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CIM Opera Theater:
Cendrillon with Cara Consilvio

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by Mike Telin 

For centuries the tale of Cinderella has been told and retold around the world. This week the magical fairytale will be brought to life when CIM Opera Theater presents Jules Massenet’s charming Cendrillon on Friday, November 11 at 7:30 pm and Sunday afternoon at 3:00 pm in Kulas Hall. Cara Consilvio is the guest director and Harry Davidson conducts the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. Click here to read a synopsis and to purchase tickets.

Cara Consilvio leads a multifaceted career as a director and producer of opera, theater, and film as well as dance and choreography. She has produced and directed numerous tribute videos, promotional videos, and behind the scenes mini-docs for the NEA Opera Honors, the NEA Jazz Masters videos, OPERA America, and the American Composers Orchestra.

I caught up with the director by phone and began our conversation by asking her about the opera.

Cara Consilvio: This is my first Cendrillon and it’s always exciting to direct a piece for the first time. It’s a new world that will unfold as you begin researching, but you don’t really understand how the piece works until you’re in the rehearsal room putting it up on its feet.

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Imani Winds make music from the heart in CCMS season opener (Oct. 5)

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by Stephanie Manning

Midway through a recent concert by the Imani Winds, the group’s newest member, hornist Kevin Newton, stepped up to the microphone. Introducing a piece by Henri Tomasi, Newton highlighted a particular quote attributed to the French composer: “Music that doesn’t come from the heart isn’t music.”

Who better to embody this quote than all five members of Imani Winds, whose passion for what they do imbues every aspect of their music-making. On Tuesday, October 5 in CIM’s Kulas Hall, this enthusiasm was on full display from the renowned wind quintet.

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CIM Opera Theater shines in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Mar. 1)

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by Mike Telin 

Is there a more fun-filled, accessible opera than Mozart’s The Magic Flute? Its classic fairy tale plot — good versus evil combined with a search for enlightenment and love — is timeless. Its characters are sympathetic, and it’s filled with beautiful arias and catchy tunes that are certain to cause the most wonderful earworms long after you leave the theater.

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CIM Opera Theater: Chatting with Dean Southern about two short operas

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by Jarrett Hoffman

The template for a good opera, according to Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges: fewer humans, more furniture.

The character list begins with a mischievous child and his mom, but soon branches out to include armchairs, a bench, a couch, a stool, a wicker chair, and a grandfather clock. Then the kitchenware, plants, and animals enter the fray.

But are singers okay with being cast as armchairs? That’s one of many questions I recently got to ask Dean Southern, head of the voice and opera division at the Cleveland Institute of Music. We spoke by phone about CIM Opera Theater’s upcoming double-bill, L’Enfant and Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol — a fascinating work in its own right, and more rarely heard than the already uncommon Ravel.

Performances will take place in CIM’s Kulas Hall from Wednesday through Friday, November 7-9 at 7:30 pm, and on Saturday, November 10 at 3:00 pm. Harry Davidson will lead the CIM Orchestra, which will appear in size XL, thanks to the extensive instrumental colors called for by Ravel and Stravinsky.

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Apollo’s Fire: being a fly on the wall at early rehearsals of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo

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by Daniel Hathaway

Coro Wandering onto setAdmirers of Thomas Forrest Kelly’s 2000 book First Nights: Five Musical Premieres probably wish they could have been physically present to witness the very first performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.

Me? I wish I had been able to attend the rehearsals — which often prove as interesting as the performances themselves. Rehearsals are where artistic philosophies get established, deals are made between directors and performers, and kinks get worked out. When the piece in question is a staged work, the rehearsal process becomes more complex: the ideas (and egos) of more than one director need to be melded into a single product, and there’s much more that can go awry.

