The Bear & Le pauvre matelot, May 5 & 6

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k Cross, Artistic D a r ic ire Y is

Yale Opera

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may 5 & 6, 2017 new double bill

walton

milhaud

The Bear

Le pauvre matelot

Robert Blocker, Dean

(The poor sailor)

D

0

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k Cross, Artistic D a r ic ire Y s ct ri

Yale Opera

9

milhaud

walton

The Bear

Le pauvre matelot (The poor sailor)

may 5 & 6, 2017 Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm

douglas dickson & timothy shaindlin music preparation and direction dustin wills stage director rebecca welles costume designer doug harry lighting designer johnny moreno projection designer

Yale Opera

The Bear A widow in mourning, loaded for love Music by William Walton Libretto by Paul Dehn and William Walton after a vaudeville by Anton Chekhov By arrangement with C.F. Peters Corporation Performed in English with projected English text Music direction by Douglas Dickson

cast in order of appearance Luka Madame Popova’s manservant

stephen clark, bass-baritone

Madame Yeliena Ivanovna Popova the young widow of a landowner

alexandra urquiola, mezzo-soprano

Grigory Stephanovitch Smirnov a middle-age landowner

bryan murray, baritone

Synopsis

Poor Madame Popova. She’s locked herself indoors for the past year in mourning for her dead husband, Nicolas.

It’s the first day of spring and yet still, she dresses in black. Her servant Luka encourages her to take a greater interest in life! But she won’t have it. She’s vowed to stay in mourning for the rest of her life to prove her fidelity to Nicolas — even though he was an abusive philanderer.

Then, a knock on the door! Smirnov forces his way past the servants into Popova’s dining room demanding immediate repayment of debts owed to him by her late husband, or else his estate will be put up for sale the very next day. Popova promises to settle the debt by the week’s end, but Smirnov insists it will be too late. He abandons all manners, shouts, and stomps sending Popova for the door. Left alone, he rages about the evils of his debtors and the illogical nature of women, and eventually spirals out of control.

Popova returns to chastise him for his lack of manners. They trade insults back and forth, both trying whatever they can to win. As they compete, Smirnov grows more and more enamored of her beauty and tenacity while Popova becomes more and more furious at his boorishness. She calls him a “bear” — an insult so great that he challenges her to a duel. She accepts, but he has to show her how to use a pistol. By this time he is so overcome with passion for her that he refuses to fire and instead declares his love for her. She threatens to shoot him, but he begs her instead to marry him. She orders him to leave, and then orders him to stay.

intermission

Yale Opera

Le pauvre matelot (The poor sailor) Some reunions can be murder Music by Darius Milhaud Libretto by Jean Cocteau By arrangement with G. Schirmer, Inc., publisher and copyright owner Performed in French with projected English translation Music direction by Timothy Shaindlin

cast in order of appearance Wife

natalia rubis, soprano

Friend

dean murphy, baritone

Father-in-law

stephen clark, bass-baritone

Sailor

lucas van lierop, tenor

Synopsis

In a small seaside town, a woman waits in her struggling bar for the return of her sailor husband who has been gone for fifteen years. She hasn’t heard any word of his whereabouts and imagines him dead, or maybe he’ll return rich, or maybe he’s lost at sea, or, or, or ...

She lives in an unhappy dream. The woman finds companionship with a friend who keeps a shop across the street, and who has proposed marriage to her — but she refuses to marry him because the specter of her husband looms over her. Her pitiful father also resides with her and begs her to move on and marry the young man from across the street.

This is the stasis where the aimless trio has lived for years and years.

ACT I On this evening, the woman and her father are drowning their sorrows, the friend sulks, and the bar has been empty (it usually is). Before the friend retires to his shop that night, he borrows a hammer from the woman, then heads home. Late in the night the sailor finally returns, and before returning home to his wife he first visits the friend to inquire about his wife’s fidelity. The sailor has changed so much that the friend mistakes him for a drunkard and tries to attack him — but soon he recognizes his long-lost friend. The sailor reveals that he has returned with riches in tow, and concocts a plan to trick his wife.

