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Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre presents: La Boheme

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Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre will make its Paramount Theatre debut with "La Boheme" on Jan. 18 and 20. (Image/ Ron Sunderman)

 

Over the moon for “Rent”? You can see where it all began when the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre makes its Paramount Theatre debut with “La Boheme” on Jan. 18 and 20.

Puccini’s best-loved opera opened in 1896 — exactly 100 years before “Rent” took Broadway by storm. One features a dying seamstress named Mimi, a poet, a painter, a singer, a musician, a philosopher, a state councilor and a landlord in the 1830s. The other features a dying dancer named Mimi, a songwriter, a filmmaker, a performance artist, a drag queen, a philosophy professor, a lawyer and a landlord in the 1980s.

The late Jonathan Larson based his modern tale of love, loss and angst on Puccini’s opera, moving the action from Paris to New York’s East Village. Both are rife with starving artists living and loving amidst poverty and illness. One scourge is AIDS, the other is tuberculosis.

Both focus on a year in the life — on seasons of undulating love under dire circumstances. And that’s why today’s audiences wrap “La Boheme” in such an enduring embrace.

“The secret is in number 1, the music, and number 2, the drama in the story,” says artistic director Stanley M. Garner of Tulsa, Okla., who is making his first trip to Iowa to work with the opera company.

But romance can’t always triumph over harsh realities, he adds. Both shows take place in and around freezing cold apartments where the most fragile characters simply can’t survive, no matter how many pieces of paper they burn for warmth. The end result is heartbreak — a death of body and a near-death of spirit in both.

“This is nothing new,” Garner says, “and it’s still around with us today. I was watching the local news last night, in Cedar Rapids, and they were doing a story about shelters and the homeless, because it was so very cold.”

Daniel Kleinknecht

That provides the bridge for opera fans and “Rent” fans.

“This couldn’t be a better first opera experience or 50th opera experience,” says Daniel Kleinknecht of Coralville, the opera theater’s founder and musical director for “La Boheme.”

The details

  • Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre presents “La Boheme”
  • 8 p.m. Jan. 18 and 2 p.m. Jan. 20
  • Paramount Theatre
  • Tickets: $18 to $53 at the Orchestra Iowa Box Office, (319) 366-8203, 1-(800) 369- 8863 or Paramounttheatrecr.com
  • Information: cr-opera.org
  • Extras: Free pre-opera Curtain Talks in Opus Cafe one hour before showtimes; Iowa Public Radio will broadcast the Jan. 20 production live

“Puccini knew how to assemble an evening’s entertainment,” he says. “The first act is rambunctious … then it becomes a little more quiet. The second act is so full of spirit and life with all of these wonderful activities. It’s Christmas Eve in Paris and ends with emotional high.

“The third act becomes so introverted and so contrasting to the second act — it’s wonderfully expressive and warm and full of pathos. It’s a discovery of unrequited love and real pain. Then Puccini continues to take us over this emotional cliff with (Mimi’s) really incapacitated health and her death,” says Kleinknecht, who also serves as an associate professor of music at Mount Mercy University.

“In essence, Puccini takes us on an emotional ride. He gives us incredible highs and incredible lows. These are all such human, human emotions and they’re set to the most gorgeous tunes. So we as human beings respond to that,” he says. “It’s a natural human response to love this piece, because Puccini was so human.”

Stanley M. Garner

Garner, a classical actor who has been directing operas since 1991, has spoken to young “Rent” fans after they experienced “La Boheme” for the first time. They love it, he says.

“It’s like almost a maturation. Now ‘Boheme’ becomes their favorite,” he says. “They are fascinated by the fact that … it’s acoustic. That there are no microphones, there’s no sound enhancement, there’s no electronic amplification of sound. … It’s pretty exciting and electrifying … if it’s the first time you’ve ever heard something like that.”

Kleinknecht can’t wait for it all to come together. The production, part of the opera theater’s 15th season, presents a number of firsts: first time in the Paramount; largest cast, numbering around 100; largest orchestra, filling the renovated pit with 50 Orchestra Iowa players; largest set, featuring a huge central piece that rotates from the attic apartment to the boisterous Latin Quarter cafe and other environs; and the opera theater’s largest potential audience, with two performances in the 1,700-seat auditorium.

He’s hoping to “open a new door” for people new to opera.

