In the media. Articles highlighting alumni and the great work they are doing around the world.
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Special congrats to Antoni Mendezona, Ambur Braid & Michael Chioldi for their great news articles. (read below)
Zee Magazine :: June 2011
Z Profile
The Canadian Opera Company Blog :: March 17, 2011
Parlando
Operanation's Star, Ambur Braid, Talks Orfeo and Broken Social Scene
Soprano Ambur Braid was one of the stars of Operanation VII, singing the Queen of the Night's aria (or "Queen 2") from The Magic Flute with indie rockers Broken Social Scene. She also supplied the coloratura for the Ensemble Studio performance of The Magic Flute last month, singing the Queen of the Night. Now she's taking a major role in our upcoming production of Orfeo ed Euridice: she will play Amore, the god of love—best known by the Roman name Cupid—who gives the grieving Orfeo a chance to bring his wife Euridice back from the dead. Amore is one of only three solo roles in Orfeo. Ambur generously took some time out of her vacation this month to answer a few questions by email.
CC: Are there any moments from the night of Operanation that stand out in your memory?
AB: The performance itself was pretty fun and filled with surprises (especially when I knocked a huge diamond earring off of my ear and then caught it discreetly before it hit an audience member in the face) but it was the rehearsal process with Wallis Giunta and Broken Social Scene that was memorable. We met in a small studio the day before Operanation and arranged the Queen of the Night aria as a group. It started off sounding like a banjo jamboree but quickly took its form when I announced that it needed "dirty, grungy guitar action" (When do I ever get to say that in opera?) and proceeded to act that out in an awkward manner. Complete with flamboyant hand movements. Wallis aptly named this process the "Opera Singer Liberation Project." When we arranged the Flower Duet it was so beautiful at the climax of the piece, and the guys really nailed it. I have to admit, I had a tear in my eye.
CC: What was it like to sing the Queen of the Night on stage at the Four Seasons Centre for the first time?
AB: Nauseatingly nerve wracking, but thrilling. It is such an incredible experience to be able to sing in the Four Seasons Centre and with the Canadian Opera Company orchestra. We had one (ONE!) rehearsal with the set, costumes, chorus and orchestra prior to our ensemble performance of The Magic Flute and it was quite a scene, but everyone did such a great job! The whole cast was supportive and sweet, and what made it that much more comforting was having Maestro Debus in the pit, grinning. It was reassuring seeing that smile from the stage and knowing that he was right there breathing along with you. The Queen of Night is so much fun to sing and I enjoy the process from heart-wrenching manipulation to evil and finally to perverse obsession when she and the "baddies" (as our director Ashlie Corcoran aptly named them) snuck into Sarastro's domain. I call her the Drama Queen of the Night.
CC: What’s your process for learning a role? Do you listen to recordings or try to stay away from them?
AB: The very first thing is to translate the text, which I usually do while watching F1 races. The buzzing of the engines helps me focus for some reason. Then I listen to a few recordings to get the "whole" sound of the piece, but that's it for the listening portion. After that it's me and the piano, learning coloratura and running it hundreds of times. Recitative is easiest to memorize when speaking it as dialogue or monologue and then adding in the rhythm. I wish there was a quicker way, but my coach in San Francisco, Kathy Cathcart, gave me these rules to follow: memorize text, add rhythm, add music. After that, it's the fun stuff: drama!
CC: What’s your take on the character of Amore? I’m guessing it’s pretty far from the cherub with a bow and arrow that people usually see when they think of “Cupid.”
AB: Amore is a little matchmaker who tests the couples virtue and loyalty. Although it would be fun to carry around a bow and arrow, the idea that one is pierced by the arrow tip and instantly in love is more cartoon version than opera. Amore puts the lovers through rigorous challenges to test their love for one another, making it that much more sweet in the end. Isn't everything better when you have to fight for it? I know my husband agrees ;)
CC: Do you have a favourite aria in Orfeo ed Euridice?
AB: Gluck's music is just so romantic and impossibly gorgeous that I absolutely love it. All of Orfeo's music is stunning, which makes sense given his ability to charm all things with his musical prowess. I can barely stand "che puro ciel, che chiaro sol". It creates these breathtaking images in the instrumentation and yet maintains this clean, yet heart-wrenching vocal line.
CC: What’s your dream role?
AB: It used to be Salome and Elektra, but that will never happen. So let's say Lulu.
