Opera News & Press

Opera on Tap in the News

Alex V. Cook, author, critic and journalist weighs in with his Opera on Tap experience.

Country Roads Magazine

May 2008

Alex V. Cook

Heading down to New Orleans for Opera on Tap posed a number of obstacles, not the least of which was finding the place.  I was told that it’s host site, the Rusty Nail was the old Mermaid Lounge, and I figured I could find that on auto-pilot, considering the number of shows I’d seen in that dingy hall over the years. 

The Rusty Nail is radically different.  While Mermaid took advantage of its remote location to split eardrums into the wee hours, there was a sign behind the bar at the Rusty Nail that said “Band cannot be loud or you will not be booked again.” An older woman was seated at the bar, trying to get her martini just right, finally acquiring the bottle of olive juice to decant out the precise level of dirt.  They served chicken quesadillas, and the place was smoke free, for at least this evening anyway.

But this displacement of time and place was the least of my hurdles; opera itself posed a much larger quandary. Opera is touted as being the intersection of many arts, where the finest of music and theatre and dance all converge. But to me, it’s always seemed a lot like a blockbuster movie—a lot of money and time put toward something I found only moderately entertaining. Opera has always struck me as something its audience used as a badge of status; a reason to get the fur out of cold storage and to thrown on a tux. I know this bias has more to do with me than it does opera itself, and I was hoping this event would turn me around.

The room started to fill up about twenty minutes before the show began. Nervous singers scurried around, moving the piano, setting out props. The young singers from Loyola were charmingly caught up in a maelstrom of nervousness and ego as the room reached its density. Kenneth Papp, an opera buff and regular at Opera on Tap gave me the lowdown. “I like it because it’s an informal place to meet up with other opera fans,” he said. “When you go to the opera, it’s where little old ladies break out the furs.  The whole place smells like mothballs.  Here you get to relax, have a drink and enjoy the singers.” I told him my trepidations about the art form, that I didn’t really get opera and he smiled, “Maybe you will in this setting.”

The singers took to the stage with little fanfare and launched into the first section, the “Papageno/Papagena” duet from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.  Casey Candebat donned a feathered Mardi Gras mask, Sheila McDermott a shawl and proceeded to fill the air with glorious sound.  Jayme Hogan-Yarbro later in the program delivered a powerful aria from Franz Lehár’s Paganini that literally shook the walls of the room.  It was rather awe-inspiring to hear a voice that poised and powerful close up like that, feeling its physical impact.

As in regular operas, though, the divas stole the show.  Maria Elena Altany, resplendent in a summery yellow dress, delivered a highly charged performance of “Monica’s Waltz” from Menotti’s 1946 opera The Medium. In it, Monica, the daughter of a charlatan medium, sings her love to Toby, a mute serving boy, ending with the ironic key line, “but you have such a beautiful voice.”  That was the moment where it pivoted for me.  The core of this music was the joy of singing, belting out with dramatic power or drawing in with careful restraint.  Later in the program, Sara E. Kelly looked as if she was going to actually cry during her Belini aria.

The finest moment though was where comedy, singing and audience participation met in the famed “Anvil Chorus” from Verdi's Il trovatore. Volunteers were sought to pound on a gumbo pot and cast iron skillet as Candebat conducted the audience, having us clap in time with the anvils as they belted out Verdi’s tribute to hard work, wine, women and song.  It was sweet, inspiring, and great fun. Seeing the singers congregate and flit around the bar was like having a backstage pass, while the immediacy of the small stage was akin to having season ticket holder seats.  As I made my way out, Kenneth asked me, “So has it made you a convert?” I replied that I still was skeptical about tuxes and concert halls, but barroom arias have my strongest endorsement.

Opera on Tap started in 2005 at Freddy’s Bar in New York City as a way to give emerging singers a chance to perform and break down the stereotypes about opera. New Orleans is the first franchise of this event. Accompanist and Chorus Master Carol Rausch thinks New Orleans is the perfect place for it. “Oh, some purists might object. But it seems like the way to go in this city, which was the first on the North American continent to have opera—New Orleanians date their opera going back to May 22, 1796! The current company was formed in 1943, making it a ‘senior citizen,’ so it's good to freshen things up!”