​Piedmont to host Artist Recital Series from Walnut Creek’s Festival Opera

By Lou Fancher

​One of the best things about regional opera companies such as Walnut-Creek-based Festival Opera is that they are nimble, versatile and courageous.

Adapting like quicksilver without sacrificing quality due to the Bay Area’s bountiful supply of talented vocalists and musicians, Festival Opera maintains a home season but also branches out to second homes, such as this fall’s Artist Recital Series at the Piedmont Center for the Arts.

This year’s Piedmont performances (piedmontcenterforthearts.org) will feature “knockout recital partners,” said Zachary Gordin, Festival Opera’s general and artistic director. In a recent interview, he said the repertoire is still being solidified as he works with each duo to select songs that tell meaningful stories based on each program’s special themes.

The series opens Sept. 22 with “Lucky in Love,” followed Oct. 27 by “Nothing to Fear” and “Muses and Musings of an Impresario” (featuring Gordin himself) on Nov. 17 (festivalopera.org/artist-recital-series).

“In each recital, the singer and pianist have developed what I call ‘musical telepathy,’ which means they have nuanced breathing, body language and a sympathetic understanding of each other,” Gordin said.

This is especially true in the first recital (Sept. 22’s “Lucky in Love”) of mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich and pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, whose past work together demonstrates keen alertness. Gordin said LaDeur is exquisitely aware of how Scharich might let a phrase decay and the organic variations in her breathing patterns. Scharich, Gordin suggested, is a sensitive vocalist who recognizes that her interplay with LaDeur depends on mutuality and leaves room for LaDeur to shine. The repertoire includes Fauré’s “La Bonne Chanson” song cycle; ballads by Loewe, Brahms and Schumann; and songs by Quinn Mason.

The October concert centers on what Gordin said was “my goofy idea about doing a Halloween theme that’s really about all the facets of fear.” He presented the idea to Sara Couden, a contralto with whom he’s had a long work association.

“She has a larger-than-life, hilarious personality,” Gordin said. “She came up with an exposition of all the things that involve fear — love, death, oneself — and dark repertoire. Through the dissection of fear, we realize there is ‘nothing to fear but fear itself,’ which is one section of the recital.”

Joining Couden is pianist Derek Tam. Together, they will tackle five fears experienced by most of humanity with an intriguing collection of music from Schubert, Ravel, Strayhorn, Ellington, Handel, Holmes, Strauss, Weill and others.

The third recital showcases Gordin appearing with pianist Daniel Lockert and “special surprise guests TBA” on a program with a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams and songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Jake Heggie, Gustav Mahler and others.

“Returning to the stage with Festival Opera forces me to chip the barnacles off my vocal chords,” he said. “It’s also a celebration of my 45th birthday and a fundraiser for us. I’m throwing a birthday bash like the ones I’ve had in my home. Musicians come, and we have an impromptu, bohemian bash, with everyone singing and playing music and dancing and in a celebratory mood.”

Plenty of space for dancing will also be available before the Piedmont recitals during the company’s popular Opera in the Park events (festivalopera.org/opera-in-the-park). A free Summer Solstice program June 20 at Orinda Community Park in Orinda will highlight opera and Broadway showstoppers. Food and wine trucks will provide dining options at the 6 p.m. show. At 4 p.m. June 23, Opera in the Park II will start in Walnut Creek’s Civic Park with operatic favorites and a sneak preview of the MainStage production that opens in July.

The mainstage performances July 12 and July 14 at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts present a double bill of short operas written 270 years apart (festivalopera.org/la-voix-dido). Francis Poulenc’s 1958 “La Voix Humaine” and Hery Purcell’s 1688 “Dido & Aeneas” share timeless themes of love, heartbreak and betrayal — and direction from Céline Ricci, the San Francisco-based Arts Minerva’s founder and executive artistic director. Ricci is widely credited with expanding the operatic audience with groundbreaking predictions of Baroque operas and the Baroque for Kids outreach program that folds high school students into classical music’s embrace.

“Céline has had a phenomenal career as a baroque opera star,” Gordon said, “She not only understands the rep from a singer’s perspective, but also brings expertise from running Arts Minerva. I was immediately struck by how insanely creative she is. She knows how to tell a story while working with a modest budget that’s fun and has high standards.

“She’s good at observing an artist and then working with them in rehearsal to bring out the best. It’s a dance that doesn’t say ‘go.’ It’s not directive, it’s more organic. The director has to bring their vision and the artist’s vision into the same place, or you won’t get a wholehearted performance.”

There’s no question soprano Carrie Hennessey’s portrayal of Elle in Poulenc’s setting of French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau’s resonant tale will be wholehearted. The one-woman opera presents only Elle’s voice in a last phone call with a longtime lover who has left her for another lover.

“Carrie is without filter,” Gordin said. “She brings vitality and rawness to this role. It will be beautiful and blatantly honest. Many operas tell stories of a woman’s experience filtered through what men can be comfortable seeing. But conveying the whole complement of energy that comes with the reality of heartbreak has to encompass how crazy love can make you when your heart is destroyed.”

Gordin said the voice of the aforementioned Scharich, which appears in “Dido & Aeneas” in Walnut Creek as well as “Lucky in Love” in Piedmont, has beautiful color and balance that comes with “no muddy diction” and expressivity.

“I can hear in her voice every emotion from the prospect of new love to the fatigue of a tired heart in the Queen (of Carthage) role (Dido) that has one of opera’s most remarkable laments.”

Gordin says for opera to survive, it “has to figure out again and again what it is going to be.”

If the intention is to show off or the subject is too distant from everyday experience, he says people tune out.
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“These operas are things people continue to go through: the promise of commitment, the prospect of ‘happily every after,’ the experience of that evaporating and not knowing why. Everyone can relate. Plus it’s beautiful music.”