The season opener is a double bill of two short operas that are rarely, if ever, done back to back. One is an Italian opera staple, “Pagliacci” by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The other, “The Seven Deadly Sins” by Kurt Weill, casts a ballerina and a singer as two competing sides of the same person.
Austrian soprano Ute Gfrerer is making her North American theatrical debut in the singing role of Anna in “The Seven Deadly Sins.”
She’s sung the role in concert and performed it in Europe, but never with a dancer actually performing as the “dreamer” side of Anna’s personality, she said. And never with a cabaret show added to the early rehearsals.
Gfrerer, channeling Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich, teamed up with Virginia Opera conductor Adam Turner, playing piano, for “A Sinful Night with Ute and Adam” in September at Dominion Arts Center’s Rhythm Hall.
Turner was the one who decided to pair the two operas in a two-hour program. “Pagliacci” is only 75 minutes. For something new to open the show, the 35-minute Weill opera was perfect.
“We’ve never done an opera by Weill,” he said. “There’s a great one-act that I had learned when I was younger, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins.’ It really resonated with me as a young person. What better way to get millennials in, to give them a taste of opera. ‘Pagliacci’ is a warhorse, in the top 10 of opera. We’ll do that in the second act. Let’s get something special and thrilling in the first act.”
Weill’s piece was commissioned by a wealthy businessman who wanted an opera that would feature his wife’s dancing. Weill wrote the music for the singing voice of his own wife, Lotte Lenya. The plot drew from their travels as they fled Berlin in 1933, after Nazis took over the country.
To cast the leading role, Turner turned to the Kurt Weill Foundation, which pointed him to “this wonderful Austrian soprano who now lives in America.” Gfrerer agreed to both the opera and a cabaret evening.
“Within 30 minutes she had an entire program,” Turner recalled. “She created it based on ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ and didn’t use any music from the opera. It was so clever and creative. We had such a blast.”
Singing the role of Anna requires a voice that can handle opera and more, Turner and Gfrerer agreed.
“It has a unique set of requirements,” he explained. “You have to be willing to use your voice in nontraditional ways but have operatic capacity. She is not afraid of making bold choices in the way she delivers a song line. Sometimes opera singers are hesitant to play with their voices. She has no fear. She throws herself into the character.”
Gfrerer said the words are as important as the music in a Weill opera.
“He used the best lyricists of his time. All the words are great. They are smart. They are deep. They are witty, just perfect,” she explained.
“You have to approach Weill through the word, not so much the vocal line. You can come from the word and the voice will do what it needs to do. … It’s not Italian opera where you’re singing long phrases on one vowel. It’s making music with the word and not against it.”
Both of the operas tell stories of sad reality that overcomes dreams. In “Pagliacci,” the clown’s happy face cannot protect him. In “Seven Deadly Sins,” the practical Anna, sung by Gfrerer, forces the dreamer Anna, danced by Gabrielle Zucker, into compromises that break both their spirits.
Director Keturah Stickann unites them by infusing characters from one show into the background of the other.
“It was Adam’s idea to pair them, and Keturah’s idea how to do it,” Gfrerer said. “It’s totally unique to this production.
“It’s fantastic. I tell you, I have seldom in my life as a singer encountered such a great team.”