The Barber of Seville (Opera)

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    In Chicago, ‘Opera Can Be Hip-Hop, and Hip-Hop Can Be Opera’

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    The baritone Will Liverman was singing in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” about five years ago when he watched a documentary about Jonathan Larson and his musical “Rent.”“It talked about how ‘Rent’ came to be, and how this guy had the idea of taking ‘La Bohème’ and updating it,” Liverman said in an interview this month. “I was wondering why more classics aren’t updated — taking them for ourselves and spinning a new narrative that reclaims the story and tells something that’s meaningful for us.”Then he visited a Black barbershop, and an idea hit him: This could be the setting for a new take on the Rossini, like “La Bohème,” one of the most beloved operas in the repertory. “The thing is,” Liverman said, “I didn’t really take agency over writing anything because of feeling like I was just a singer. I was like, man, someone should do this.”The years since have proven that Liverman isn’t just a singer. An enterprising artist on the rise, he has not only become a fixture of contemporary works at the Metropolitan Opera, including a star turn in Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” last season, but also shepherded new commissions. And now, with his old friend DJ King Rico, he has taken on composing as well.Together they have updated “Barber,” loosely adapting its story into one about a barbershop on the South Side of Chicago and blending operatic writing with a kaleidoscope of styles like R&B, funk, hip-hop, gospel, rap and, of course, barbershop quartet. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj joined them, collaborating on the show’s book and becoming its dramaturg and director. The result, “The Factotum” — its title recalls the famous Rossini aria “Largo al factotum” — opens Feb. 3 at Lyric Opera of Chicago.Liverman, 34, and DJ King Rico, 33, met as teenagers at the Governor’s School for the Arts in Virginia. There, they found a mentor in Robert Brown, a teacher with a gospel background who taught them, young Black men, what place they could have in a world like opera, and how free the art form could be.“We had someone to look up to that looked like us, that taught us what opera was but also could get on the keys and play the craziest rendition of anything you ever heard,” Liverman said. “That’s what really sparked it all, before we even knew what was inside of us. He instilled that.”On the bus, the pair would hold court, singing songs like Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz’s “Get Low” in classical voices. “The girls would go crazy,” DJ King Rico said; but more important, the playfulness taught him “that opera can be hip-hop, and hip-hop can be opera. It’s the same notes.”In a joint video interview, Liverman and DJ King Rico talked about writing “The Factotum,” and the place it might come to have in the opera world. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.“The possibilities just seemed endless,” Liverman said about composing an opera.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesComposing opera is new for both of you. How has it felt to be working in this mode?DJ KING RICO When Will hit me up about this, that was the farthest thing from my mind. I sang opera in high school; I did it for two years. That was really cool, but then I went the other route. So, when he came back, what immediately started playing in my mind was like, OK, we’re going to make this us. It’s going to be really, really authentic.WILL LIVERMAN The exciting thing was, the possibilities just seemed endless. There was a lot of trial and error — figuring out how the operatic voice can serve these styles we know and love. We were in the studio; we’d record something and listen back to it a bunch of times and really pinpoint what things were working and what things we could fix.DJ KING RICO For me, it’s been cool to play various roles. That’s what the factotum is — a jack-of-all-trades. Having to master a lot of different things throughout this process: writing the music, recording, engineering. Whatever helps the process move along, just removing the ego, and that has been transformational.There’s an added layer here, Will, of writing for yourself in the role of Mike.LIVERMAN It’s been a big discovery, because we’re also both the composers and librettists. I loved writing parodies back in the day; if TikTok was a thing in my 20s, I’d be all over that. But now, we noticed there are certain words that just sound so corny if you try to sing them operatically, like “That’s so dope.” And in these styles, you have to keep space for the operatic voice to feel natural.There were some things that I sing for my part that I had to rewrite because it’s like, Oh man, I need to actually breathe here, or do that. On the creating side, you also start thinking about vowels and certain words that speak better.Given how broad the range of styles is in this opera, how did you arrive at what sounded right for any given moment?DJ KING RICO I don’t think we ever arrived at what felt right completely until Rajendra came onboard. He helped complete the story line, and even now, in rehearsals we’re still fine-tuning. But as far as whether to use hip-hop or gospel or whatever — I think it’s more so the emotion that we want the audience to feel and what supports that.We used to play this Basquiat clip where he was like, “Black people are not represented in these spaces.” But we do exist here, and so we are being very intentional about being ourselves in this space. So, there’s this one song, “Conversation,” where