Opera Chic

Sunday Brunch with Daniel Okulitch: OC Name Checked in the L.A. Times

 

Daniel Okulitch (a.k.a. that really hawt naked dude from L.A. Opera's The Fly) who is one of the most buff bass baritones in the business (check out these photos from the Fort Worth Opera's Dead Man Walking) chatted with The Los Angeles Times about his upcoming Figaro in Le Nozze for the L.A. Opera. He'll be singing with Marlis Petersen as Susanna, Bo Skovhus as the Count, and Martina Serafin as the Countess under the baton of Plácidone Domingone.

OC was name checked today in The Los Angele's Time's Sunday Conversation, highlighting Okulitch's NYCO Don Giovanni from last year, a standout of GM George Steel's comeback season:

Operachic.com called you "a swaggering rock star" in "Don Giovanni" in New York. Do you think that opera singers have to bring the same kind of sexual bravado that rock musicians do to the stage to attract younger audiences?

I've seen various performances with the people touted as these sort of personas. It gets them in the door, but 20 rows back, no one can tell the difference. You really can't. What's interesting about that that if you tell someone you're going to see Erwin Schrott or Anna Netrebko and they're really hot and you tell them this enough times, even if they're sitting 50 rows back they're going to think, "Wow, I'm watching a really sexy, attractive person onstage." And their brain fills in what the eye is not catching. So it's a self-feeding loop; it's a snake eating its own tail. In the end, what's going to keep people coming back is if they have a satisfying dramatic musical experience.

Yeah, you'll definitely want to go ahead and read the rest of the interview. Trust. Okultich divulges the naughtiest (we hope?) item that he packs in his suitcase. Here's a hint: No time for love, Doctor Jones! We're hoping he packs a black fedora to complete the look!

New York City Opera Countdown!

The season is upon us! And although everyone's prematurely breaking out the vintage Alber Elbaz embroidered Xmas sweaters and the Marni seasonal jewelry, it's the season of New York City Opera's resilient & pragmatic 5-opera mini-season. Tomorrow night opens a preview of the 2009-10 season (which operatically-officially begins on Saturday, November 7 with Hugo Weisgall’s Esther), with NYCO hosting an Opening Night Gala concert honoring renovated theater namesake, David H. Koch. The evening's festivities will also honor the many unique voices that have shaped NYCO's illustrious history, with a guest appearance by the New York City Ballet.

No doubt GM and Artistic Director George Steel will be on hand to welcome his guests and benefactors, still less than a year into owning his official title. The Little Engine that Could, Steel's the great hope for spiriting the cash-strapped NYCO back to its humble roots when NYCO was known as a financially accessible and artistically courageous Volkstheater, championing American singers and composers to diverse audiences.

As inviting as comfort food (think pumpkin purée and crispy braised chicken), this season offers the classic rapey/zombie-knight opera, Mozart-Da Ponte's Don Giovanni. Director Christopher Alden directs the hawt, impressionable young cast in a new production heavy on sexual angst. Daniel Okulitch leads as a swaggering rockstar in his NYCO debut. Opening on November 8 and running until November 22, this opera also boasts an "Artist Dialouge (on November 12) at the MUSEUM OF SEX! Fo'reals!

Check out this clip below for a preview. Highlight? Daniel Okulitch says "panties are dropping" and our Pavlovian panties (vintage Cadolle, of course) drop with it.

Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream @ la Scala: Came for Carsen, Stayed for the 20" d1ldo. Viva Shakespeare!!!

There are conductors who, for some reason, get that most disheartening slur branded on their baton -- "workingman conductor". Or, as they like to say here, "routinier". Appropriately, the slur ends up being attached to the undeserving names of perfectly fine conductors. Because the same people who like to badmouth a masterpiece of elegance, grace and subtlety like L'Elisir d'Amore (everything they told you about L'Elisir -- or Don Pasquale for that matter -- is wrong, but this is the topic of a future post) like to slam perfectly fine, if definitely non-flashy, maestri.