ACT II The next morning, he returns home and, taking advantage of his changed appearance, introduces himself to his wife as an “acquaintance” of her husband.

He informs her that her husband is alive, owes many debts, and is currently in hiding but will return in a week’s time.

He then spins a tale of how an exotic queen romantically tempted both himself and her husband — and how her husband refused her advances and was turned away penniless but that he, the acquaintance, acquiesced and was rewarded with an expensive string of pearls, which he shows her. The woman is overcome with emotion and admits she has no money to cover her husband’s debts. Her husband (still playing the trick) asks to stay the night in the bar and hide his treasure there, which she allows. The friend, distraught and desiring to see the woman to find out what’s happening, returns the hammer to the woman late in the evening. They exchange some brief words at the door and she takes the hammer.

ACT III Hours pass deep into night and into the earliest morning. And in those rare hours, the nightmares that have been lurking beneath the surface erupt …

Artist Bios

Dustin Wills stage director Dustin Wills is an New York City-based theater director originally from Texas.

Recent projects have includes Frontieres Sans Frontieres by Phillip Howze at the Bushwick Starr, Orange Julius by Basil Kreimendahl with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre & PAGE 73, a new musical with Kate Tarker and Dan Schlosberg called AWFUL EVENT!, and ongoing work on a trio of short Lorca plays translated into a three-part evening including The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife — a play with music; Once Five Years Pass — a musical; and The Love of Don Perlimplin for Belisa in the Garden — an opera. Dustin has worked with The Foundry Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Bushwick Starr, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Berkeley Rep, Echo Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Group, Lark Play Development Center, Paper Chairs, and Salvage Vanguard Theatre. He has created large-scale community puppet projects with Creative Action and devised new work for The English Theatre of Rome and Teatro L’Arciliuto in Rome, Italy. He is a two-time recipient of the Princess Grace Award for Theatre, a Drama League and Boris Sagal directing fellow, the former artistic director of the Yale Summer Cabaret, and for a couple of years gave rogue tours of the Vatican. He received his master of fine arts degree from the Yale School of Drama.

Douglas Dickson music direction and accompaniment Douglas Dickson received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University and his master of musical arts degree from the

Yale School of Music. On various occasions The Washington Post has called him an “intelligent, sensitive” pianist with “super technique” and a “skillful pianist” and has praised him for the “finely integrated oneness” he achieves as an accompanist.

Mr. Dickson has performed in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America in venues ranging from Japan’s Expo Hall to the Cincinnati Coliseum.

While still in college, he was the accompanist for the American Boychoir. As part of Duodecaphonia, a prize-winning piano duo, he has performed at the Kennedy Center and elsewhere. Mr. Dickson has been the music director for productions at Quinnipiac University, the Yale School of Drama, Opera Theater of Connecticut, and Connecticut Experimental Theater. He was the music director and conductor for Yale Opera’s production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and he conducted a concert featuring the Yale Opera with the Orchestra Verdi in Milan. He has taught at Quinnipiac University since 1993, and joined the Yale School of Musi faculty in 1998. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in an all-Ives concert at Weill Recital Hall. For Naxos, he recorded more than eighty Charles Ives songs.

Timothy Shaindlin music direction and accompaniment A native of New York City, Timothy Shaindlin joined the Yale School of Music faculty in 2008. After studies at The Juilliard School and Indiana University, he worked for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, San Diego Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, and Pittsburgh Opera. He has also coached for Sarasota

Artist Bios

Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, and Hawaii Opera Theatre. In Europe, he worked for Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu and played master classes for Tito Gobbi. He has also played classes and coachings for such artists as Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne, Natalie Dessay, Ben Heppner, Luciano Pavarotti, Eleanor Steber, Samuel Ramey, Régine Crespin, Thomas Hampson, Frederica von Stade, and Carlo Bergonzi.

