Mozart and Chow Mein: A Day at the Opera

For the last two months fifty Harvard singers and musicians have been rehearsing Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, an opera that people who know about music insist is too difficult for undergraduates to do. Last Saturday afternoon a small group of students, some of whom were still in grade school when the last grand opera was performed here, wandered down to Leverett House to find out what makes staging a grand opera so challenging.

Isaiah (Jack) Jackson, Philip Heckscher, and Sandy Leon--three roommates from Eliot House who are, respectively, conductor, director, and assistant producer of Cosi--quickly greeted their visitors. After saying yes, they certainly could show why Mozart was so much grander than chamber opera or Gilbert and Sullivan (both of which are presented regularly and successfully at Harvard, they excused themselves temporarily and hurried off to move chairs.

The Uneducated Audience

Cosi's performers expect their performance to go over well with what they term Harvard's "uneducated but intelligent" audience. Last Saturday, however, their audience was about twenty students eating lunch with their dates, and they seem more uninterested than uneducated as the chorus and orchestra trooped in for their two o'clock rehearsal. The musicians pushed tables out of the way and attached the apron to the stage. As the students finished eating, everyone in the room except a few professional singers was moving chairs.

"We can't expect professionals to work on the set," Phil explained. "Although everyone else is painting flats tonight, professionals cause their own special problems. Jack tried to cast as many undergraduates as possible, but Cosi needs six principals. (Gilbert and Sullivan has only one or two principals.) Also, his orchestra is much more complex and much harder to hold and rehearse than a G&S orchestra. In G&S the musicians trade off, but they can't here--the parts are far too difficult. In fact, everything in the show is difficult."

Phil said he thought the best by-product of the show was the Camaraderie that has developed during the five weeks of rehearsals. "Everyone has been working so hard that I couldn't believe it when no one showed up the day after Thanksgiving," he added. "I cried."

The singers had stopped moving chairs and were singing. Phil ran back on stage to correct some shoddy blocking, while Jack turned to interpret the mood of a scene to his musicians. "Don Alfonso comes on saying 'It's terrible,'" Jack said, looking as if something terrible had happened. "The ladies ask him what's happening and he finally tells them that the men have gone off to war. Now the audience knows this, but the women don't: Don Alfonso has made a deal with the men to do everything possible to test the women's fidelity within twenty-four hours. If they're faithful, he pays the men one hundred pieces of gold."

One of the violinists made a noise of protest.

"What are they?" Jack asked. "Guilders? Well then, one hundred guilders. Anyway, if the women aren't faithful, the men pay Don Alfonso one hundred guilders. The story is humorous, but this is some of the most deadly serious farewell music I've ever heard."

Jack went back to the music, jabbing his baton at a singer who had lost the tempo and nodding and smiling as friends came into the dining room to see how Mozart was faring. The atmosphere was extremely friendly and informal, rather more like a rehearsal for a children's recital than for a grand opera whose cast had to practice its lines and blocking and learn to keep in tempo by opening nights, now only four days away.

Greg Sandow, one of the opera's two suitors and one of the two undergraduate principals, came off the stage to explain why any Harvard show is hard to put on, why a House show is harder than a show at the Loeb, and why a grand opera is harder than anything else.

"It's easy to see why," Greg said. "The singers sing harder and the orchestra plays harder. Co-ordinating this production is almost impossible. It's not as hard as Verdi or Wagner, but the music never quite fits with the singing. Still, Mozart is real opera. And I want to be an opera singer when I grow up."

Greg, having missed his cue, ran back on stage to sing a belated "What makes you think that women are capable of cuckolding" at Don Alfonso. "See?" Holly Worthen, a chorus member, exclaimed. "This is eight times as funny as either Gilbert or Sullivan! The music is better and the plot's ridiculous, but it's a self-conscious kind of ridiculous. People are always going off on the side of the stage and saying, 'Isn't this absurd?'"

Miss Alabama

Although Cosi's producers speak of the "professionals" in their cast, their oldest performer is under 30. The female leads are a Cambridge housewife who studies voice, and a recent Miss Alabama who forsook the South to attend Boston's New England Conservatory of Music.