Andrew Davis is one of those conductors -- more often than not your usual alleged connoisseur of opera who doesn't really get it will roll his (generally beady) eyes sighing some sort of dismissive remark about Sir Andrew. Who in fact, as he so often demonstrates whenever he steps on the podium, and as he showed last night at la Scala conducting A Midsummer Night 'sDream -- is a very gifted conductor. He has the gift of music -- he engages the listener. He's wary of the corny effects, understands deeply his scores, and some composers -- Britten, for example -- he simply gets it.

All due respect to a mostly excellent cast, last night's success is in large part Davis's work.

Anyway: as the curtain dropped on last night's Teatro alla Scala premiere of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, it was obvious, even before the numerous curtain calls and tonsil-busting "bravi", that the night had been a rousing success for all involved (even Robert Carsen himself, the director, showed up, and this is a vintage production, like from the Bush years -- Bush the Father years). When the cast and chorus eventually disappeared backstage for good and all the applause in the audience stopped, a riotous, congratulatory roar exploded from backstage and echoed around the theater -- a little backstage impromptu party, the singers in their hidden, not-so-private victory lap.

Carsen's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was seen for the first time at Scala last night, though it's ages old, already shown from Aix-en-Provence to Barcelona's Liceu spanning over two decades, and was released on DVD a few years ago (you can get the DVD here)

The libretto (written by Britten and bff Peter Pears) is indeed packed with love and lust. Carsen's production -- he's possibly our second-favorite living Canadian, after Alice Munro -- goes unexpectedly sexual without discretion. Throughout the course of the opera, we witness an explosive orgasm (Tytania from Bottom's prosthetic), a cat fight (between Helena and Hermia), and let's be frank...what more can be said about an opera that mentions the word "cock" or "love juice" in some form or another half-a-dozen times? Opera Chic wouldn't have been surprised to hear some "bukkake" interpolation in the libretto.

But then, Carsen somehow kept a detached, straightforward interpretation of the overt erotic themes (Opera Chic still recalls the hotness from his Semele and Traviata orgies and his Salome striptease -- he's a director who likes his gangbangs, and more power to him for that). And yes we'd be remiss to not mention Matthew Rose's 20" strap-on that would make Dirk Diggler blush [link NSFW], though you'll have to keep reading to hear about that!

Hawt Man Walking: Daniel Okulitch in Fort Worth

(Daniel Okulitch as Joseph De Rocher in Dead Man Walking. Photo: Trudie Lee courtesy Calgary Opera)

Fort Worth opera, that little gem in north-west Texas, will this month launch their 2009 Opera Festival. Sandwiched between crowd-pleasers Carmen and Cenerentola comes Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, featuring Daniel Okulitch as death row inmate, Joseph De Rocher. As if there wasn't reason enough to catch a glimpse Okulitch's rising star, the performance comes with a caution via the FWO website stating, "Contains nudity and adult situations". Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!

Dead Man Walking is American composer Jake Heggie's first opera (libretto by ~kiss of the spider woman~ Terrence McNally), based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, is about her time spent with death row inmates in Louisiana in the 1980s.

The death row, convicted murderer Joseph De Rocher is sung by Canadian bass baritone, Daniel Okulitch, etched-up with tattoos (but we're frankly hoping Texas will omit the drawn-on swastika like the one used at the 2006 Calgary Opera shown above). Joining Okulitch and his boxer-briefs is Robynne Redmon as Sister Helen Prejean and Sheryl Woods as Mrs. Patrick De Rocher. The FWO performance opens on May 2 and then repeats on May 10.

Daniel, we can't take our gaze off that secksay scar, and are wondering if you sustained it on death row from being shanked, or it was just a nasty case of appendicitis. *prays for shanking anecdote*

Naked Guy Comes To La Scala (Via Vancouver)

Daniel Okulitch Comes To Milan