Uptown Celebrates 10 Years With ‘La Boheme’
The story of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” with its quartet of rowdy bachelors and two of their wayward women, could happen any place any time. Uptown Opera’s production of it, which opens Friday, is unique to Spokane.
“La Boheme” rivals Verdi’s “Aida” and “La Traviata” and Bizet’s “Carmen” as the most frequently performed operas in the world. “La Boheme,” which celebrated its 100th anniversary earlier this year, has been performed more than 500 times at the Metropolitan Opera alone. It even reached Spokane early in this century with a traveling company performing it in English, just as Uptown Opera will do in its seven performances this week and next.
The story was originally serialized in a Parisian magazine in the 1840s, was later published as a novel and still later turned into a play that made its author, Henri Murger, a rich man (but in keeping with romantic tradition, Murger died young, at 39). There have been several “La Bohemes” on film and musical treatments by Henri Hirschmann and Ruggiero Leoncavallo. But none has even touched the great popularity of Puccini’s version.
The Uptown company, now in its 10th season, is the brainchild of two local opera fanatics, voice teacher Marjory Halvorson and electronics firm employee Bill Graham. Halvorson is the producer for the company’s productions, and Graham serves as its stage and musical director. The pair began by producing one-act operas in a South Hill restaurant, and when The Met opened, Uptown moved downtown and graduated from one-acters to full-scale operas such as “The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Magic Flute” along with musicals like “Sweeney Todd.”
In its 10 years, Uptown Opera has given local talent such as baritone Frank Hernandez and soprano Cynthia Kirkman their first opportunities to sing in fully staged opera productions. Kirkman, born in Eastern Washington and now a resident of New York City, will sing the role of Mimi in “La Boheme.” Partnering her as Rudolfo is Paul Mueller, a regular in Seattle opera with roles in “Norma,” “Don Carlo” and “The Merry Widow.”
Other principals in Uptown’s “La Boheme” include soprano Julie Mark, a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, as Musetta, and baritone John Cooper, who has appeared in other Uptown productions, as Marcello. Baritone Reginald Unterseher, as Schunard, and bass Paul Linnes, as Colline, round out Rudolfo and Marcello’s quartet of bohemian roomates.
One of the unusual features of Uptown Opera productions is the company’s solution to the “orchestra problem.” Small companies producing large operas face having to hire a large orchestra and send costs soaring, or resort to two-piano (or even one piano) accompaniment, losing the instrumental coloring of the great opera composer. “La Boheme,” for example, calls for a symphonic-size orchestra and a 16-piece on-stage band.
The Uptown solution has been to hire a 12-piece instrumental group made up of strings, winds, percussion and keyboard and to commission a special arrangement of the orchestration. Like many Uptown productions, the orchestration of “La Boheme” has been arranged especially for the group by Stefan Kozinski, a New York-based composer and arranger who was formerly associate conductor of the Spokane Symphony. Washington State University music professor James Schoepflin will conduct.
Scene designer is George Caldwell, and Sherry Schmidt designed the costumes.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: OPERA “La Boheme” will be presented at The Met at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Sept. 12, and 8 p.m. Sept. 13-14. Tickets are $14 to $26, available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.