Apollo’s Fire will produce three semi-staged performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in the next week: two in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm, and one at St. Raphael Church in Bay Village on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]

CIM Opera Theater matinee: Hansel and Gretel (March 10)

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by Robert Rollin

Meg Linebaugh and Anne Carruthers 2 _ credit Robert MullerLast Saturday’s matinee performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel by the Cleveland Institute of Music Opera Theater at Kulas Hall sparkled. An excellent cast, David Bamberger’s fine direction and blocking, David Brooks’ beautiful sets and effective scene changes, Harry Davidson’s expeditious control of the full orchestra and balance with the singers, and Inda Blatch-Geib’s imaginative costumes, all combined to create a beautifully flowing production whose energy never flagged.

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CIM to present area premiere of
Luigi Cherubini’s Medea

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by Mike Telin

Delacroix Medea_preview (1)Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, as epitomized by Euripides’ infamous character Medea. After her husband Jason rejects her for another woman in order to further his political career, she will stop at nothing to get revenge, including murdering her own children.

This sensational drama will be brought to life when the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Opera Theater presents Luigi Cherubini’s Medea on November 8, 9, 10, and 11 at 7:30 pm in Kulas Hall.

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Review: Faith and Redemption: Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites at CIM (February 28)

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 by Timothy Robson

The historical frame around Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmelites is the French revolution, and the historically-based story revolves around a convent of Carmelite nuns near Paris during the Reign of Terror who were rounded up and executed at the guillotine for their religious beliefs.

The real subject of the opera is, however, the faith journey of one young nun, Blanche de la Force, daughter of a French aristocrat, who joins the convent to escape the real world. Her doubts cause her to abandon her sister nuns, yet she is redeemed at the end of the opera when she returns to join them in their final sacrifice.

The Cleveland Institute of Music opera department presented four performances (two performances each with double casting of the principals) from February 27-March 2, in Kulas Hall at CIM. David Bamberger was the stage director, and Harry Davidson was the guest conductor of the CIM orchestra. This report is based on the Thursday evening performance. [Read more…]

Review: Live stream from Oberlin: “Poetic Music for Oboe, Viola, and Piano” with Michael Strauss, Roger Roe, R. Kent Cook & T.S. McMillin (February 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

NewlySTRAUSS-Michael appointed Oberlin viola professor Michael Strauss, who was previously principal violist of the Indianapolis Symphony, has devised an intriguing chamber music program for the unusual combination of viola, oboe and piano which has recently been toured and will be recorded later this week in the conservatory’s Clonick Hall for release as a CD.

The program was presented on Thursday evening in Kulas Hall, when Strauss joined his long-time chamber music colleagues, oboist Roger Roe of the Indianapolis Symphony and pianist R. Kent Cook of Illinois Wesleyan University, in four works by one relatively well-known and three pretty obscure late nineteenth and early twentieth century Romantic composers. The concert, entitled “Poetic Music for Oboe, Viola and Piano”, was enhanced by poetry that inspired each work read by Oberlin English professor T.S. McMillin. I attended the performance virtually thanks to Oberlin’s new “Listen Live” streaming service. [Read more…]

Review: CIM Opera: Il matrimonio segreto

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by J.D. Goddard

On ThursdayCIM-Matrimonio.317104034_std evening November 8 I attended the second of four performances of Cimarosa’s opera buffa, Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage) at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Kulas Hall. There were two casts: Wednesday / Friday and Thursday / Saturday. Director David Bamberger and conductor Harry Davidson handily crafted a charming performance showcasing the multi-talented vocal and instrumental students who inhabit the halls and practice rooms of CIM. Sets and lighting by Dave Brooks, costumes, wigs and makeup by Allison Garrigan and English supertitles by Jana Mosby and Paul Zweifel wonderfully enhanced the stage tableau and visually amplified the opera’s innate buffastyle with formidable simplicity.

In 1792, Emperor Leopold II commissioned Domenico Cimarosa to write his opera Il matrimonio segreto on a libretto by Giovanni Bertati based on the play The Clandestine/Secret Marriage (1766) by George Colman and David Garrick. The opera was premiered in Vienna in 1792, two months after the death of Mozart. Love triangles and romantic chicanery in 18th century Italy permeate this two-act opera, which unfurls slowly in the first act and becomes more frolicsome in the second. [Read more…]

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