A few years back I was a “super” at the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Bohème. I don’t mean I was super – singing along to the radio’s the extent of my experience as a musical performer – but a super. If you have no idea what I’m talking about neither did I until the Met offered me the role.
A super is shorthand for supernumerary. Those are the unpaid extras playing townsfolk, farmers, soldiers, gypsys – whatever the particular opera calls for – that have no singing roles but lend a dash of verisimilitude to the scene. I was a meandering citizen of the Latin Quarter, dressed in period costume, and dropping by the milliner and the butcher until I was offered a tiny French flag that I was supposed to wave in patriotic display as a military band marched by.
A few things stand out about the experience; such as the way a monumental riser carrying dozens of us as well as a live donkey was wheeled into place seconds before the act started and the curtains rose. But my main takeaway may have been what a massive enterprise the Metropolitan Opera is, and the amount of talent, money and energy it takes to stage seven new productions, as the organization did this season.
That brief behind-the-scenes experience gave me a deeper appreciation for what a much smaller opera company, the Berkshire Opera Festival, was able to pull off last week when I attended one of the performances they gave of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The venue was the jewel-like Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington.
A disclaimer or two may be called for. Opera isn’t my favorite form of entertainment and I don’t pretend to be a critic. I partially blame it on my mother. As a teenager she forced me to attend the Met and the New York City Opera, across the plaza from the Met in Lincoln Center – distressingly, she had subscriptions to both -- because my father refused to go. I would sometimes mitigate the pain by bringing along a transistor radio and earphone and surreptitiously listen to the Mets game while the diva on stage belted out some aria about undying love, committing suicide, or whatever that opera’s plot happened to be.
I had no idea what was going on – beyond what I read in the program before the lights dimmed – because it’s hard enough for me to understand the words when operas are sung in English let alone French, Italian or German. You can’t imagine how much my appreciation for the art form has grown in recent years since the Met and other opera companies, the Berkshire Opera Festival among them, have incorporated subtitles. In the Met’s case they’re on an individual screen on the seat back in front of you. With the Berkshire Opera Festival they shine above the stage.
For the first time in my life I understood what was going on; why the diva was getting so worked up about her lover, his mother,or what have you. Or in the case of Don Giovanni why the title character was such an amusing, amoral cad, Opera’s ultimate seducer, as the program notes describe him.
The Berkshire Opera Festival is the brainchild of co-founders Brian Garman, its artistic director, who conducted Don Giovanni, and Jonathan Loy, the company’s director of production. I suppose what most interested me was what gave Brian, who I spoke with the afternoon following the evening performance I attended, the temerity to believe that Jonathan Loy and he could create an opera company from scratch.
And by the way, this isn’t some Podunk opera company, no disrespect to Podunk opera companies, if they exist. The singing and acting were first rate, many of the performers up-and-coming stars that have sung at opera houses like the Met. I was relieved that Brian didn’t take issue with my characterization of his dreams as wacky.
“Calling it a wacky idea is probably an understatement,” he acknowledged. He went on to explain that he and Mr. Loy started kicking around the idea over twenty years ago when they met at Pittsburgh Opera. Their opportunity came, or rather they made it happen, in 2014. Jonathan Loy had family in the Berkshires which, despite its music-rich offerings, didn’t have opera.
Brian told me the biggest challenge, as it is with any arts organization, is funding, especially with costs increasing dramatically. Before last Friday night’s performance executive director Abigail Rollins took to the stage to thank supporters in the audience and encouraged new ones to sign up. But a second challenge, for a summer opera company in a high rent rural area, is housing for cast members for a full month of rehersals and performances. They’re responsible for finding their own and reimbursed up to a certain cap.
I noticed not just the talent of the singers, the staging and set design, but also something I never witnessed at the Met; perhaps because the setting isn’t nearly as intimate. Indeed, it can be downright intimidating. There seemed to be a palpable comraderie among the singers, an uninhibited joy in performing. Brian attributed that to emerging from a pandemic; singers are thrilled simply to be singing again.
Also, spending a month in the Berkshires leads to bonding. “There’s a lot of activities in nature,” he explained. “People go on hikes, ride bikes. That’s one of the reason why I’m proud of the fact, given our size and relatively young age and budget, we’re really punching above our weight.”
The Berkshire Opera Festival will return next summer, performing La Bohème at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. I doubt there will be room for supers. But if so, I’m available.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
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