The company's first twenty-five years were celebrated with a 1975 production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, based on the first play in the comic trilogy by Beaumarchais. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, based on the second play in the same Beaumarchais series, will this year mark the Ithaca Opera's second quarter-century.

The Marriage of Figaro is an opera buffa that consists of set situations with which Mozart's eighteenth-century audience would have been quite familiar. Opera buffa was as popular then as musical theatre is today. In order to bridge the gap of changing sensibilities and reproduce the same familiarity for today's audience, the characters in this production speak directly to the audience. Deborah Karner, whose guest directorship of the IOA's 1990 production The Marriage of Figaro convinced the Board of Directors to grant her a permanent position as Artistic Director, returns as Stage Director for this production a decade later. She considers Figaro a timeless work about all different kinds of human relationships and emotions: growing up, power, love, anger, jealousy...the list goes on. With such a moving story and the powerful music that tells it, Karner chose to make the singers the focus of the production. "In my ten years of directing, I have come to trust the music and the performers. And this production for me is about voices and the characters of Mozart and Da Ponte," she says.

And the singers deserve to be the focus. Leading the cast in the title role is Canadian baritone Robert deVrij. He has performed extensively in Canada, Italy, Austria, and the United States and has recently played the villains in The Tales of Hoffman and Don Giovanni. Joining this Ithaca Opera newcomer are several veterans, including Deborah Montgomery as Susanna. An Ithaca local and Professor of Voice at Ithaca College, she has sung with the Syracuse Symphony and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and had lead roles in the IOA's productions of The Rake's Progress and The Fairy Queen, the latter of which Karner also directed. Count Almaviva is played by another IC professor, Randie Blooding. His past roles include the lead in Don Giovanni, Valentine in Faust, and the Count in Figaro. He has more than 300 performances of this role under his belt! Julie Rockhold brings her performance of the Countess from Philadelphia, where she just sang it with the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia.

But this complex tale of romance and intrigue has many important characters: those four are complemented and complicated by at least seven more. Barbara Conrad, who has performed at the Met and appears on PBS this month, is Marcellina. Michael O'Hearn, who plays Bartolo, also performs in NYC, with the City Opera. And another Philadelphian, Stacy Karas, brings to Ithaca her role there as Cherubino. Stacy has recently played Mrs. Nolan in The Medium and La Badessa in Swor Angelica and looks forward to appearing in the world premiere of The Bottom of the Ocean this spring. Rounding out the large cast are several other locals: Ivy Gaibel as Barberina, Gary Moulsdale as Curzio, Brian Bohrer as Basilio, and Kevin Doherty as Antonio. Gaibel teaches voice at the Community School of Music and Arts and is making her operatic debut. Moulsdale is a graduate student at Cornell and played King Kaspar in the IOA's December production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. Bohrer and Doherty are both IC students and recently appeared in the college's production of Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring.

Supporting the lead singers are the people involved in the many other aspects of presenting an opera. The Conductor for this production is Patrick Hansen, Director of Opera and Musical Theatre at Ithaca College and newly-appointed Music Director for Opera Festival of New Jersey. Figaro is his first IOA production but one of five operas he's currently working on simultaneously. The others are La Voix Humaine with Judith Kellock for Cornell's late-April Poulenc Festival, an IC double bill of the baroque pastiche The Many Faces of Love and Swor Angelica, and the world premiere of Frank Lewin's Burning Bright in New Jersey. Despite such a full plate, he's had time to help recruit many talented local musicians for the orchestra and chorus, who play and sing "almost all the notes that Mozart wrote," he says. He explains that the Met is just about the only opera company to ever perform The Marriage of Figaro without any cuts, but the IOA audience this April is treated to an exceptionally almost-complete version this spring.

This production is also the reunion of a famous local behind-the-scenes duo: Set Designer Victoria Romanoff and Lighting Designer Craig Eagleson, who have collaborated in the past on such IOA productions as Dido and Aeneas and The Rake's Progress. Romanoff has worked on the design of more than forty local buildings, including the Clinton House and the Station Restaurant, and has designed the sets for several past IOA productions. Eagleson is an architect at Cornell as well as Technical Director of the Ithaca Ballet. Joining them is another IOA backstage veteran: costume coordinator Arlene Lyon. The full, period costumes designed to highlight the singers come from the Tri-Cities Opera, just as they did ten years ago when Lyon served as costume coordinator for the IOA's last production of Figaro.

In 1966, Ithaca Mayor Hunna Johns proclaimed January 17-22 'Opera Week' in honor of the Ithaca Civic Opera Association's production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. "Many of the people in our community are not aware of the professional caliber of this organization and the tedious planning of a show," the proclamation stated. "Show these people you appreciate their efforts and give them a 'full house'." There is no official 'Opera Week' this year, but there should be a spiritual 'Opera Year' in honor of the Ithaca Opera Association's fifty great years.

"For opera to be a vital art form in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, it's got to have more fans. It's got to have more composers, it's got to have more repertoire, it's got to have more people understanding and liking it." So said Gary Race in 1984 (Maraniss, Wendy. "Gary Race sings the praises of opera". The Ithaca Journal. April 12, 1984), echoing the raison d'être of the Ithaca Opera Association. So come on out and be a fan of opera who will help it continue into the twenty-first century: see what fifty years of local civic opera has produced at the Ithaca Opera's fiftieth anniversary production of The Marriage of Figaro April 1 and 2, 2000 at the Statler Auditorium on the Cornell campus. Tickets: $24.00 for adults, $22.00 for seniors 65 and older, and $12.00 for students of all ages are available at the Clinton House Ticket Center.

Melissa Kastler

Last modified: 2000 March 21

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