time with us.

 

Katherine Benfer:  We have to learn the music cold, first.  So you have a musical rehearsal, then you have a staging alone, then you stage one opera and perform another.  That's the hardest and it's what we're doing right now.  We had a stage rehearsal of Candide this afternoon from 11:30-5:00pm, and then we have a show tonight, which can go to 11:00pm.  So this is the 12-hour day with a break in between.  At the end of the season, there's a week or two when we're free during the day and just do shows at night.  That's what helps us survive!

 

 

Katherine Benfer:  I think the difference with this career is that you perform.  There's a huge level of intensity and fitness.  Performing is like sports; you work and work and work and work and two minutes later it's over.  There's a huge intensity, and you're acutely aware of everything.  I could compare it to being a surgeon.  They have to study and study and study and they have one shot to get it right.

 

Beth Pensiero:  Performing is a high energy thing.  You can do your paperwork and sit at your computer and not be at your best, physically.  But when you're performing, you must be energized.  But you have to be relaxed as well so your body and your voice will respond.  It can be very demanding.

 

 

Katherine Benfer:  Well, the chorus -- and the orchestra, too -- our job is to help the soloists out, we give them space or guide them.  We know what's going on -- sometimes better than the soloists!  They might know their arias better but we know the show as a whole.  We energize the production, too.  Sometimes, when the chorus comes on, it's like..."let's bring the circus in here and liven things up!"

 

 

Beth Pensiero:  Well, as an example, we've been working very intensely on Candide lately.  It's kind of like an opera in a way but it really is an American musical, too.  This version was written years ago for New York City Opera.  It's a play within a play.  We, the chorus, are an invited audience to watch the story of Candide.  And we sit on the sidelines and watch the action.  But there are these big chorus numbers where we're asked to participate and comment.  We're onstage from the top of the show to the end of the show.  We get to be soloists in a way.  We are on our best behavior -- in character all the time.  It can be very tiring but it's a lot of fun, too.  Alternately, there's the King Arthur chorus, which just comments on the action from the pit.  That's totally different.  Then there are the Puccini operas.  Like in Tosca, we're part of the story.  We're part of the crowd, we're the churchgoers, and we're in the background.

 

Katherine Benfer:  And our purpose there is to reflect the spirit of the time.  In Tosca, we express the agony of the fascist state.

 

 

Katherine Benfer:  And sometimes, the audience can identify with us, too.  We're onstage there and they identify with us as we comment on a situation.

 

 

Katherine Benfer:  I came here from a church-singer background.  I wanted to try this art form and explore it.  What better way to understand it than right from the middle.

 

Beth Pensiero:  I worked with the Opera [Company] of Philadelphia for a few years.  Then I ended up moving to the New York area and I decided to audition here.  The timing was right; they needed someone for a soprano spot and it ended up being me!  And that was 24 years ago and I'm still here!  It's been a way to make a living and have a lot of experience singing with different types of opera.  And we get to go on tour every once in a while, which has been fun.

 

 

Katherine Benfer:  This job has broken me out of who I thought I was.  Imagine you have to look in the mirror every day to put on makeup and see all those wrinkles.  But you put on a different wig and a different outfit -- and you don't get a choice as to what you wear or what wig they hand you -- and this image of yourself gets shaken up a little.  And that can be a very good thing.  You do have to leave your ego at the door, though.  "I'm sorry, I always part my hair on the side!" -- Well, that's not going to work here.  They're going to give you a fright wig or they'll want you to be a madam [of a brothel].  What do you say to that? "I'm sorry, I can't, I'm Episcopalian?" [laughs]  No, you do what they tell you!  And it's good to be flexible, to look at yourself in the mirror and get over yourself.

 

Beth Pensiero:  One of my favorite things about the job is when we participate in an extraordinary production.  We get to do a lot of good stuff with conductors and directors but every once in a while there's an extraordinary experience.  It's wonderful; you get to experience these people and their music in a very special way.  There are good singers and there are great singers.  Renée Fleming was in our Marriage of Figaro production!  And my ears pricked up and I went, "Oh wow, who is she?" and ten years later she's a big star at the Met!

 

 

Beth Pensiero:  Yeah.  So, that's fun.

 

Katherine Benfer:  And I love when you finish a production and you hear the applause and you know you've done really good work. You can't buy that. That's the priceless part of the MasterCard.  [laughs]

 

 

Beth Pensiero:  There's a lot of controversy about the direction of opera today.  And we wonder about the next generation; whether it will end up being the next opera audience.  We want to see this art form continue to flourish, yet we want to keep our standards high.  I really hope that it's true that we are attracting the next generation.  There's so much culture and beauty in opera.  I would hate to see it become a dying art form.  I really want to see it flourish.  That's my hope for the future.

