OPERA
LINGO Increase your enjoyment of opera by learning its unique language!
BANDA
You may notice from time to time in the HGO Orchestra listing that there is a “banda”—musicians who play from a location other than the pit. A banda plays twice in The Pearl Fishers, and they will be especially easy to pick out in this particular opera, because the pit orchestra does not play at all while the banda is playing. Sometimes a banda actually plays onstage, like the trumpeters in Aida, but most of the time they are backstage, as they are in The Pearl Fishers. Here’s what to listen for: At the beginning of Act II, a tambourine and two piccolos accompany the HGO Chorus. In this instance, the basses in the chorus and the tambourine provide a rhythmic accompaniment while the women and tenors sing the melody. The piccolos are intended to provide Eastern flavor. The second instance comes in the scene following: Leïla has been left alone to pray for the fishermen, and in her aria “Me voila seule dans la nuit...comme autrefois” (Here I am alone in the night…as before), she wonders whether Nadir is nearby. Sure enough, he has come looking for her: when he begins singing offstage, he is accompanied only by a harp backstage. CHORUS MASTER AND CONCERTMASTER
The chorus master auditions and selects chorus members and rehearses them for performance. HGO’s longtime chorus master is Richard Bado.
The concertmaster—HGO’s is Denise Tarrant—leads the first violin section. Concertmasters also make technical musical decisions for the violins, lead the orchestra in tuning, play any solo violin parts, and serve as the liaison between the players and the conductor. This is particularly important since an orchestra typically plays under several different conductors in a season. It’s easy to see that the conductor is leading the orchestra, but audiences may not realize that he/she is also leading the singers. And conductors do far more than just keep everyone together! Read our interview with The Pearl Fishers conductor Roderick Cox on p. 96, in which he describes what conductors do before they even come to the first rehearsal.
That’s why, in opera, the director is the one who is credited with creating the production, which refers not only to the physical production, i.e., the sets and costumes, but also to the director’s staging. When you see someone credited with the production and another person credited as the revival director, the one credited with the production is the original director, and the revival director is someone who has worked closely with the director on the production and is restaging it the way the director would have. In Florencia en el Amazonas, Francesca Zambello was the original director. For The Pearl Fishers, E. Loren Meeker was not the original director, but she is using only the physical production, not the original director’s staging. She is creating her own staging, so she is credited as the director.
DIRECTOR
SUPERNUMERARY
CONDUCTOR
The role of the opera director has changed a great deal since the 1920s and ’30s, when many operas still performed today began to enter the public domain. Freed from copyright constraints, directors began reinterpreting operas, sometimes transporting them to other times and locales. Also, as the ideas of Sigmund Freud gained currency, directors increasingly began to favor abstract “mindscapes” instead of traditional settings with realistic-looking furniture. A director collaborates with the designers— set, costume, lighting, and sometimes video—but final choices are ultimately up to the director.
Supernumeraries neither speak nor sing onstage, but that doesn’t mean they are not important! They help make crowd scenes look impressive, and sometimes they have something even more special to do. Remember the waiter in La bohème who presents the check to Musetta’s elderly paramour? A super. The notary in The Barber of Seville who comes (as he thinks) to witness the marriage of Dr. Bartolo and Rosina? A super. In Florencia en el Amazonas, the Cabin Boy (Daniel Boyd) is a super role. He is seen most prominently in Act I, when he is helping serve dinner to Paula and Alvaro.
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