it has all of the genres mixed up into one so you see all of the personalities of the different characters in the barbershop. We wanted it to feel a little bit chaotic, and authentic.About the barbershop. In Rajendra’s director’s note, he compares that space to the theater, as a gathering place. What did that idea open up for you in the opera’s story?LIVERMAN One of the cool things about going into a barbershop is, you never know who’s going to come in. Everybody needs to get their hair cut, from the gangster to the preacher to the teacher. It’s a safe space for us to really be and speak our truths. It’s so much more than a haircut. My hair was a mess about a month ago; I was looking like Moses in “The Ten Commandments.” But I go to my guy in Chicago, and I just listen in on the conversations — the openness, the honesty, the funny things, the joy. Then, at the end of it, I come out a new person. I feel like art has the power to do that.DJ KING RICO They definitely both provide community. And a work like this allows multiple people to come together. If you’ve seen the things in this story and been impacted by them, probably someone next to you has experienced the same thing. So, you can come together and feel joy in that.DJ King Rico at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. “Opera can be fun!” he said. “There’s room for everything.”Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesThe Met Opera recently said, in something of a reversal, that contemporary works have become box office draws — including, Will, the sold-out run of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” that you were in. Not only were those seats full, but the audience was also visibly different. Do you see “The Factotum” aiming for something similar?DJ KING RICO Opera can be fun! There’s room for everything. And so if we’re going to put something like this on on a Friday, let’s make this a thing, a vibe. Let’s experience the art and then kick it after. There’s a renaissance that happening, and I’m just thankful that we’re a part of it. Because opera changed my life as a 14-year-old kid studying those scores. I feel like if we can continue to expand it and expand the audience, it can continue to do the same thing going forward for future generations.LIVERMAN I hope other artists look at this and see that anything’s possible. When you have a dream or that feeling, that inner voice saying “Do this,” do it. Like Rico said, one of the ways we think of the factotum is being a jack-of-all-trades. We put this together ourselves over a number of years, and I want it to be an inspiration for other artists to step outside a box that says “I have to just be in this one lane.”Then there are young kids of color. But there are also young kids period, and older people. I want this to be a story of humanity, like Rico said, coming together. You see so much of the sad mask in opera, but I think there’s something to be said, just as powerful, about joy and happiness. We need those stories, but we also need some of the things that make the heart feel good. More

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      Review: With Fresh Subtlety, Opera Returns to New York City

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      Teatro Nuovo’s “Barber of Seville” was the first full-scale live performance in the city since before the pandemic.Opera is back in New York City.On Tuesday evening, two months before the Metropolitan Opera is scheduled to reopen, a full-scale live performance took place, for the first time since before the pandemic. And it was in the Met’s shadow, in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, where Teatro Nuovo presented a semi-staged, concert-dress version of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” (There is a second performance on Wednesday evening.)Like almost all outdoor performances, this one required amplification. Usually this is a burden. Yet on Tuesday it proved a salve for the audience of roughly 750, as the music had to compete with the sounds of grunting generators and crunching machinery on a nearby street.Members of the cast get ready backstage before the performance.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesLike almost all outdoor performances, this one required amplification, which proved a salve for the audience of roughly 750.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAn outgrowth of the Bel Canto at Caramoor series that Will Crutchfield, a conductor and scholar of early 19th-century Italian opera, ran for 20 years, Teatro Nuovo is a performing and training program focused on the bel canto repertory. Generally known for his devotion to complete performances of these works, Crutchfield had to make trims to Rossini’s score to end the performance by 10 p.m., the park’s curfew.No matter. This was still nearly three hours of opera. And what came through was a fresh, lively performance full of ideas and rich in subtleties.The artists who work with Crutchfield study the performance practices of a golden era of opera. His goal is not to make performers today feel beholden to the past in matters of ornamentation and rhythmic execution; after all, the style in Rossini’s day encouraged freedom and flair. Crutchfield tries to embolden his colleagues to start from scratch and think for themselves.Hannah Ludwig starred as Rosina.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe ensemble was made up of artists in Will Crutchfield’s training institute focused on bel canto operatic style.