Source: Canadian Opera Company
Gay People's Chronicle :: November 5, 2010
Evenings Out
This Tonio is not clowning around
Baritone enjoys adding multiple levels and dimensions to an opera character
by Richard M. Berrong
After an hour speaking with Michael Chioldi, you feel as if you’ve reconnected to the wide world of opera even though you’re sitting in a Cleveland Starbucks. Intelligent, articulate, and funny, with an impressive range of professional experience, this out baritone from near Pittsburgh with a world-wide career provides fascinating insights into his own art and the current state of the opera scene.
Chioldi is back here for Opera Cleveland’s upcoming production of two of opera’s most theatrical short works. One, Poulenc’s forty-minute The Human Voice, is a musical setting of Jean Cocteau’s dramatization of the relationship-ending phone call he received from one of his male lovers. The other, I Pagliacci (The Clowns), is the story of a beautiful young woman, Nedda, who is trapped in an apparently endless relationship with an older and very jealous man whom she married out of gratitude, and from whom she wants to escape.
In the second work Chioldi takes the role of Tonio, one of the two other men who also desire Nedda. Usually his character is portrayed as a malevolent older hunchback, a Quasimodo gone bad, who tries to destroy Nedda because, unlike Esmeralda, she has no sympathy for him.
Working with director Bernard Uzan, who allows singers to contribute to the development of their roles, Chioldi has decided to present him in a different light. His Tonio will be far more sympathetic, a younger man who, though perhaps somewhat limited mentally, still believes that he, too, can aspire to happiness with another. A trusting if naïve individual whom Nedda has strung along for her own amusement, Chioldi’s Tonio will, unlike most, have the sympathy of the audience when the street-savvy and sadistic young woman finally turns on him with her whip. (Pagliacci is one of several turn-of-the-century operas that delve into the realm of S&M.) This Tonio will not be the opera’s villain.
Being able to give multiple levels and dimensions to a character appeals to Chioldi, who began in “straight” community theater and was subsequently drawn to opera by the stories as much as the music. This interest in acting explains, in part, Chioldi’s eagerness to be involved in some of the most important new operas produced over the last two decades.
In March, for example, he took the role of the former president in Long Beach Opera’s production of John Adams’ Nixon in China, for which he received literally glowing reviews. Chioldi spent months researching the character, wanting to find some elements in the man that would allow the audience to have at least a certain sympathy for him.
He also appeared in the San Francisco and Houston premières of Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk, an opera about the assassinated opera-loving San Francisco supervisor. Chioldi spoke at length about the difference in audience reaction to the Houston performances, which were well received, and those in San Francisco, where the heavily gay audience embraced the work as an expression of their own lives on stage.
Another modern work that very much interests Chioldi is John Corigliano’s melodic masterpiece, The Ghosts of Versailles, which ran to sold-out houses at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The work takes a large cast and elaborate sets, however, so the current recession has led to the cancellation of further performances.
Chioldi points out that he has to temper this desire to be involved in modern works. There is still the danger of being type-cast as a specialist in the modern, which still shuts doors and possibilities. Furthermore, many modern works, such as Nixon in China, push the voice to the very edge, so he needs to keep singing Mozart, Donizetti, and Verdi to keep his voice agile and fresh.
Chioldi also has his eyes on several roles in the repertory in between, among them Zurga in the homoerotically charged Pearl Fishers, which Opera Cleveland did in September, and Gérard in Andrea Chénier. Having had a success recently in Wagner’s Flying Dutchman in Germany, he now thinks about the possibility of Wotan and even Wozzeck in Berg’s opera about a tormented soldier, sometime in the still somewhat distant future as his voice continues to mature.
As I do with all interviewees, I asked Chioldi whether being gay has played any role in his career. His response was one that I hadn’t heard before. He pointed out that while some of the big female names in opera, such as Brigitte Fassbender and Patricia Racette, have come out as lesbian, none of the big names among the men has done so. That, he explained, was troubling to him seventeen years ago when he, already out even then, began his career. He wanted a gay role model in the profession, but they didn’t exist then and still don’t exist now.
Being identified as gay in high school also played a role in his subsequent career, he explained, in that the pain it caused gave him a depth of feeling on which he has been able to draw for some of the more tormented characters he has subsequently been called on to perform. Among them is Tonio, whom he plays as a victim of others’ cruelty for a difference that merits no such treatment.