"We're all soaking up vast quantities of experience together," said one of the male leads, tenor John Stewart, who also qualifies as a professional. John was graduated in 1962 from Yale, where they never attempted grand opera, and is now a graduate student at the Conservatory and a teaching assistant at Brown. Although he praised the production, he expressed some major reservations.

"I joined this production because I wanted operatic experience under low-pressured conditions," he said. "But the trouble with this performance is that the demands of operatic singing are just too great for undergraduates. Most of the people have had very slight experience with this or any opera--Jack, who first had the idea of doing Cosi, hadn't conducted it before, and Phil hadn't directed anything before. Phil is a first-rate director, but he's young and inexperienced."

Greg was off-stage again, still comparing Mozart to G&S. "G&S can carry a show on cleverness alone, but here you have to practice. The orchestra was even told to practice at home. When this performance was announced, a lot of people laughed; I hear the last Mozart done here was terrible." Greg grimaced and then laughed.

Not Fastidious

"But if this comes off well," he continued, "people might be willing to try it again. Despite the troubles. We've had trouble getting in time with the orchestra. The orchestra sits on the same level as the audience, so all you can hear is the orchestra. And this room has cork walls and is lined with tapestries; it's dead. But the show should be well received. We've got lots of opera fans around here who aren't fastidious enough musicians to be put off by this performance."

"This opera is made for the audience," Tom Webber, a sophomore who plays Don Alfonso, Mozart's embodiment of deception, broke in. "If they're alert, they'll get it." Tom gets lots of chances to play directly to his audience while being deceptive, coming to the front of the stage and telling them how deceptive he is. "As anyone can see, I'm not bashful," he said. "I enjoy singing and acting. This opera is close to drama. The recitatives have been cut and dialogue substituted so that we don't have to sing on sixteenth-notes. Doing the opera in English was an excellent idea, although in this place it's difficult to hear English even with your best diction."

"Have patience, consider our qualifications," sang Greg and John to the housewife and Miss Alabama. Archie Epps, who convinced Jack, Phil, and Sandy to bring their opera to Leverett House, was in the back of the room listening to every word. "At least we can hear those boys," he said. "I usually have to sit back on my hands and let the undergraduates"--he motioned at Jack and Phil--"make their own mistakes."

It was after four o'clock and the orchestra was taking a break. "I have a date at five," one Cliffie chafed. "He's a violinist, too. I guess he'll wait. He's in G&S."

"G&S!" Jack exclaimed.

"You know, a lot of us left G&S to play with you."

"Well," Jack answered, "if you know some more violinists send them around. We need them."

Soon the timpani appeared for the first time. The kitchen staff walked into the dining room with dinner. Phil opened the window to let out the smell of chow mein and knocked Don Alfonso's sword off the window. One of the singers started and flubbed her line. Archie Epps hissed slightly.

"I can't consider doing another opera this year," Jack was telling Archie. "But I may do something larger or smaller or later next year, depending on how this goes. Puccini would be larger, Pergolesi would be smaller, Weil would be later."

"Opera would be three times as hard to produce in the Loeb," Walter Jewell, the show's producer, commented. "Here we can concentrate on the show itself rather than on technical aspects. This is a perfect example of kids with no experience creating something big. This is light, gay, happy--not formal--opera."

"Leverett House, rather then the Leverett House Opera Society, plans to do more opera," Archie continued. "Master Gill suggests we try a series of Mozarts. Gill has sung professionally, of course; I think he's sung Don Alfonso. He had been thinking of doing Cosi when Jack mentioned it.

By now, the whole cast was on stage for the finale. Jack was urging his orchestra on, Philip was blocking from the back of the hall, and Sandy was yelling at a boy who had neglected to find some workers to raise the stage. The residents of Leverett House had come out of their rooms to eat. The Kitchen staff was watching intently as the orchestra played louder and louder.

"I couldn't stop kinds from wanderin here this afternoon," one green lady said to another. "They said they wanted to see what an opera looked like. And then they liked it so much they wanted to stay."

"I'll never come see this show," whispered one boy to his date. "I've had to listen to it every day for the past two months."