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThat this cast, backed by 31 orchestral players, had made their own interpretive choices came through consistently. Early in Act I, the tenor Nicholas Simpson — as Count Almaviva, who has fallen for the lovely Rosina — brought bright sound and expansive lyricism to the serenade he sings from below her balcony. Simpson certainly embellished the melodic lines with ornate ornamentation; not for nothing has Crutchfield called one offering of his program “ornamentation boot camp.” But his embellishments emanated from the melody and the mood, and never seemed overly elaborate.As Figaro, the dynamic bass Hans Tashjian, whose voice has a nice, light ping in its upper range, adorned the character’s famous aria “Largo al factotum” with fresh, inventive ornaments. Many singers overdo Figaro’s bluster as he boasts of being Seville’s indispensable jack-of-all-trades. But Tashjian sang the aria almost as a personal revelation to the audience — underplayed, with some wonderfully soft-spoken phrases. You felt that this Figaro seriously believed himself to be special, beyond arrogance.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe mezzo-soprano Hannah Ludwig, as Rosina, went perhaps a step too far in ornamenting her defining aria, “Una voce poco fa.” Still, with a rich, dark voice she shaped supple phrases and conveyed the character’s mix of reticence and sass.The baritone Scott Purcell excelled as the officious Dr. Bartolo; as his housekeeper, Berta, the soprano Alina Tamborini was unusually big-voiced and feisty. The young bass Daniel Fridley, as the wily Don Basilio, was downright chilling in the aria “La calunnia,” in which he explains to Bartolo that the way to deal with Almaviva is to start a rumor and help it spread until an explosive scandal erupts. (Rossini anticipated social media by two centuries.)Rather than relying on a single conductor, this performance — nodding to the usual practice in Rossini’s day — was guided by both Crutchfield, who also played the accompanying fortepiano, and the violinist Jakob Lehmann, the concertmaster, who led the orchestral players while seated on a stool. If this looser approach sometimes resulted in minor slip-ups, the gain in spontaneity and freshness was well worth it.The Barber of SevillePerformed Tuesday at Damrosch Park, Manhattan. More

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      Rossini at the Drive-In, as San Francisco Opera Returns

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      SAN FRANCISCO — It feels almost too good to be true after a pandemic closure of Wagnerian scale: an audience watching a cast of singers enter the War Memorial Opera House here to rehearse and perform Rossini’s classic comedy “The Barber of Seville.”And, indeed, we’re not quite there yet. After 16 months, San Francisco Opera did return last week to live performance with “The Barber of Seville,” but not indoors at the War Memorial, its usual home. Rather, it is presenting the work through May 15 some 20 miles north, in a Marin County park. The cast for this abridged version is pared down to six main characters, who appear as singers coming back to work at the opera house to embody their Rossinian counterparts.Much of the plot has been reconfigured as a day of rehearsals, culminating in a performance of the final scenes “on” the War Memorial stage. By then, contemporary street clothes have been replaced with 18th-century-style costumes — the illusion of art restored, at long last.“We wanted to ignite and celebrate the return of this living, breathing art form with a sense of joy and hope and healing,” Matthew Ozawa, who adapted the opera and directed the production, said in an interview. “Audiences really need laughter and catharsis.”About 400 cars form the capacity crowd for this open-air “Barber” at the Marin Center in San Rafael, Calif. The orchestra’s sound is mixed with that of the singers and transmitted live as an FM signal to each car’s radio. Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesSan Francisco Opera needs it, too. With its centennial season fast approaching, in 2022-23, the company is trying to write the most dramatic crisis-and-comeback chapter of its history at breakneck speed.The damage has been brutal. Arts organizations around the world have been devastated by pandemic shutdowns, but San Francisco has been closed significantly longer than most. Because of the structure of its season, which splits its calendar into fall and spring-summer segments, its last in-person performance was in December 2019.This enforced silence has come at great cost: Eight productions had to be canceled, wiping out some $7.5 million in ticket revenue. The company, which struggled with deficits even before the pandemic, has had to make around $20 million in cuts to its budget of roughly $70 million. In September, its orchestra agreed to a new contract containing what the musicians have called “devastating” reductions in compensation.Top, Catherine Cook, familiar to San Francisco audiences as the housekeeper Berta, warms up before the performance.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesMatthew Shilvock, the company’s general director, said of the production, “I see this as a signpost to something new in our future.”Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times“We felt that it was so important to get back to live performance when we could,” said Matthew Shilvock, the company’s general director. “There has been such a hunger, a need for that in the community.”Like opera companies in Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, upstate New York and elsewhere, San Francisco’s return has a retro precursor: the drive-in. “The Barber of Seville” is being presented on an open-air stage erected at the Marin Center in San Rafael. Audience members, in their cars, can opt for premium “seats” with a head-on view of the stage, or for a neighboring area where the opera is simulcast on a large movie screen — for a total capacity of about 400 cars.A cellist gets ready in the tent that serves as the production’s orchestra pit.