Mr. Shaindlin’s work on the podium includes conducting engagements with the Wolf Trap Opera Festival, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Pittsburgh Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago Light Opera Works, and Eugene Opera. He has assisted such renowned conductors as Sir Andrew Davis, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Richard Bonynge, Bruno Bartoletti, Donato Renzetti, Louis Langrée, Edoardo Müller, Yves Abel, Daniele Gatti, Antonio Pappano, and Paul Gemignani.

Rebecca L. Welles costume designer Rebecca L. Welles received her master of fine arts degree in theater design from the Yale School of Drama in 2012. Her recent design credits include Don Quichotte, Le Nozze de Figaro, La Cenerentola, and Iolanta for Yale Opera; and Awake and Sing! and Murder Mystery for ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut.

Recent New York credits include Irreversible at The Red Fern Theatre Company, The Taming of the Shrew at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, Blank Canvas at the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, Two Gentlemen of Verona, at Shrunken Shakespeare, and Marie Christine, at Columbia University.

Upcoming work includes Fools and The Education Project at ACES Educational Center for the Arts.

Doug Harry lighting designer Doug hails from the United Kingdom and trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama way back in the crazy eighties!

He has traveled the world as a lighting designer for theater, opera, and corporate events. Currently he splits his time between production management and design and is currently the production manager for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. He is very happy to be designing for the Yale Opera program.

Johnny Moreno projection designer Johnny Moreno is a second-year master of fine arts degree candidate at the Yale School of Drama, where his credits include ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. He is a producer and cameraman on the upcoming feature film Seagull and is a proud member of “The Lake Lucille Project,” an artist collaborative that is exploring the works of Anton Chekhov.

Johnny continues to work as a concert video director, lighting, and video designer with Grammy Award-winning singer Lila Downs.

Previous design work includes The Merchant of Venice (designer, Cornell University), The Wiz (associate designer, La Jolla Playhouse), Tiffany & Co. (mapping installation, Guggenheim Museum), and As Above So Below (mapping installation, Manhattan Bridge, Dumbo Arts Festival).

Student Profiles

Young Artists Programs

Stephen Clark, bass-baritone ba Northeastern State University Oklahoma, mm Oklahoma City University Central City Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Fort Worth Opera Festival, Seagle Music Colony

Education Young Artists Programs

Dean Murphy, baritone bm The Hartt School Opera North, Prelude to Performance, Central City Opera

Education

Young Artists Programs

Bryan Murray, baritone bm Stony Brook University, mm SUNY Purchase Si Parla, Si Canta, Brooklyn Opera Institute, Central City Opera

Education Professional Appearances

Natalia Rubis, soprano ba & mm Wrocław Music Academy, Poland Capella Cracoviensis, Znojmo Music Festival, Händel-Festspiele

Education

Education Young Artists Program

Education Young Artists Programs

Alexandra Urquiola, mezzo-soprano bm Northwestern University Aspen Music Festival Lucas van Lierop, tenor bm & mm McGill University Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (Aldeburg, England), Central City Opera

Special Thanks

Ruppert Bohle Erich Bolton Richard Cross Robert Heltzel Jen McClure Christopher Murrah Rick Sordelet John Sullivan Kyle Swann Travis Wurges Yale School of Drama Long Wharf Theatre Southern Connecticut State University Wendall K. Harrington and her projection design students

Yale Opera Production Staff

dustin wills Stage Director

erika niemi heltzel Manager

rebecca l. welles Costume Designer

julie hurley Stage Manager

doug harry Lighting Designer & Master Electrician

zachary johnson Assistant Stage Manager cailey harwood-smith Properties Master

johnny moreno Projection Designer

bobby graham Wardrobe Assistant

yaara bar Projection Assistant zachary johnson & dean murphy Student Assistants

jill brunelle Surtitle Operator

concert programs & box office Krista Johnson, Kate Gonzales communications Donna Yoo, Katie Dune, David Brensilver operations Tara Deming, Chris Melillo piano curators Barbara Renner, Robert Crowson, Brian Daley, William Harold media production Matthew LeFevre, Travis Wurges

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Robert Blocker, Dean