This Sunday – Opera Tampa’s La Boheme on WEDU

Set your DVR or take advantage of another Tampa gem (not the Buccaneers) when WEDU airs La Boheme at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. This Curtain Call performance is from the 2007 production that performed in Carol Morsani Hall on Nov. 18th.

La Vie Boheme!

-Kari G.

A Star is Born

The understudy comes out from the wings to save the show and then is skyrocketed to stardom. It’s the stuff of dreams, of movies, of The Phantom of the Opera. As audience members we root for the underdog – and if you’ve never been an understudy – it is the ultimate underdog role.

So when the storied Lyric Theater in Chicago canned their Mimi last week for failing to attend rehearsals (just a minor thing – really), newcomer Elaine Alvarez was asked to step in and play the consumptive seamstress in La Boheme. Can you imagine making your very first debut with a major opera company at THE LYRIC???

Not an opera fan? Okay, let’s see if I can put it in broader terms: Imagine you’re a third string quarterback and suddenly you get to make your NFL debut at the Superbowl. You with me? It’s a lot like that.

So how did she do? Did she go 3 for 24 with 2 INT? According to Chicago Tribune critic John Von Rhein, “… even audience members who have seen hundreds of "Bohemes" got misty-eyed. Alvarez saved the day, and then some. After her smooth, confident Lyric debut, the opera world surely will be taking notice.”

I would call that a touchdown.

And by the way, Opera Tampa’s Mimi will be played by Darryn Zimmer. (I bet she’ll make some folks misty eyed, she certainly is easy on the eyes).

-Kari G.

Figar-d’oh!

In marketing there is a term, it’s used when a product you will be launching receives a great deal of press for something unrelated to your release date. It’s called “softening the market.” Thank you Simpsons for softening the Opera Tampa market in your season premiere!

If you missed it – the season premiere entitled “The Homer of Seville” featured special guest star Placido Domingo as himself. In the highly plausible plot, Homer found yet another of his hidden talents, this time as an opera singer. After giving Placido a few voice lessons, he asks the opera great for advice on the hordes of middle-aged female fans that follow him everywhere.

Oh, and Homer’s stage debut? La Boheme. Opera Tampa’s first show of the season? La Boheme. I’m telling you – we’re geniuses over here!

Actually, I had no idea Placido Domingo was guest starring. He is the first opera singer to guest star in the show’s 18 year history. Pretty cool. Here’s a short article from Playbill.

FREE RENT!

From Ashley the Intern:

In honor of the amazing original cast members, Adam Pascal (Roger Davis) and Anthony Rapp (Mark Cohen) reprising their roles in Broadway’s production of RENT through October, we are going to be hosting the film adaptation as our movie-on-the-lawn! The movie is FREE and you can bring your own blanket and chairs (no coolers though, sorry!) and enjoy the movie that starred these two prolific original stars!

Even better, we will be offering special ticket discounts to the Opera La Boheme which, by the way, is what RENT is based on. Since La Boheme is coming to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in November what better way to celebrate Adam and Anthony’s return than to see them in RENT the movie and then watch the award-winning musical’s inspiration on stage?

Anyway, here’s a character comparison between RENT and La Boheme so you can see the similarities in both productions!

See you at the movie!

Character in La Boheme	Character in RENT
Mimi, a seamstress with tuberculosis	Mimi Marquez, an exotic dancer with HIV
Rodolfo, a poet	Roger Davis, a musician with HIV
Marcello, a painter	Mark Cohen, a filmmaker
Musetta, a singer	Maureen Johnson, a bisexual performance artist
Schaunard, a musician	Angel Dumott Schunard, a gay cross-dressing drummer with AIDS
Colline, a philosopher	Tom Collins, a gay philosophy professor and Anarchist philosopher with AIDS
Alcindoro, a state councillor	Joanne Jefferson, a lesbian lawyer
Benoit, a landlord	Benjamin 'Benny' Coffin III, also a landlord

Boheme for Beginners

Here at Opera Tampa we’ve been pretty giddy lately. Not just because we have been having lots of successful pre-season events and welcoming V.O.I.C.Experience to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, but because we have a great season ahead of us. Celebrating 150 years since Puccini’s birth, we have the great honor to be producing two of the most beloved and famous operas of Puccini’s repertoire: La Boheme and Tosca.

Opera Tampa has been saying since the season was announced that La Boheme is a great experience for people who have never been to an opera before. Tim Page of the Washington Post agrees and put it so beautifully and succinctly in Sunday’s paper that I wanted to share a snippet and the entire article:

If you don't respond to the frat-boy high jinks and intimate love music in the first act, the second act presents a bright, tuneful, crowded panorama of the city of Paris on a long ago Christmas Eve. If that still doesn't do it for you, Act 3 is among the most perfectly knit 25 minutes of music and drama ever accomplished. (Stephen Sondheim has called it his favorite act in Italian opera -- and the final quartet, with its citric pairing of sweet and sour lovers, quarreling and reconciling, might have come from his pen.) And then there is Act 4, which has inspired gentle Niagaras of private tears since the opera's premiere in 1896.

Doesn’t that sound fabulous? Here’s a funny La Boheme story that he shares later in the article:

It was near the end of La Bohème that what must have been the most unintentionally funny moment in the history of opera in Washington took place. One night in 1996, the English surtitles misfired in the last few minutes of a Kennedy Center performance, and Rodolfo responded to poor, dying Mimi's entreaties never to leave her, with the computer-generated message: "Your batteries are running low and your light has been dimmed."

We’ll make sure the batteries are charged on the laptop for the supertitles in Carol Morsani Hall!

You can’t miss it! Come on, Give. Opera. A. Chance.

-Kari G

Opera Warm Fuzzy

I’ve been following this story for the last week and the results are in: Paul Potts, 36, a mobile phone salesman from Wales has won the new Simon Cowell vehicle, “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Special thanks to fellow co-worker Christen P., who alerted me to this “diamond in the rough” and sent me this clip. Singing Nessum Dorma from Puccini’s Turnadot, Potts demonstrates the passion and beauty of opera. Then there is the clip where he really gets to show off – and gets a rock star’s reception!

Enjoy the clips, enjoy watching someone being “discovered,” and if you need more – Opera Tampa will be performing two beloved Puccini opera’s in our 2007-2008 season; La Bohème and Tosca.

Congratulations Paul Potts – and watch out American Idol - opera singers rock!

-Kari G.