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesThe drive-in presentation meant jettisoning the company’s house production and conceptualizing and designing a brand-new staging in a just few months.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesRoderick Cox, in his San Francisco Opera debut, conducts the singers by video feed — while wearing a mask.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesThe logistics necessary to bring this off have been complex — not only to adapt to an unaccustomed space, but on account of Covid protocols, which in the Bay Area have been among the strictest in the country. The company has adhered to a rigorous regimen of testing and masking; wind players have used specially designed masks, and in rehearsals the singers wore masks developed by Dr. Sanziana Roman, an opera singer turned endocrine surgeon. Even during performances, the cast members must remain at least eight and a half feet away from each other — 15 feet if singing directly at someone else.Shilvock realized in December that it might be possible to bring live opera back around the time of the company’s originally planned April production of “Barber,” but only if he could “remove as many uncertainties as possible.” The idea of a drive-in presentation began to take shape. But that meant jettisoning the company’s house production and conceptualizing and designing a brand-new staging in a just few months.“I’ve had to rethink some of my tempi and how to keep that excitement,” Cox said. “To know when to press on the gas a little bit more.”Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesA village of tents behind the stage houses the infrastructure and staff needed to run the show. One tent acts as an orchestra pit, where the conductor Roderick Cox, making his company debut, leads a reduced ensemble of 18 players. Along with adapting to using video screens to communicate with the singers — while wearing a mask — Cox noted an added layer of challenge in the absence of audible responses from the audience.“I’ve had to rethink some of my tempi and how to keep that excitement,” he said. “To know when to press on the gas a little bit more.”The orchestra’s sound is mixed with that of the singers and transmitted live as an FM signal to each car’s radio. “Rather than sound coming through big speaker clusters, across a massive parking lot,” Shilvock said, “it comes straight from the stage and from the orchestra tent into your vehicle.”Alek Shrader, who sings the opera’s dashing tenor hero, said he felt “a combination of nostalgia and excitement for what’s to come.”Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesDaniela Mack, Shrader’s lover in “Barber” and his wife in real life, spoke of the cathartic effect of finally being able “to perform for actual people.”Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesA sense of drive-in populism — keeping in mind the comfort and attention spans of automobile-bound listeners — resulted in the decision to present a streamlined, intermission-less, English-language “Barber,” about 100 minutes long. All of the recitative is cut, along with the choruses.The familiar War Memorial Opera House is conjured through projections of the theater’s exterior and replicas of its dressing rooms as part of Alexander V. Nichols’s two-level set. Ozawa’s staging takes as a poignant underlying theme the transition back to live performance: The singers, with sometimes witty self-consciousness, must negotiate a labyrinth of distancing precautions, but with a hopeful sense of soon being able to return to much-missed theaters.The mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, who stars as Rosina, spoke in an interview of the cathartic effect of finally being able “to perform for actual people, to have that connection with an audience.” The tenor Alek Shrader, her lover in the opera and her husband in real life, said he felt “a combination of nostalgia and excitement for what’s to come.”For all of the production’s novelty, there was something reassuring about the familial ease with which the cast interacted. Mack and Shrader are reprising roles they have performed previously here in San Francisco opposite Lucas Meachem’s charismatic Figaro. And Catherine Cook’s sympathetic housekeeper Berta has been a fixture of “Barber” at the company since the 1990s. All four, as well as Philip Skinner (Dr. Bartolo) and Kenneth Kellogg (Don Basilio), emerged from San Francisco’s Adler Fellowship young artists program.Much of the plot has been reconfigured as a day of rehearsals, culminating in a performance of the final scenes “on” the War Memorial Opera House stage, conjured through projections.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesShilvock said the production costs for “Barber” were comparable to what the company would have spent for the 2021 summer season it had planned prepandemic — but building the temporary venue and Covid restrictions added between $2 and $3 million in extra costs.Still, Shilvock said it has been worth it — and on opening night on April 23, the curtain calls were greeted with an exuberant chorus of honks. Shilvock said that around a third of “Barber” ticket buyers were new to the company.“I’m not seeing this in any way just as a band-aid to get us through to the point where we go back to normal,” he said. “Rather, I see this as a signpost to something new in our future. It’s creating this energy for opera for people who would never have otherwise given us a thought.” More