He’s already opening a new door for massive community involvement, using 30 children from Orchestra Iowa’s Discovery Chorus and the Crescendo Children’s Choir from Iowa City; 17 from the opera’s Young Artists program; an adult chorus of 30; and 12 players from the Jefferson High School band onstage — in addition to the principal core of six professional opera performers Kleinknecht auditioned in New York last June.

“We decided … let’s throw everything in but the kitchen sink,” Kleinknecht says.

All will find big challenges in Puccini’s score, which is sung in Italian.

“Every measure is in a different tempo,” he says. “People have to keep real close attention to not just the notes and the key signatures, but to the way it’s shaped and the way it’s sung.”

They also need to be on their toes, since Kleinknecht and the orchestra will be down in the pit, while the singers will be on two levels on the set.

“We’ll have like three stories’ difference between the orchestra and the singers. This will be really fun,” he says.

Erica Strauss

Despite the sadness of her role, soprano Erica Strauss of New York City is having fun with her first opportunity to portray Mimi. She’s loved the show for a long time, and says the aria “Mi Chiamano Mimì” is the second one she learned as a beginning voice student.

“It’s exciting to be able to finally get a chance to do it,” she says. “Besides the amazing music,” she’s drawn to Mimi’s “sweetness, her vulnerability. She has a very, very deep soul. I love that about her. I find her to be a very genuine person with a really, really good heart.”

It’s not easy playing someone who is ill, especially someone who is coughing, which is hard on the vocal chords, so Strauss protects herself by doing more of a pantomime cough.

Her main challenge, however, deals with the show’s emotional impact.

“It’s just so sad and the music hits you so close to your heart,” she says, so her hard task is “to separate you as a person from you as a character and not get overwhelmed by just how sad it is. …

“Honestly, it’s a pleasure to play her.”

 

Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre will make its Paramount Theatre debut with "La Boheme" on Jan. 18 and 20. (Image/ Ron Sunderman)

Idina Menzel continues to defy gravity

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Broadway, film and television star Idina Menzel

The star who defied gravity on Broadway is now flying around the country, singing barefoot with a symphony.

Idina Menzel grabbed a Tony nomination in 1996 for her first Broadway role, playing performance artist Maureen in the groundbreaking musical “Rent.” In 2004, she won the coveted Tony for her soaring ride as Elphaba, the green-skinned girl with magical powers in “Wicked.” Her “Rent” character made the leap to the big screen in 2005 and two years later, she was back for another fairy-tale turn in  “Enchanted,” opposite Patrick Dempsey.

With many other stage and screen credits under her belt, she’s found yet another young fan niche playing Rachel’s mom on “Glee.”

But it’s her “Barefoot at the Symphony” project that gets her back to her roots as a singer. She’s been performing with orchestras across the country and abroad since 2010, recording her November 2011 Toronto concert for PBS and a “live” CD, both released in March. She’ll bring her mix of show tunes and pop songs with a twist to the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines at 7:30 p.m. June 22, 2012.

Despite the sweeping scope of each venue and staging with no fewer than 25 musicians, Menzel strives to create “a real intimacy” with the audience.

“I tell a lot of stories and chronicle my music with personal anecdotes about my life,” she says by phone from a recent tour stop in Santa Rosa, Calif. “I enjoy actually trying to find that balance between having some musicians and a big, dramatic, theatrical, magnificent sound  up there with all that wonderful musicianship, but also keeping it really intimate and personal, because it’s important to me that people feel like they leave getting to see a little window into who I am. Those are the only concerts I’ve enjoyed in my life. When I’ve left the theater, I want to feel like  I know that person.”

Menzel, 41, grew up in New York and has been singing since she was a little girl. She stepped onstage for the first time in a kids’ talent show in the Catskills around age 6, singing harmony with friends on ”Cats in the Cradle.” By a second grade school choir audition, she was hooked.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do,” she says. “Everything I did and all the choices I made paved that (career) path.”

She started out singing weddings and bar mitzvahs at age 15, went to college, “pounded the pavement,” and  landed on Broadway at 25.

She describes “Rent” as ”an incredible ride.”

“It was a very emotional and impactful time in my life. I met my husband in that cast,”  says Menzel, who is married to actor Taye Diggs. She had a guest role on his TV show, “Private Practice,” and together, they have a son, Walker, nearly 3.

