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LSU Opera Program continues to prosper after nearly 75 years
Opera in Louisiana. Considering the cast of characters and larger-than-life events that have taken place since its inception into the Union in 1812, the state is practically crying out for its own opera. One might almost swear opera’s origins derived from Louisiana, rather than another, albeit larger, boot-shaped land mass—Italy. But if the discussion centers around opera’s origins in America, then one need look no further than Louisiana. These days the Creole state is known more today for its festivals, food, and devil-may-care attitude than for its opera—political soap operas notwithstanding. But in the late 18th century, Louisiana was not only the center for opera in America, it was the only place to view the art form.
Opera made its debut on American soil after two Parisian brothers, Jean-Marie and Louis-Alexander Henry, erected the Peter Street Theater in New Orleans in 1792. In its 18-year span, the theater presented more than 300 operatic performances, including Silvain, an opera-comique believed to be the first performance of its kind in the United States. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s however, that opera began to reach its height in popularity, doing so at the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon Street. On Dec. 1, 1859, the Old French Opera House opened to the public with a performance of William Tell. Built at a cost of $118,000, the Opera House was the first of its kind in the United States. and the cultural center of New Orleans. Its elliptical auditorium seated 1,800 in four tiers of seats, but perhaps more impressive, was its 80-foot loft that towered above other buildings in the French Quarter. Then in 1919, for reasons still unknown, the Opera House was destroyed by fire. Accounts observed that theater in New Orleans, and perhaps all of Louisiana, was now dead. Instead, it lay dormant for 10 years before a group of civic leaders came together to bring opera back to South Louisiana. “(The group) was paying for all the LSU productions and those same people supported the (New York Metropolitan Opera House’s) tour to New Orleans,” said Robert Grayson, former artistic director of the LSU Opera Program and chair of LSU School of Music’s voice/opera division. “In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, it was all traditional operas being done from the 17th century. And if it was 17th century, it would be done that way with the language, the costumes and the gestures.” The Beginnings
With the Opera House in New Orleans a pile of smouldering ashes, the LSU School of Music began making plans to keep the tradition alive. In 1930, under the direction of H. W. Stopher, Sr., the School of Music presented Bohemian Girl by Balfe. Only one performance was given in the Gym Armory before an audience of high school students on campus for a state rally. A 15-piece orchestra, makeshift scenery, and rented costumes detracted nothing from the performance, and soon Stopher was at work on the next production, Martha. Hollywood set designer Dalton S. Reymond soon joined Stopher for the production, and would remain at LSU, eventually succeeding Stopher as director in 1933. By the time Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado was staged in 1932, LSU’s opera program had come into its own. A cast of more than 100 participated in the production, which included 17 performances. During its tour of the state, more than 30,000 school children saw The Mikado. “In those days, if they didn’t have the singers they needed, they imported them,” Grayson said, citing earlier accounts by former opera director, Ralph Erolle. “They would bring them to LSU, enroll them in classes, and give them an assistantship of $3,000, which was huge at the time.” Amato
For the 1935 season, Reymond sought assistance from someone considered to be one of the greatest Italian baritones of his day, Pasquale Amato. It was said of Amato that his voice was so unique, only he could fill certain roles. By the time his voice began to deteriorate at the age of 43, his repertoire included nearly 70 roles. After spending much of his career with the Metropolitan Opera Company, he spent the last seven years of his life as director of opera at LSU. In that time, he produced nine operas, including Madame Butterfly, La Traviata, and La Boheme. He provided Frances Greer and Marguerite Piazza, both future stars with the Metropolitan Opera, with their first opportunities, and his productions proved to be more elaborate than anything ever done on the LSU Opera stage.
The 1937 production of Faust included 18 principal characters, a chorus of 60, a ballet troupe of 18, a stage band of 11, and an orchestra of 40. For his production of Manon, an estimated 1,480 yards of material were used for the costumes. But it was his production of La Traviata, which went to New Orleans in 1938, that may have proven to be his crowning achievement at LSU. A reviewer for the Item in New Orleans described the show by writing, “the performance took New Orleans by storm. It turned an ordinarily mildly appreciative audience into a hysterical mob that not only applauded, but stamped and shouted and drew tears from oldsters who remembered the gala days of New Orleans’ own French Opera.”
Amato’s final opera would be La Boheme in 1942. For that performance, Piazza displayed her future brilliance by appearing as two of the principal female characters on alternating nights. Soon after the production closed, Amato passed away, and with World War II in its early stages, difficulties began to rise quickly for the opera program. The War Years The University began to feel the early effects of the war in decreased enrollment. For the opera program, musicians had become scarce and male singers even more so. Gasoline shortages had all but shelved any ideas of touring productions. Brought in to solve the problems was Ralph Erolle, a leading tenor with the Metropolitan Opera. Erolle began producing lighter works, such as Naughty Marietta, Robin Hood, and The Chocolate Soldier, using coeds to play the parts of the young gentlemen. Former students were brought back to sing the leading roles and faculty members from the School of Music and the Department of Speech were called on to participate. Erolle even tapped G.I.s stationed on campus to fill some of the roles.
