Chicago Fringe Opera / Recenzii

It’s a heartening development, as well as a testament to the bounty of local talent, youthful audacity, and artistic determination, that some of the most inspired opera in Chicago these days is being done by small storefront companies. Witness the current production of Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony being presented by Chicago Fringe Opera. Performed in a tiny gallery at the Lill Street Art Center in Ravenswood, Friday night’s performance was a knockout, with sensational performances by the two principals, impressive musical values, and ingenious direction that made a virtue out of the tight space. With this strong and compelling production, Chicago Fringe Opera is providing local audiences with one of the opera highlights of the year. There are two more performances this weekend and this show is not to be missed.

True to its name, Chicago Fringe Opera likes to rummage around the outskirts of the repertory for smaller-scaled, English-language music theater works that have been neglected locally, presenting them in site-specific settings where "in your face" is taken literally. So it is with the company's stark, vest-pocket production of composer Philip Glass' "In the Penal Colony," with which it is closing its second season this week. The chamber opera is receiving only its second staging in Chicago after director JoAnne Akalaitis' well-remembered local premiere production at the Court Theatre in 2000.

Chicago Fringe Opera has quickly made its mark on the local music scene by presenting edgy, serious works strongly performed and scrupulously rehearsed, such as Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony and Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar. The feisty, upstart company put the drama aside for a lighter evening on Saturday by serving up William Bolcom’s one-act comedy Lucrezia at the Chopin Theater. Inspired by Machiavelli’s story “La Mandragola,” Bolcom updates the comic tale to 1970s Argentina in his 2008 echt-zarzuela in which the alluring title character outplays a trio of not-so-bright conspiratorial male suitors to get their money.

Chicago Fringe Opera shows off its cast in a warm-up cabaret act of William Bolcom songs in the Chopin Theatre’s cozy underground lounge, then moves into the adjacent black box theater for a deliciously droll production of this one-hour romp of an opera, scored for two pianos and five singers. Composed by Bolcom in 2007—and based on a 16th-century play by Machiavelli called La Mandragola—and benefiting greatly from Mark Campbell’s hilarious lyrics, it’s the story of a woman who likes sex and gets it, along with everything else she wants, by outwitting the men in her life, including her husband and lover. Strong comic performances all-round, and some especially nice singing by Matthan Ring Black, as the fixer with an elixir. As she should, Ashley Kay Armstrong, in the title role, rules.

As the holidays come charging in this time of year as they always do, some of us lucky ones are reminded of our forever dysfunctional families and their baggage (literal and figurative). The Long Christmas Dinner holds no exception for troubled families with its dramatic one-act plotline. I was treated to an evening overflowing with emotion and a winding story by the Fringe Opera Company’s production of The Long Christmas Dinner at the Chopin Theatre. The first act treated the audience to a series of “parlor songs” from the singers, evoking an environment of Christmas Eve in a 1930’s parlor. Each song was punctually different, from the chuckle-inducing “Refrigerator 1957” by Ralph Vaughan Williams sung by mezzo-soprano Naomi Brigell, to the emotional “Sleep” by Ivor Gurney sung by tenor Jonathan Zeng. Another noteworthy performance was the mesmerizing Anatoliy Torchinksiy at the piano for his performance of “Ballad Op 10 No. 1” by Johannes Brahms.

You know, nothing says Christmas like Paul Hindemith. Actually, few people would associate the severe German composer with holiday conviviality and celebration. Yet in 1963, Hindemith wrote an opera, The Long Christmas Dinner, based upon Thornton Wilder’s play of the same name. And in Chicago Fringe Opera’s brilliantly effective staging Friday night at the Chopin Theater, Hindemith’s little-known, one-act work is revealed as a small masterpiece and one of the composer’s finest inspirations. Running a concise 49 minutes, the opera depicts a 90-year span in the life of the Bayard family in the form of a single continuous Christmas dinner encompassing four generations. Wilder wrote the libretto adapting his play, and the facility and economy with which the opera handles eleven different characters (Hindemith calls for three singers to double roles) is an extraordinary achievement, with each etched in quick yet effective brushstrokes.

Chicago Fringe Opera has emerged as the most consistently impressive of the city’s storefront opera companies. The upstart troupe discerningly chooses edgy, contemporary works and pulls them off successfully with thoughtful casting and modest but effective stagings. Such was the case again with Laura Kaminsky’s one-act opera As One, heard Friday night in its Chicago premiere at the Center on Halsted where it runs through Sunday. With a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, As One examines issues of gender identity, as represented by the title transexual character Hannah–a young man who is cautiously transitioning into his female persona. Hannah’s conflicted nature is represented by two singers: Hannah Before (Jonathan Wilson) and Hannah After (Samantha Attaguile). The concise 75-minute opera moves breezily between vignettes of Hannah’s life and the growing realization that he is really a woman. Among the young Hannah’s early key moments are his wearing a woman’s blouse underneath a shirt at age 12 while delivering papers, and secretly–and humorously–researching the word “transexual” at a library.

As One, a chamber opera for two voices and string quartet composed by Laura Kaminsky and with a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, conveys the experiences of a transgender protagonist named Hannah, as she seeks to reconcile her internal identity with the outside world. First commissioned and developed by American Opera Projects and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014, these performances by Chicago Fringe Opera are As One’s Chicago premiere. Kaminsky’s conception of the piece is intriguing and its strongest attribute. Hannah Before is sung by a baritone, here the resonant Jonathan Wilson; Hannah After is sung by a mezzo-soprano, here the steely-voiced Samantha Attaguile. These cisgendered singers take turns relaying Hannah’s thoughts and experiences in this autobiographical, journal-like work. We benefit from the rich and often messy psychology of hearing both perspectives throughout the opera: early on Hannah After serves as a reassuring “It Gets Better” presence for Hannah Before, and later in the opera Hannah Before keeps Hannah After aware of her past.

Isabelle Eberhardt, the real-life protagonist of composer Missy Mazzoli's and librettist Royce Vavrek's chamber opera "Song from the Uproar," was at least a century ahead of her time. During her brief life, the Swiss author struck a blow for female independence that her contemporaries regarded as subversive but that feels very much relevant in today's society. Though not without problems, Mazzoli's first opera (2012) remains a striking piece of contemporary music theater, and one must be grateful to Chicago Fringe Opera for presenting the local premiere, in an absorbing production playing at the Preston Bradley Center in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

Chicago is currently awash in debut operas by major young composers staged by upstart companies. Third Eye Theatre Ensemble is presenting Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters, which runs through November 6. And Friday night Chicago Fringe Opera gave the Chicago premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar at the Preston Bradley Center. Fringe Opera scoring a striking success with their performances of Philip Glass’s In the Penal Colony last spring. Compared to the claustrophobic gallery for that show, the wide fourth-floor space at the Uptown venue must have seemed like the Met. Premiered in 2012 in New York, Song from the Uproar tells of Isabelle Eberhardt, a Swiss journalist and explorer who lived from 1877-1904. Her short but packed life hits a Lotto Powerball of zeitgeist-friendly themes: a feminist pioneer and anti-colonial activist; a convert to Islam; and a woman who cross-dresses to pass as a man in Algeria. Add her debut published story written at 18 about necrophilia and her death in a flash flood at age 27, and the material was clearly impossible to resist for composer Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.