“The ‘Rent’ experience was different than most people’s experiences in theater, because we lost Jonathan (Larson), our composer, on the night of our first dress rehearsal,” she says, “so there was no room for being heady. As much as it was a whirlwind and the show was taking off, we had to stay really grounded and committed to what we were doing, because he wasn’t there. It became obsessive, in a way, to make sure that we were doing right by him.”

That was the springboard to her career, but she still had to work hard, “like everybody else.”

“I got a record deal, but then I got dropped from my record label. I had a lot of ups and downs,” she says. “It wasn’t until years later — six or seven — that ‘Wicked’ happened. So I sort of had to start over again.  And then when ‘Wicked’ happened, I was older and knew, as well, how things come and go and are so fleeting. I just try and enjoy every moment of that.”

Now that she’s an established star, she does have more theatrical options at her fingertips, but prefers to be part of new shows being developed.

“Because I really want to be involved in originating roles and being in new works, that takes a lot of time and patience,” she says. “You can do workshops and readings of new material, then it takes years for them to find their legs. That’s the challenge with finding a new piece on Broadway.

“And then in the rest of my career, sometimes things are handed to you, but for the most part, I’m still out there, like everyone else, auditioning and trying to get the next job.”

The immediacy has changed with her new role as mother.

“It’s made a world of difference for me,” she says. “It’s completely changed my priorities and my perspective. It’s made me a lot more laid-back about career and expectations that I have on myself. I enjoy my work more because when I get up onstage, I don’t expect as much from myself, because maybe I haven’t slept as much, or I’m juggling so many things with family, and therefore I kind of let it go and I end up being freer and easier on myself. In return, I think I’m a better performer.”

That mirrors the best advice she’s received along the way.

“It comes from my husband a lot — to just go easy on myself,” she says, “and to know that I am enough in my talent, and even if I’m not at a hundred percent, it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be impactful. That I’m not just my voice or just my talents — I’m everything that makes up who I am. Therefore, if something is a little weaker one day from the next, it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be successful. It’s about being a great person, therefore taking the pressure off a little bit.”

 

 

 

 

Rent: A review

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I still have goosebumps. The staff and volunteers at Theatre Cedar Rapids have done an amazing job of staging the rock opera “Rent.”

This is a testament to the amount of talent living, working and creating art in Eastern Iowa.

The show opened July 9 to a sold-out crowd and sent three generations of screaming, cheering fans jumping to their feet in unison at the end of an exhilarating two hours. The show runs through July 25 and is guaranteed to sell out quickly.

The cast of 20 young people – many of them new to the TCR stage — unleash an immeasurable force of voices and emotions as they explore a year of living, dying and creating art in New York City under the emerging pall of AIDS.

For a group of volunteers to tackle this much-lauded work, based on the opera “La Boheme,” is astounding. It takes the firm guiding hand of TCR’s professional staff, the vision of directors Leslie Charipar and Janelle Lauer, the rock ‘n’ roll fervor of the seasoned band and plenty of technical wizardry to pull it off.

I didn’t even like the show when it first came out. It made me angry. I wanted to scream: “Grow up and get a job like the rest of us – do your art at night like the rest of us.” My best friend from college had just died of AIDS and several other dear friends were in various stages of dying a horrible death. The show hit a nerve that was still too raw.

Those memories still brought tears to my eyes during this production, but enough time has passed that “Rent” is now bearable to see and serves as a powerful reminder of this terrible affliction. The show’s mantra of ”no day but today” has become its message of the urgency for squeezing every ounce of life and love out of every day.

The show is packed with beautiful music, beautiful characters and beautiful performances.

The moment that blows off the roof comes in the second half, when Alisabeth (who recently dropped her surname Caraway) and Stephanie Larios blast their way through “Take Me or Leave Me.” Area native Alisabeth is recently back from New York and Cornell student Larios stayed from Las Vegas to play the bickering lovers Maureen and Joanne. They live, love and fight fiercely, creating enough electricity to power a small town.

Alisabeth also milks every ounce of passion out of her show-stopping performance art piece, “Over the Moon,” that incites a riot near the end of Act I.

Nathan Cooper, a 2009 Cedar Rapids Jefferson grad, has just one real moment in the spotlight, but he makes it memorable, launching his outstanding voice above all others in “Will I.”

Lead players Jennifer Anderson as Mimi, Aaron Brewer as Roger and Steve Goedken as Mark exude plenty of pathos and ardor as they work through their demons, frustrations and relationships.