 

Katherine Benfer:  We do care about it, beyond a paycheck.  We just had the television special of Butterfly and I know a lot of people who watched it and were impressed.  They bought tickets to the opera.  It was a wonderful thing.

 

Beth Pensiero:  Yes, there was a lot of positive feedback.

 

Katherine Benfer:  And the houses were packed out there.  This is important to us.  We believe in it.

A typical opera-going evening for me begins on the train.  I commute down to the city from New Haven, where I go to medical school.  It's typically a bum-numbing experience on the Metro-North, where I try to do some reading or catch up on work.  It's also a great opportunity to review the score of the opera I'm planning to see.  Madama Butterfly has never been one of my favorite Puccini operas so on this particular train ride, I wasn't eager to crack open the score.  Luckily, there was a crowd of at least ten middle-aged women in my compartment upon whom it was my pleasure to eavesdrop instead.

 

They were all middle-school teachers from Westport heading down to the city to watch their students compete in some sort of speech team contest.  The most vociferous among them was complaining about her husband, who apparently used to drive three hours up to Boston (where she went to college) every weekend to see her while they were courting.

 

But after 20 years of marriage, he was now posted in Boston for two months on some sort of assignment for his work, while she held down the fort in Westport.  And he refused to drive down to visit her or the kids on the weekends.

 

"Doesn't he love me anymore?" she moaned.  "He used to drive to see me all the time."

 

One of her fellow teachers remarked, "Life's not like Enchanted."

 

I'm pretty sure she was talking about the recent Disney movie, Enchanted.  It occurred to me that this film is an excellent reduction of the themes in Butterfly.

I'm not sure if any of you have seen it, but in Enchanted, there is a wonderful scene where Amy Adams (playing the lost princess, Giselle) is at a salon with Morgan, Patrick Dempsey's young daughter.  Morgan is advising the princess that she shouldn't wear too much make-up on her first date with the prince.

 

"But why?" asks the princess.

 

"Because boys will get ideas in their head -- and you know they're only after one thing," replies Morgan, wisely.

 

"Oh, what's that?" wonders the princess.

 

"I don't know, no one will tell me," shrugs Morgan.

 

Well, it's pretty clear what that "one thing" is, wouldn't you say?  It's certainly the "one thing" on Pinkerton's mind during the first act of Butterfly.  He's a hapless American navy lieutenant in Nagasaki who has decided to purchase a house and wife to satisfy his worldly sailor appetites.  The only problem is that Cio-Cio San, the geisha who comes with the house he's purchased, believes he is marrying her for true love.  Her level of devotion and faith in sailor-boy is nothing short of breathtaking, and is parodied aptly in movies like Enchanted, where Princess Giselle and her prince decide to marry after meeting each other only once!  In Butterfly, Pinkerton and Cio-Cio San share one ostensibly crazy night of passion, but then he disappears for 3 years, only to come back with an American wife.

 

I think the reason I've always been reticent about Butterfly is that it makes such a fool out of the tenor role, Pinkerton.  It is also a huge misrepresentation of men, portraying them as mindless sacks of seed with the motto "fertilize and forget."  Butterfly seems to happily corroborate what Robin Williams has uncharitably said about men: "God gave them a brain and a penis and not enough blood to run both at the same time."  What was Puccini thinking?  (Plus, the tenor is made to sing lines like, "Lo Yan-kee va-ga bon-do.")

Oh yes. The buffoonishness is utterly complete.

 

And yet it also has some of the most beautiful music Puccini ever wrote.  The love duet at the end of Act I --"bimba dagli occhi pieni di malia" will hopefully be the theme music of my honeymoon.  It has swells and swings that seem to be in sync with the pituitary gland.  The only problem is that my wife will have to be kept in the dark about what happens in Act II or else she'll get nervous about why I'm playing music from Butterfly.

 

Thankfully, New York City Opera's production on Wednesday proved to me that you have to keep going to live performances despite old prejudices.  Every once in a great while, you'll see something on stage that is simply electrifying and makes you fall in love with the theater all over again.  I imagine it's a lot like being a physician -- one takes care of a lot of mundane disorders and ailments, but every so often, something truly life-threatening comes in and you discover once again what a privilege it is to take care of patients and their families in such times.

