Here is my Saturday May 8 Chicago Sun-Times preview feature on Frederica von Stade's opera and recital appearances in Chicago May 8 to 16, 2010.
Von Stade's Chicago farewell tour starts
Von Stade's Chicago farewell tour starts
Character, talent are hallmarks of mezzo's career
It's one thing to be known as one of the nicest members of your profession. It's another to be known as one of the best.
American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade is in that small company regarded by colleagues as belonging to both groups.
[Frederica von Stade as Madeline in Chicago Opera Theater's production of Jake Heggie's Three Decembers.]
As the beloved singer turns 65 on June 1, she is wrapping up her 40-year professional career in a series of national appearances that find her warm and communicative voice and her always-sympathetic stage presence still in wonderful bloom. And Chicago Opera Theater has landed von Stade -- known to her friends and family as well, it seems, to people who don't know her at all, as Flicka -- for her final appearances in a fully staged opera, Three Decembers opening Saturday night, and for a one-night-only recital Monday night. Both are at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.
"I can't think of Chicago without thinking of Ardis [Krainik]," von Stade said, by telephone, referring to the longtime general director of Lyric Opera who died 13 years ago. "Her unique combination of love and support and appreciation, combined with real skill as a manager and impresaria, is something that I'm not sure that you could find anywhere but in the Midwest."
Chicago saw von Stade in two runs of her signature roles, Mozart's Cherubino in 1987 and 1991 and Rossini's Rosina in 1989 and 1994, as well as in numerous concert and recital programs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and elsewhere. (This summer she will join the CSO and conductor James Conlon in the comic role of Despina in Mozart's Così fan tutte at Ravinia's Martin Theatre, her farewell to that venue.)
That Brian Dickie, general director of COT, "has landed here in Chicago seems so appropriate," she said. "We spent many summers at Glyndebourne [Opera] together, and that combination of working 10-hour days but never neglecting to take a break for afternoon tea is the kind of thing that I know works very well here, too."
That kind of loyalty, those kinds of evaluations, are at the core of this week's programs. Years ago, composer Jake Heggie, now 49, was producing a private recital series in Los Angeles, and it was a dream of his to present von Stade.
"I had no plans or hopes beyond just wanting to hear her sing up close and to share her gifts with our supporters," Heggie said last Saturday from Dallas, where the world première of his new opera Moby-Dick had taken place the night before to an eight-minute ovation. "Instead, our connection renewed and deepened when I worked in the press office of the San Francisco Opera, and led to me first accompanying her in recitals, then writing songs for her, and eventually writing operas and operatic parts with her in mind."
Heggie originally wanted von Stade to play the death penalty-activist nun Sister Helen Prejean in his first opera, Dead Man Walking (2000). "I told him, Jake, it would be an honor," von Stade said, "but don't be sentimental: Get someone younger who will break through with this."
The part went to a longtime von Stade fan, Susan Graham and helped to cement her reputation as one of the leading mezzos of the new century. Von Stade instead created the part of the mother of the convicted man on Death Row.
More songs followed, and then, in 2008, another new staged work, this time at Houston Grand Opera, initially called Last Acts, and with von Stade as its star and central character. "When I was young, I had wanted to sing on Broadway," von Stade recalled. "Opera came somewhat by accident instead."
But this story, written by Gene Scheer, based on an unpublished play by Dead Man librettist Terrence McNally, "of a Broadway actress dealing with her adult children and looking back at her career just pulled so many things together from my own life that I jumped at it."
Retitled Three Decembers, the work went to San Francisco as well, but Chicago will be seeing a "new and final" version, according to von Stade and Heggie, with all of the story's three Decembers now playing out over 90 minutes without an intermission. There's also a new song, "a sort of 'Send in the Clowns,' " says Heggie, a lifelong fan of Stephen Sondheim, for von Stade's character. Heggie will play one of the two piano parts in his score here and will accompany von Stade at her recital Monday.
Will Three Decembers wind up sounding like opera or musical theater, something new or something nostalgic? We'll know this week.
But what we already know is that a great American artist will be offering the operatic part of her farewell to singing. And that she and other very bright, very talented, very hardworking people will be giving their all and sharing a lot of love onstage.
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