But DiAndre Neville, a Linn-Mar grad, simply shimmers as the sweet cross-dressing Angel. He owns the stage with a performance as subtle and refined as one can manage in a mini skirt and high heels. Never over-the-top, he breaks every heart in Act II.

The only downside came in Act I, when the band overpowered the vocals on the large ensemble numbers, especially “La Vie Boheme” and “I Will,” and when the actors were singing in the lower register of their voices. I’m afraid audience members who don’t know the show lost some of the rich texture of the dialogue that is only conveyed through the singing.

Still, this is a production of the highest magnitude and a proud achievement for Theatre Cedar Rapids.

 – DIANA NOLLEN

  • What: “Rent”
  • Where: Theatre Cedar Rapids, 102 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
  • When: Through July 31; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays
  • Rated: PG-13
  • Tickets: $20 to $25 adults and $15 youths, at the Theatre Cedar Rapids Box Office, (319) 366−8591 and www.theatrecr.org $12 rush 30 minutes before showtime at the TCR Box Office
  • Information: www.theatrecr.org and www.siteforrent.com

Seasons of love

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Nearly 20 years after “Rent” took Broadway by storm, the rock opera based on the opera “La Boheme” has become an event of epic proportions.

The story follows a group of young artists in New York’s Lower East Side as they struggle to live, love and keep their creative spirit burning under the emerging pall of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

The show runs the gamut of emotions, from elation to despair.

“It’s a great reminder for everyone about how precious life is,” says music director Janelle Lauer. “It’s a celebration of life in many respects, through characters or in general.”

The show’s continuing popularity drew a record 136 people from four or five states to TCR’s auditions in April. Twenty were cast. They range in age from 17 to mid-30s, but most are in their 20s. About half are new to the Theatre Cedar Rapids stage.

One challenge Director Leslie Charipar and Janelle hadn’t anticipated was the way AIDS has fallen off the younger generation’s radar.

“One of the kids said AIDS is a joke in school now,” Leslie says. “That’s startling to me. I grew up with it — my early adult years were steeped in it. We discovered from the kids that it’s lost its power. That makes me nervous for the next generation not taking it seriously. We’ve done a very bad job of keeping it at the fore for young people.”

So Leslie is stripping off the hype and taking the musical back to its roots for the production that plays Friday through July 25 at Theatre Cedar Rapids.

“Over time, it has become this music concert, this rock concert. It’s important to me to be putting it back in its historical context and keeping the metaphor of AIDS as its touchstone,” she says.

“AIDS fell out of its storyline over the years and I wanted to put it back there. It was a unique time in our lives and so scary. We didn’t know what it was and it was killing people,” she says. “Having that disease in the show is one of the most powerful elements bringing these people together. It makes the lyric ‘no day but today’ make all the sense in the world.”

Talking about AIDS and sharing their personal experiences with the cast has helped, Leslie says.

“I feel like they’re getting it. AIDS really is a metaphor at this point for the urgent reason we have to live well and love well before it’s too late.”

The show is demanding vocally, with all the dialogue conveyed through song. To make sure the cast understood the essence of the story, Leslie had them spend one week treating the lyrics as dialogue, speaking the words instead of singing them.

“That got us closer to what it meant,” she says. “It got the relationships fleshed out and got everybody connected to the lyrics the way they need to be connected to them so they became a conversation.”

The relationships and the characters are vital to the way TCR is presenting the show.

DiAndre Neville, 20, of Cedar Rapids, plays Angel, a cross-dressing street drummer who has AIDS. He’s one of the most flamboyant characters in the show and one of the easiest to embrace.

“He’s very carefree and loves everybody,” DiAndre says. “He has a lot of love. The best part of him is that even though he has AIDS, he still finds love at the end of life. He puts everything into being in love with this last man. He doesn’t care that he has something terminal. He wants them to think this isn’t the end.”

The directors feel the show will resonate with all ages, in different ways.

“You have to be open to the concept of ‘no day but today,’” Janelle says.

– DIANA NOLLEN

“Rent”

  • Where: Theatre Cedar Rapids, 102 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
  • When: Friday through July31; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays
  • Rated: PG-13
  • Tickets: $20 to $25 adults and $15 youths, at the Theatre Cedar Rapids Box Office, (319) 366−8591 and www.theatrecr.org $12 rush 30 minutes before showtime at the TCR Box Office
  • Details: www.theatrecr.org and www.siteforrent.com