Last spring I wrote in these pages about my discovery of Bay Ridge’s Regina Opera Company. While I did grow up in a house where the Metropolitan Opera was on the radio every Saturday, that was not my cup of tea. The idea of dressing up and paying lots of money to hear a musical show was not my scene. I preferred outdoor rock concerts and the Fillmore.
But I did hear the music as it played on the radio, and now, many years later I have discovered the overwhelming skill that composers, singers and actors of the 18th and 19th century used to create masterpieces that have never stopped being appreciated.
The Regina Opera Company has been presenting full length operas, complete with orchestra, lighting, sets and costumes, since 1970. They began as a small group of dedicated singers who gave opera recitals, with piano accompaniment at the Regina Pacis-St. Rosalia Parish Youth Center in Borough Park/Dyker Heights. In 1976,they moved to a larger stage there and acquired an orchestra in 1982. In 2012, they moved to their present home, Our Lady of Perpetual Help School auditorium at 59th Street and Sixth Avenue, which is kind of between Bay Ridge and Brooklyn Chinatown.
Not only is it a great opera company, but for $25 or less you can take a seat of your choice, right behind the orchestra if you like with the stage right in front of you, English translation unobtrusively shown way above the stage, and enjoy world class acting, singing and musicianship. Add in a couple of dollars for coffee and cookies and you are in a working man’s heaven.
Their first production this year was Tosca, written by the Italian Giacomo Puccini, based on a play written by a Frenchman, Victorien Sardou in 1887.
Just like the Regina production I saw last spring, La Traviata, Tosca is another horribly sad tale of love and death. Omigod, were there ANY happy endings in the 19th century?
What happens is that a painter is finishing up a religious portrait in a church, when an escaped political prisoner (there’s a war on, of course) runs into the church to hide. The painter gives him some food and a place to hide, and of course gets in trouble for this. It turns out that the chief of police lusts after the painter’s girlfriend and uses this opportunity to jail and threaten to kill the painter unless his girlfriend (Tosca) gives herself up to him – that’s a polite way to say allows him to rape her.
In the end, the evil police chief, the political prisoner, the painter and Tosca all end up dying, but before they go there is a lot of tremendous artistry happening.
Regina presents one opera for the fall season, and two in the spring, plus various concerts in between. There were four performances of Tosca, plus two public rehearsals. The main roles are generally split between three performers. In other words, in the case of Tosca, her role was played by Tara Jamshidian for two performances, Audrey DuBois Harris for two, and Sara Beth Pearson for two.
To give you an idea of the caliber of what is being presented to you in a high school auditorium, DuBois Harris has performed for both Aretha Franklin and Barack Obama, and was Franklin’s favorite soprano. She starred in the show I saw.
Sarah Beth Pearson has sung with the Metropolitan Opera as well as the Baltimore Opera and Washington National Opera. Tara Jamshidian is an up and coming singer who has already performed with the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the New Jersey Opera Theater.
Of course I had a wonderful afternoon at the opera, but I am not a very knowledgable critic (yet). I will say that at the spring performance of Lucia Di Lammermoor I was overwhelmed and moved by the performance of Makila Kirchner, a coloratura who played the title role. She was so good that she shone above the performers.
In Tosca, the performances were all uniformly good, although none were as shining as the Lucia I saw. I don’t know whether that’s because of the way the plays are written, or the particular cast. Each performance had its pluses.
Regina is dormant until their winter gala concert on February 2. Then comes I Pagliacci (that must be the one about a clown) in March, and back to Verdi’s La Traviata in May (including on my birthday). Everything is on their website.
If you are not an operagoer, do yourself a favor and experiment with Regina. It’s not only a great afternoon of culture, but of community as well.