 

This was the second to last performance of Butterfly this season and it featured a soprano playing Cio-Cio San (Yunah Lee) who had us nibbling at her feet from the word go.

 

She not only stole the show, she hijacked it.  At the first intermission, an elderly Italian couple seated next to me rushed outside to call their friends about the "next big thing." Numerous other fans I spoke to mentioned that she reminded them of a young Renata Scotto.  I would have to agree, except that I think she's more of a mix between a young Katia Ricciarelli and a mature Renata Scotto.  (Please click on the above youtube links to appreciate what I mean.)  Scotto was one of the greatest actresses of the opera stage and Ricciarelli had one of the most delicious and creamy soprano voices of the last 25 years.  It's incredibly rare to see a young singer so vocally endowed -- with a voice that carries over the orchestra effortlessly, yet retains focus and the floating quality necessary to portray a character who's supposed to be 15 years old!  Oh, and by the way, she can act too.  And how!

 

The production was fairly traditional compared to what I've seen in the past, but that was a welcome respite.  All the Butterfly productions I've seen in the past have been uber-modern dalliances and for some reason, they all omitted the part of the young Butterfly-Pinkerton love-child, relying on symbolism instead.  Is it really that hard to cast an adorable little boy wearing a kimono?  Once, when I saw the production in Baltimore, they used a potted plant to represent the little boy.  The only way you knew the plant was the boy was that Cio-Cio San was watering it while she sang about her son.  It's definitely more poignant when you have an actual child on the stage!

 

Something funny: during the second intermission, there were numerous couples on the mezzanine bemoaning the Spitzer-Patterson affairs, inspired by the "typically male behavior" of Pinkerton.  Poor New Yorkers have been through a lot in March.  At least there's no love-child that we know about from these extracurricular activities... yet.  (This may be where potted plants actually come in handy.)

 

After Cio-Cio San committed suicide in the final act and the curtain came down, there was a split-second of silence before the audience rose out of its reverie and started clapping violently.  When Yunah Lee took her bows, everyone was instantly on their feet.  I haven't seen that kind of excitement in an opera house in a long time.  This production featured a different cast than the version that was broadcast live on PBS last week, but I can't imagine how any evening could have been more thrilling.  It's proof that New York City Opera is continuing its tradition of being the launch pad for the next generation of opera stars.  This must have been what it was like when Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Beverly Sills, and Renee Fleming were at New York City Opera... you just knew you were witnessing history.

 

Wednesday night helped me get over my beef with Butterfly.  I've always been slightly peeved about the way it portrays men.  But with Yunah Lee singing Cio-Cio San in a production that was pitch-perfect, I was forced into being ashamed instead of angry.  That's what powerful theater can do.  I think it made all the guys in the audience feel sorry on behalf of their entire gender that they have been "fertilizing and forgetting" since the time of Abraham.  That's how touching and affecting Yunah Lee was on Wednesday.  I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her at the New York City Opera, and it will be a huge loss for us if she moves next door to the Met.  I hope she'd come back to visit.

I will preface this entry by saying that I have an unwarranted but fairly strong aversion to Puccini's music.  I went to New York City Opera's production of Madama Butterfly feeling apprehensive about the experience.  I wondered how I would be able to sit through three hours of Puccini when I could hardly listen to three arias in a row at home.  I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying almost every minute of Madama Butterfly.  I will not chalk this up to the music -- my Puccini aversion is still alive and well -- but the incredible singing and the striking lighting and sets made it all seem worthwhile.

 

I was not particularly blown away by the first scene.  I think this is because, having never seen this opera live before, I found the affectation of Japanese mannerisms and customs to be slightly awkward and very strange.  I found myself wondering if the opera would make any sense at all if it was set in another time period, or a different country.  I later decided that no, it absolutely would not, but it was an interesting thought all the same.  The love scene at the end of the first act captivated me; the floating orchestral and vocal music with the white costumes against the indigo sets were so incredibly striking, both aurally and visually.

 

Madama Butterfly is one of New York City Opera's most popular and most praised productions; this could explain why I noticed so many tourists in the lobby at intermission.  It was fairly exciting to see people from so many different countries at one performance in New York.

 

The second act began as enticingly as the first act ended.  Madama Butterfly's big aria, "Un Bel Di" was sung superbly and acted so delicately that it really blew the audience away.  The applause lasted a good while longer than any other ovations I can remember at New York City Opera.

