Downtown Opera 2001 - Press
"Up-to-date as Long Beach Opera is in its attitude, it doesn't actually produce new work very often. But it has now decided to at least give aid and comfort to the struggling composers and librettists who do. As a first effort, the company is including the premieres of two operas by local composers as part of what it calls 'Coincidences,' events ... surrounding its new production of Strauss' 'Elektra.' The operas, given their first performances Friday night at the Edison Theater in downtown Long Beach and presented by Downtown Opera, were William Houston's 'Consumers' Paradise' and Martin Herman's 'Orlando.' Houston wrote the librettos for both; Herman was the conductor of a seven-member pit band hidden under the stage. Byungkoo Ahn was the young director for the two operas. Accomplished singers participated.
'Consumers' Paradise' mocks our commercial world, as an irrepressible ad agency executive (Paul Berkolds) force-feeds to death a thoroughly humiliated test consumer (Jonathan Mack). The musical style is declamatory but still operatic ...
Houston's Gertrude Stein-ish wordplay worked ...for Herman's opera ... "Orlando" [which] employs snappy, Minimalist music. A Postmodern take on Virginia Woolf's novel, it makes room for Orlando as both a woman (Jacqueline Bobak) and cross-dressing male (Berkolds). Mack, a tenor, dressed in a kitschy sailor suit and suspended from a puffy cloud, masqueraded as a castrato. Casanova (Marc Lowestein) had a walk-on role; Chopin (Russell Smith) was glimpsed from behind; and George Sand (a spoken role performed by pianist Vicki Ray) wound up marrying the female Orlando. Society, Certainty and Ambiguity, her companions, commented on the action.
In the end, 'Consumers' Paradise' and 'Orlando' proved small operas wanting to be something grander, Postmodern opera ... is such an extravagant enterprise, it requires substantial experimentation; and there is pleasure to be had in a visit to the laboratory."
- Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times
"Folks cruising for parking on East Broadway in downtown Long Beach last Friday night probably didn't make much of the crowd under the small marquee of the Edison Theatre. But there is the chance that they were watching an important piece of musical history happen.
That will be for the future to decide...The event in question Friday was the opening of Downtown Opera and the premiere of two one-act chamber operas, 'Orlando' with music by Martin Herman and 'Consumer's Paradise' by William Houston. Houston wrote both librettos.
'Consumer's Paradise' opened the evening with...plenty of attractive music. Houston's libretto takes aim at our shopping-mad culture in this self proclaimed 'comic book' opera. Santa Claus is played as a deadpan business-suited CEO by Paul Berkholds, and Santa's elves are the chorus, donning test-jumpers to run his laboratory, where new products are smeared on the Test Consumer, sung by Jonathan Mack.
Kati Prescott-Terray is the happy, simple-minded Looky Loo, who only wants to consume, and Marc Lowenstein is Jingle Jim who sings only in advertising jingles. There is a brief comic appearence by Scott Graff's Halitosis, but he is driven away by Freshness, delightfully sung in bath towel and flowers by Zanaida Stewart.
Houston's music is effective, charming, even tuneful, mixing marimba and accordion with keyboard and woodwinds in pleasant and attractive tunefulness...In Byungkoo's staging it moves along energetically, and could be the kind of work that finds a place as an annual antidote to the force-feeding of 'Nutcrackers' music-lovers face every December.
'Orlando', the evenings second work, is a more serious matter. Houston's libretto is taken from Virginia Woolf's novel, and Herman's music treats the subject, the character's search for sexual and personal identity, with both seriousness and humor.
Jacqueline Bobak's Orlando is sung with sheer liquid gold, and her plaintive searching, through time and hitory, to find out who she is, is supported by a cast of unlikely characters including Lowenstein's Casanova, Vicki Ray's George Sand and Berkolds' cross-dressing Male Orlando, looking for sexual identity in another direction.
The story plays out in lilting musicality, full of rich vocal moments and a little disco-style comedy (for Male Orlando). The finale, where the two Orlandos sing to each other across a dressing table and through an imaginary mirror, realizing that everyone is all things, was an effective apotheosis.
Both operas featured simple productions based on the size of the Edison Theater. The seven-piece orchestra actually was under the floor of the stage, with conductor Herman standing in a hole at the front of the stage, his directions transmitted below by live television. The music came through grates set in the floor. A nine panel back projection screen and minimal furniture, plus costumes, provided enough detail for the eye.
History will tell whether Downtown Opera takes off or crashes. But these two works, brief, effective, and entertaining, suggest there is plenty to look forward to."
- John Farrell, Long Beach Press Telegram
"We saw the different faces of opera recently, when we went to the Long Beach and Los Angeles Operas. In Long Beach, on June 9th, we rediscovered intimate opera at the Edison Theater, when we saw William Houston's 'Consumer's Paradise', whose music had a faint touch of the tango and a curious lilt, cutely contrapuntal and faintly Balinese in influence. It...featured an outstanding use of the chorus as commentary in vocalizing its opposition to consumerism. Vocally, Test Consumer Jonathan Mack displayed great enunciation and authority in being given too much of a good thing...
Continuing to conduct by camera, Herman next led us to a staging of his own composition, 'Orlando', which presented the art as schadeuwspiel, staged with real psychological insight. There was anticipation to be heard in its opening bars, the score being in turn driving and idyllic, with fascinating stutters. Like 'Consumer's Paradise', it was horizontal in construction. In the title role of Orlando, Jacqueline Bobak was nicely and prettily voiced, while Paul Berkold's Male Orlando was great...engaging in an interesting chase your own tail duet with his female counterpart. Between the 'penetration and the capitulation, and the shifting seas of yang and yin', [was the] striking presence...of Laura Bohn. Her Ambiguity had a big voice, and a dominating presence that was physically imposing, with a beautiful mezzo range and an expressive use of her hands. In short it was Long Beach Opera as we have come to know and love it, offering us what no other operatic company can or will."
- Charles Lonberger, Beverly Hills Outlook
Back to Downtown Opera