Opera for Gourmets

The opera was off the beaten track, the passage soft and opulent, and the boys from Local 802 were not digging it. "Say," said one to Conductor Arnold U. Gamson, "you're highbrow, aren't you?" Patiently Gamson explained what the passage was about, finally told them: "It's like the music for a striptease." That did it. The violins became silky, the horns impassioned, and everyone proceeded with the rehearsal of Anna Bolena, one of Gaetano Donizetti's rarely played masterpieces.

Anna was performed last week for the first time in the U.S. in more than a century when the American Opera Society opened its fifth season in Manhattan's Town Hall. During its brief lifetime, the company has proved that it can mount operatic oddities with unique skill and flair. Its entire season is already a sellout by subscription alone, and when hundreds of people were turned away for last week's performance, the company quickly scheduled another evening of Anna for next month at Carnegie Hall.

From the Social Register. The men responsible for the American Opera Society's consistent success are Conductor Gamson, 29, and his cousin, Director Allen Sven Oxenburg, 30. When they were both students at the Juilliard School of Music, they developed a passion for Renaissance music, decided it ought to be played as it was originally in the homes of the rich. Founders Gamson and Oxenburg achieved their place in the sun through awnings. "Mother," Gamson explains, "is in awnings--the Port Chester [N.Y.] Shade & Awning Co.--and since they are very expensive awnings only people with money buy them. Mother's list of customers was helpful in raising money."

The impresarios established their first office in a bathroom. A friend had agreed to let them use his tony Manhattan address provided that they kept out of the way, so they installed the phone in a spare bath. In this austere retreat the opera company took shape. Backers were found, some of whom were in the Social Register, and most of them owned awnings. The company's first production was Monteverdi's 300-year-old Coronation of Poppea, performed in a Fifth Avenue drawing room for an audience of 50.

On to New Fields. Though they have since moved into major concert halls, Gamson, Oxenburg and Co. still produce works that are rarely if ever done by other companies in the U.S. or abroad--Gluck's Le Cadi Dupe, Purcell's Witch of Endor, Cherubini's Medea, Handel's Julius Caesar. Despite packed houses, the company's current deficit runs to about $35,000 a season--which in the opera business really adds up to a howling financial success. Contributions ("We never know where we're going to get the money") cover the losses.

Like all the society's productions, Anna Bolena was done with the orchestra onstage before a simple backdrop. There were no sets. The men wore tails, the women period costumes, using only the simplest gestures and stage movements. Donizetti's version of the Anne Boleyn story portrays her as pure and innocent, sent to the block by a cruel, heartless Henry VIII on the lying pretext that she had been unfaithful to him with Lord Percy. Musically, the melody-drenched tragedy, which was composed in 30 days, is full of gems including a fine quintet, an affecting choral piece for women. The musical and dramatic high points occur when Anne learns that the woman for whom the King is condemning her is her lady in waiting Jane Seymour, but goes to her death singing a deeply compassionate aria, forgiving one and all.

Though last week's cast was uneven, the production had a sweetly lyrical Anne in Gloria Davy, a promising American Negro soprano who will sing at the Met this season. Star of the evening was Italian Mezzo-Soprano Giulietta Simionato (as Jane), making her Manhattan debut. She had said that "I want to set off a bomb" in New York, and she did, with a voice that had range, power, brilliance and control. With their fifth season thus promisingly under way, Impresario Oxenburg and Conductor Gamson are looking for new fields to conquer. Their hope: to spread out to Boston and Washington, which, they are sure, must be full of fanciers of awnings and opera.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.