 

The visuals in the second act were what really made this show special for me.  I was shocked by how effectively they used lighting, props and the set to convey the different emotions that Butterfly was feeling.  From the shower of rose petals on the ivory sheet during the excitement of the flower duet, to the red sun that lit up the stage when Butterfly stood waiting in vain for Pinkerton; and finally, the simplicity and slight disarray of the set when Madama Butterfly finally decides to take her own life.

I brought my friend, Michael, a film student, to Madama Butterfly this Sunday.  His only previous opera experience was seeing John Adams' Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera when it was first commissioned: he didn't like the music of Doctor Atomic.  I wondered how Butterfly, a staple of opera repertoire everywhere, would fare with him.

 

Butterfly's first moment relaxed me into the production with its sheer appropriateness.  At lights up, we see Pinkerton approaching the house he has just leased from Goro, the marriage broker, who is with him -- in silhouette!  The effect is reminiscent of Byobu, the Japanese art of screen painting.  Once the screen doors separating the audience from the action are opened, though, we realize that the set for the jagged incline to the house is, incongruously, a set of neat steps painted sky blue.  Once screen doors appear on the upstage side of the house, however, the space seems comfortably transformed into an effectively intimate playing space.

 

As Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, James Valenti sang with a clear, ringing top; his youthful energy translated well for Pinkerton's childishness.  Shu-Ying Li displayed a great handle on the role of Cio-Cio-San (her bio says that since 2002, she has sung in over twenty productions of the opera), singing with intensity and a beautiful pianissimo that only got better into as the performance went on.  Standout moments for me included the juvenile way Pinkerton rolled on the floor out of excitement at the prospect of meeting his bride, and Cio-Cio San's hilarious description of American divorce court.

After the opera, Michael and I had a conversation about what he had just seen:

 

Me: What would you say was your favorite element of the performance today?

 

Michael:  I really liked how they did the lighting of the sun and the color changing.

 

Me:  What would you say was the element that you most had trouble connecting to?

 

Michael:  I don't really listen to classical music.  I get interested when I hear about a Philip Glass opera or a Steve Reich opera, but that's the extent of my classical music taste -- very modern, very specific.  As for this, I feel like I am seeing it but not fully appreciating it because it is such an acquired taste.

 

Me:  What about this new exposure to opera intrigued you?

 

Michael:  What really appealed to me was that it reminded me of film.  There was something that felt kind of cinematic about watching that opera, because there's music all the way through.  And like a movie, there's music all the way through to carry your emotions, even when they're just walking around and not singing.  That was interesting.

 

Me:  What, to you, is the biggest difference (aside from obvious differences) between taking in an opera versus taking in a movie?

 

Michael:  In film, you're sitting up close and it's easier to get immersed into that other world.  With opera, there's a lot of exposition to build to the last act when you are really into the character and their struggle.  People are impatient; that's probably why less young people are seeing plays and operas.  We are the generation of the moving image; for instance, I just mentioned the sun.  I just mentioned how I liked the sun and how the color of the lighting changed; that's the result of putting the audience into this world of the character.  She was at that sunrise and the music was playing and the sun slowly changed color.  That was like her waiting and going through all of those emotions.  You could feel it and see it without her singing it and saying it.  That's what I like about film; there's less focus on talking, on saying what it is.  It's more about showing the audience what it is.

 

Me:  What about opera could you see yourself growing more loyal to with time and more exposure?

 

Michael:  The music.  My music taste is always changing, shaping, evolving.  When there's music playing throughout and there's someone singing their emotions, I like that.  I love music; it's such a big influence on me.  Music plays to your emotions, and so do non-musical plays.  

 

I agree that opera is a very different experience than any other performance event.  When I saw my first opera, Puccini's La Bohème, I was -- more than anything -- intrigued; it was not an obsession at first glance.  After exploring it further, my mere curiosity grew to devotion.  When I went to see Bohème, I had already acquainted myself with the music; it was the experience of live opera in front of me that was unfamiliar.  My biggest advice to Michael and anyone else who might be exploring opera for the first time is simply this: listen to the music before you go.  If you are planning on going to a concert, it usually helps if you know what kind of band is playing.

 

Also, for any opera beginners (and/or devotees), see Candide!  It's ridiculously funny and Bernstein's score is simply to die for.  If any of you do go out and buy the CD or borrow it from the library, some standout songs are "The Best of All Possible Worlds," "Glitter and Be Gay," and "Make our Garden Grow."  I am going to observe my first rehearsal of Candide soon; I'll let you all know the scoop!