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.

Number one most-performed opera in the US?  Madama Butterfly.  If this trend keeps up, and the folks at New York City Opera's current production are any indication, Madama Butterfly will continue to bring in new opera aficionados for years to come.

 

On the "New to Opera?" section of their website, City Opera recommends Madama Butterfly for first-timers at the opera house.  I decided to make finding opera newbies a goal that evening, to see how they reacted to Puccini's masterpiece, and to opera in general.

 

Madama Butterfly has a simple, tragic plot.  Butterfly is a geisha who falls in love with Lieutenant Pinkerton, an American sailor stationed in Japan.  He marries Butterfly, but then abandons her.  She waits for three years, only to find on Pinkerton's return that he has taken an American bride and forgotten about his faithful Butterfly.  When Butterfly hears about his second marriage, she is heartbroken and commits suicide moments before a remorse-stricken Pinkerton returns to see her.

 

New York City Opera's production was restrained in terms of sets and visuals.  Rather than detracting from the experience, I liked this minimization of distractions; I could just concentrate on the story and the music.  The simple blue-stage setting was the same for all three acts; they just pulled in some silk screens for the scenes that took place inside Butterfly's house.  Yet, while there was not a lot in the way of props and scenery, the costumes were sufficient to give the production a definite Japanese/period flavor. 

 

"Visually, it's beautiful," said Theo, a patron who was attending his first opera.  He had familiarized himself with the story before heading to the opera, and said that had enabled him to just concentrate on the stage (rather than having to look back and forth, watching the supertitles). 

 

Josh Thomas, a university student, was particularly struck by the breathtaking lighting effects.  "It's amazing how they change the lighting from night to day, and how they add the moon, or the red light [when Butterfly's threatening uncle appears]."

 

As I walked around during the two intermissions, I was struck by the variety of people attending the opera.  There were retirees, theater students, tourists, kids (even whole families!), or young professionals looking for something different to do on a Saturday night.

 

Martina, an au pair from Germany, was fascinated by her first experience at New York City Opera: "It is my first time at a big opera house and it is interesting."  She had decided to come see Madama Butterfly after noticing an ad for it on a college billboard. 

 

Shy, ten-year-old Dasha was enjoying herself and thought that "the music was pretty." 

 

A talkative, engaging young lady named Amy shared her thoughts while she browsed flyers for other operas.  "It's a sad story, but I really like it anyway.  I think it's going to become one of my favorite operas.  I definitely want to see more."

 

I happened to go to Madama Butterfly the same night the honors program from Ithaca College was visiting New York City Opera.  It was a school trip that included a visit to the Metropolitan Museum and sightseeing in New York, but the centerpiece of the outing was Madama Butterfly.  Most of the Ithaca students were completely new to opera and practically all were enthusiastic about the performance.  "I think it's great," said Matthew, one of the honors students, "and it's definitely fulfilling everything I've heard about [opera]."  His friend Julianne added that maybe "the vibrato took some getting used to, but the singers are really talented."

 

Garret, another Ithaca student, summed up the evening perfectly for me when he said, "It's beautiful.  I never really thought much about going to the opera but I'm really interested in it now.  I kind of want to see another one."

Sir John Falstaff is one of Shakespeare's most beloved and memorable characters.  You've got to wonder why; he's a monument to gluttony, has more than a slight penchant for the bottle, and is about as disreputable and dishonest as knights come.  But as the story goes, he was so popular with even Queen Elizabeth that after his appearance as a character in Henry IV, she requested a play starring Falstaff.  This became The Merry Wives of Windsor, a comedy set in Elizabethan England.

 

As in so many of Shakespeare's comedies, the plot is a little complex.  Sir John Falstaff, short on cash, decides to woo a couple of rich (and married!) women to pay for some wine and fine dinners.  He writes two identical letters to the ladies, who figure it out and decide to play a joke on Falstaff.  This leads to some confusion when one of the ladies' husbands believes he's being cheated on -- with Falstaff.  He schemes his own revenge on his wife, complicating her joke on Falstaff.  In the meantime, their daughter tries to escape an arranged marriage with a frighteningly old doctor.  Of course, the ladies get the last laugh of the play, with the daughter managing to pull off a marriage with her true love, and the other ladies teaching Falstaff and their husbands a lesson in female intelligence (assumedly a nod to Queen Elizabeth).

 

Giuseppe Verdi's operatic vision of the play retains all the wit and quickness of the original play.  Though he only wrote a couple of comedic operas, Verdi's Falstaff is a tight and well-managed piece.  Verdi recognized the importance of comedic timing and Falstaff lacks the drawn-out 'aria scenes' in most operas.  It's a high-action piece with quick dialogue.  New York City Opera's production is lively and entertaining without being over-the-top.  Some scenes are so laced with sprightly, musical conversation that watching the stage is a little like trying to take in two or three games of table-tennis at once.  But it never becomes overwhelming, and the actors toss the humor around without missing a beat.

 

As a comedy, Falstaff makes a great first opera, and I met several happy newcomers to opera throughout the evening.  Julia, a music theater student, was experiencing her first comedic opera.  "I really like modern things, but it's nice to see where everything came from," she told me.  "And it's nice to have a bit of everything."  Falstaff is a marvelous bit of comedy.  While it might lack memorable, hum-able melodies or a grand story, its witty charm and quick action makes it wonderful fun.  Go see it; you've only got two performances left!