Boston Opera Underground Virtue and Vice
Weill, Mozart, Sondheim, Chueca and Valverde at the Lizard Lounge
Mar 18, 2009 Sarah Canice Funke
The Boston Opera Underground's performance at the Lizard Lounge on Wednesday, March 11 proved that an audience doesn't need to be ensconced in plush seats in order to enjoy a night of opera. Fine singing can happen anywhere. Especially if what a musician is singing happens to be written by Kurt Weill, an early 20th century composer of music theater.
These "underground" performances by the Boston Opera first started only as recently as 2007, but judging by attendance, word has already traveled fast. Eager onlookers packed into the underground space, and those early birds lucky enough to grab a table elbowed their way through the crowd with plates of fries or a pint of beer.
An Evening of Vice: Selected Sinful Arias by Sondheim, Mozart, Chueca & Valverde and Weill
The topic for the evening's performance was the second half of a two-part series on Virtue and Vice. Perhaps the subject matter accounted for the popularity, but the singers' own talented execution of their art probably played a large role, too.
To set the mood, a saucy Glorivy Arroyo and a burly Graham Wright started off with Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Priest" from the musical Sweeney Todd. With dark humor, the song speculates how men of different professions would taste were they to be made into meat pies.
Following this delicious account, Sol Kim Bentley and Rob Woodin moved on to lusts of the flesh, with a salacious rendition of "Là Ci Darem la Mano" from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. To seduce a bride-to-be on her way to her own wedding is about as full of vice as one can get.
A men's trio then transported the audience to a life of thievery: Christian Figueroa, Stefan Reed and Graham Wright performed "Jota de las Ratas (Pickpockets' Jota)" from La Gran Via by Spanish composers Federico Chueca and Joaquín Valverde.
Closing the first half and setting the stage for the second section was Brenna Wells' performance of "Der Abschiedsbrief (The Farewell Letter)" by Kurt Weill.
Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins
In the second half, Weill's "The Seven Deadly Sins" relayed the adventures of Anna I and Anna II, a girl split between herself over what was virtue and what was vice. Sent from home to make her fortune, Anna finds herself stooping lower and lower (cabaret dancing, prostitution, toy companion, etc.), even as she makes her family rich. Weill pokes fun at society's hypocrisy regarding what it calls right and wrong and what it expects an individual to do. The same Graham Wright who cut an impressive figure as Sweeney Todd cut an equally impressive figure (though for different reasons) as Anna's rather hairy and bearded mother.
The size of the venue meant that the audience was practically rubbing elbows with the singers. When a singer and audience are that close together, the performance energy becomes electric. The audience is close enough to see how much the singers enjoy what they are doing, and the singers in turn can feel the audience love. It's an experience to remember.
Source
Opera Boston Underground website.
"Opera Boston Underground: Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins with Selected Sinful Arias." Program Notes.
Seven Deadly Sins, from Program Notes
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