Despite the gasoline shortages, Erolle took the entire company on a tour of the state for the1943 season, bringing Naughty Marietta to New Orleans for the Spring Fiesta before traveling to Shreveport, Monroe, Fort Polk, and Lake Charles. It was the first time the company had gone on the road since 1932. “I was an undergrad(uate) at California State-Long Beach where I studied with Ralph,” Grayson said. “I’d go to his studio and on the wall were pictures of all these opera productions from LSU with mold on them. “When he retired, he moved out to California. I was so nervous meeting him . . . and he looked just like Colonel Sanders. He would come down the stairs, holding the bannister, and looking very regal. He was of an era where acting was becoming more important. Today, I think acting overshadows the music. Now we’re integrating acting classes, how to move to the music . . . it’s not about doing these big sweeping arm gestures that no one would ever do.” Adding another element to Erolle’s productions was Don Blakely, a technical director brought on board for Manon. Blakely moved away from conventional lighting and scenery to use arrangements that would reproduce actual, and optical-illusioned, three-dimensional sets. Changing of the guard In 1950, Erolle was replaced by Peter Paul Fuchs, who was at the time, the youngest man to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera. He also founded the Baton Rouge Civic Opera in 1952 and had his own opera company, Opera for Everyone, before World War II. A year after Fuchs took over directorial duties at LSU, the opera department was reorganized as LSU Opera Activities. Now operas would be performed in English, using modern staging techniques to emphasize ensemble and dramatic work. The emphasis was to be placed on the educational value of operatic ensemble work, not the vocal achievements of individuals. “We are aiming, rather than to build our productions around a few performers of particularly outstanding gifts that might be referred to as ‘stars,’ to give a production that is well rounded in all details,” Fuchs was quoted as saying. “This does not mean that we wish to encourage sloppy singing or bad musicianship; however, in building our productions, we aim to make our audience so much aware of the production elements that the purely vocal, the ‘star’ angle, recedes in the background.” Fuchs was also noted for tackling challenging, and borderline controversial, pieces during his career at LSU. Problems arose from the fact that the pieces were primarily works by Richard Strauss, widely considered to be too vocally difficult for a college opera student to perform. As one former student noted, these were not the works being performed on college stages. But you did them, and you survived them. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the demands of the performances, the program continued to produce future stars like James King, who went on to sing with the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House in London, and Terry Patrick-Harris, who was a featured soloist in Paul Paray’s Grammy Award-nominated Mass for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Joan of Arc. Patrick-Harris is also a professional-in-residence, voice faculty member in the LSU School of Music. Her husband, Joseph, was one of the lucky ones—he survived his lead role as Baccus in Strauss’ Adriadne of Naxos. Fuchs produced his last play—Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier—at LSU in 1976. Not only had he served 26 years, the longest tenure as director of opera, but he had pushed his students further than anyone else and made them better for it. Modern History Problems arose, however, as fewer students were able to participate in performances because professional actors were now occupying roles. The partnership would last several years before BROC eventually folded. Today, the opera program is both different and the same as its predecessor of almost 75 years ago. The classics are still being performed, albeit with a different twist. The Barber of Seville, for instance, was performed last year set against the backdrop of the 1960s. The operas are also being sung in the original languages—with the assistance of supertitles for the casual opera-goer. And the program continues to produce some of the biggest names in opera today like Paul Groves and Jeffrey Wells of the Metropolitan Opera, Shon Sims of the New York City Opera, and Edward Scott Hendricks and Chad Shelton of the Houston Grand Opera, Central City, and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. Epilogue When Erolle’s protégé Grayson first arrived at LSU, he was still performing in New York. After teaching Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Grayson would board a plane for New York, sing the matinee on Sunday and then leave for the airport—in full makeup—to return to Baton Rouge. At the time, he thought the university had a lot of potential for both him and his career. These days, he’s more concerned about the potential of the program. “In the last three or four years, we’ve really upped things,” he said. “The audience started coming back . . . and I think we have the components to go to the next level.” Two of those components are first-year director of opera, Dugg McDonough, and new music director, John Keene. McDonough joined the LSU School of Music faculty in the fall of 2002 after spending the last 17 years as director of the Temple University Opera Theater in Philadelphia. There he staged nearly 50 originally conceived productions, including five world premieres and numerous Philadelphia and East Coast premieres. He has staged operas for companies ranging from New York to Taiwan, and for the last 10 years has been highly involved in working with young performers as co-director of the Des Moines Metro Opera’s Apprentice Artist Program. Keene’s resume includes founding and serving as artistic director of the Elysian Opera Group in New York City, as well as teaching at the University of South Carolina, East Carolina University and serving as an artist-in-residence at the University of Arkansas. He has also performed as an accompianist and chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center. Written by Josh Duplechain | LSU
Office of University Relations
Related Links: LSU School of Music |
In
1987, LSU Opera and the Baton Rouge Opera Company (BROC) entered
into a partnership that proved beneficial to both parties, but had
its drawbacks for LSU. Both companies benefitted from a financial
standpoint. The BROC, before entering into the partnership, was
financially strapped and by joining LSU’s program, could help
refill its coffers. LSU, on the other hand, was able to put on productions
and have the BROC handle all the costs.
