TOSCA Shepherd soloist auditions

Artistic director Ward Holmquist and director of education/children’s chorus master Paula Winans audition young soloists for Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s fall 2009 production of Puccini’s TOSCA.

Visit Bayreuth in Your Bathrobe

Ward Holmquist, Lyric's Artistic Director

One of the most exciting applications of web communication is the attendance of live opera performances via streaming audio/video. This summer you can attend Bayreuth’s performance of DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜREMBERG as a live streaming event for $77.

Finally, I can eat lunch (and dinner) while I’m enjoying one of Wagner’s unending opuses!

On the firing of Paul Horsley, The KC Star classical music and dance critic

It feels a little odd for me to be writing in support of a critic; after all, performers and critics aren’t supposed to care for each other, much less associate. As artistic director of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Paul reviewed my work at least four times a year, and I read, along with everyone else, what he thought of our artistic efforts. In my business, we all disagree on whether reviews significantly influence ticket sales, but we all use every good word ever written about us to promote our organizations, our projects and our individual careers. We crave the imprimatur of the critic almost as much as the applause of the audience.

Paul is a gifted musician with a probing intellect and a deep love for the art forms he covers. I greatly admire the writing style he has developed, which allows him to digest performances and submit cogent reviews before we performers have finished our post-performance festivities or our evening’s patrons have gone to bed. His other, in depth articles, reveal his deep, ever-widening insight into the purpose of art and artists in our society, and his thoughtful approach to educating his readers. I was not always pleased to see in print what he thought of one of our productions, but I rarely had fundamental disagreements with his assessments.

A somewhat anomalous vein (for a critic) I see running through his work and in our on- and off-record conversations is his humanity. Perhaps copious scathing, snide personal attacks would have made his writing more controversially appealing to some; Paul seems to suffer the curse of being a man who actually respects and likes other human beings, and is liked and respected in return.

Those who attend and support the rich, broad arts scene in Kansas City will have to look to sources other than the Star for credible coverage of this important area of their lives, and another local paper will eventually go under for neglecting what should be its primary mission – covering its own town in a professional manner.

This is an epitaph for only the Kansas City Star portion of Paul’s fine career in the arts. I am certain that he, and the other worthy arts writers, will find homes as new, economically viable reportage and commentary vehicles come into being.

A plea for cogitation – “Use your noodle!”

From Ward Holmquist, artistic director

As regular attendees of Lyric Opera of Kansas City performances over the last decade will know, productions with greater intellectual or less familiar musical depths are sparingly interspersed between fare that is more easily appreciated by the uninitiated to what can be considered an unknown art form by many KC patrons. This programming choice is intentional, and by no means a put-down of those who might be coerced to lay down hard-earned coin of the realm to cross our threshold and partake of our goods with no prior knowledge of what is in store for them. For goodness’ sake, as a small town Minnesotan and the son of a grocer, I didn’t become enthralled by this art form to such an extent that I would dedicate my entire professional career to it after witnessing Parsifal, either live or on recording.

Like any pleasurable hobby, pastime, obsession or affliction, opera seems to grab folks indiscriminately. Before they know it, they’re comparing Gedda and Björling, Pavarotti and Domingo, Zeffirelli and Taymor, buying CDs or downloading tracks at odd hours of the night, and subscribing to arcane listservers. It just happens, and it’s far less detrimental to character than gambling or whoring (either actual or virtual) and so far is not listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a sin of either classification (although my Papa Benedict XVI is clearly not enthralled with my choice of livelihood). Sometimes what we put on is the thinking person’s equivalent of the Monster Truck Show at the local arena or state fair grounds.

Since it is an American’s habit in this era to rush through his or her multi-tasked life, we arts producers have accommodated ourselves to the requirements of our potential constituencies. We offer our fare from the gods in modern, eye-catching, pre-digested, synopsized and Wikified commercial bytes, calculated to attract and elicit a “two thumbs up” response from our paying clientele that will result in a season subscription and at least minimal donation for a “privileged society/free parking pass for performance” membership.

But let’s be frank. We really want more from you – much more.

We chose our dubious professions because we hold insane, irrational opinions of the artistic, cultural and redemptive capacities of our beloved art forms. We are more sincere than the Fàtima children, and more enthusiastic than Carrottop. What’s more, we’d like you to join our number.

And we’re not telling you the whole truth. Most of the works we present were not just meant to entertain you for the duration of the performance. As a matter of fact, these works were usually labors of love, created in a era without residual earnings, copyright laws, MTV or any kind of file sharing (other than that of communal farriers).

These works were meant to last longer than your Izod, your iPod or your IRA. They were created with timeless, human struggles in mind, and they are meant to take some time to digest, understand and appreciate.

Please remember that the next time you go to an arts event and see something you “don’t like.” It is possible – as I have repeatedly discovered in my own life, to my embarrassment – that the creators/recreators have placed something before you for your examination that could change something about what you think about an aspect of life – perhaps your own life – if you open yourself to the possibility of your own change, growth and evolution.

As my mother told me in my formative years when I was acting on a blind, previously developed impulse rather than by evaluating the situation with the fresh, new, unfamiliar facts at hand – “Ward, use your noodle!

Mom, I’m still trying…

To boo (or not to boo)

From Ward Holmquist, artistic director

Something extraordinary happened during the fourth performance of our new AIDA production on Friday night. Someone booed – twice. The first instance came at the end of the Consecration Scene, a dimly lit scene in Act 1 which includes the sacrifice of a virgin after her partial disrobing (above the waist). Clearly a moment not in Verdi’s original conception of the scene, but (IMHO) a highly theatrical visual setting worthy of an Indiana Jones movie (the original, I believe). The scene ended, and a disapproving male rang out with a loud “boo!”

The second followed when the lights came up on the following scene – Amneris in her boudoir, lying on her large bed with a pair of scantily-clad male lovers keeping her company. The offended attendee announced his disapproval again, followed quickly by another patron contradicting by shouting “Boo you!

The offended patron was not heard from again for the rest of the evening, and the standing ovation of the audience at the end lead us to believe that in general our presentation was well received.

In conversation with veteran KC Symphony musicians during intermission, no one could ever remember a Lyric performance eliciting such a response.

It would seem that we have struck a nerve of some with this production. There are those who are utterly comfortable with all the operatic murders on stage throughout the repertory, but never wish to see anything that anyone might consider sexual.

While I respect people’s differing types of morality, I find this hypersensitivity to common sexual expression and total acceptance of assault and murder on the stage disingenuous in the extreme. Are we a people who accept the taking of human life as acceptable, but sexual contact as unacceptable? Doesn’t that sound foolish – and just plain wrong.

Opera as theater depicts the reality of human life. Attempting to sanitize its portrayal is just another instance of our insecure, hypercritical views about aspects of who we are that we are uncomfortable with.

One of theater’s chief tasks is to help us (or force us) to look at ourselves in a clear, focused and polished mirror with revelatory lighting.

And, just in case someone felt that our portrayal of Egyptian court life is inaccurate – Rameses II fathered over 100 children (and had a line of condoms named after him).