Opera Preview: The Big 30: Scott Schoover on Union Avenue Opera's 30th

I caught up with Scott Schoonover, the Artistic Director and Conductor of Union Avenue Opera, for a chat about the company’s 20204 season. This interview is based on our Zoom call, with the usual edits for clarity and brevity (“the soul of wit,” as Shakespeare wrote).

Chuck Lavazzi
So you're opening with Bizet’s “Carmen” and then a concert staging of Verdi’s “Aida” and finally Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

Scott Schoonover
Right.

Chuck Lavazzi
Often the third show at UAO is a Broadway musical. I see others doing this. Is this going to be something you're going to be doing more of in the future?

Scott Schoonover
I think we'll continue to do it. It's not that we plan necessarily to do it every single year for the rest of our lives, but for the moment, it's working for us. And it's been a real boon to ticket sales, especially post pandemic, trying to get things back up on their feet.

And also, we ended up having a lot of fun with it. It’s sort of a different medium of storytelling and for us the fun of opera is the storytelling. And from what we hear from our audiences, they really enjoy seeing those musicals and hearing them sung without mics, which is really an interesting change from what they get to hear other places.

Chuck Lavazzi
Yes, that is a rare experience. As an audience member and as a critic, I've kind of gotten tired of going to see musicals that are always amplified. Half the time I find that the amplification makes a lot of the lyrics incomprehensible.

Scott Schoonover
I know. Me too. Yeah

Chuck Lavazzi  
This raises another question. Is it sometimes difficult to find shows, non-operas, that will work in an operatic setting? I mean, obviously, “Ragtime” works because it's almost an opera, and Sondheim shows have a lot of musical depth to them.

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, and sort of Golden Age shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein, those sorts of things. I mean, they were written to be unamplified in the beginning.

Sondheim is an interesting guy because in my brain, he has a classical sense about him. “A Little Night Music” was my first choice in that sense because I felt like it really was operatic in so many ways.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Well, “Sweeney Todd” also.

Scott Schoonover
Yeah. And I intend to do “Sweeney Todd” at some point, for sure. And I’m also a big fan of Kurt Weil, which I want to do in the future too. We aren't going to announce our 2025 season until our big gala this fall. But we're working on some options for that. And also, of course, the first two shows this season.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Well, let's start with “Carmen.” I mean, this is one that's very popula.r

Scott Schoonover  
For the 30th season, I wanted to do three kind of big ensemble shows that had a lot of popular appeal to kind of make a big statement. And “Carmen” certainly is always the most popular piece when we put out an audience survey.  

I think it's just one of those operas that people know. They enjoy hearing the music and it's got all the elements of a popular show. It's got this rebellious, sexy character who is at the center of it. And it's a dramatic story. There are things that tug at your heartstrings. There's a kid's chorus. There are all sorts of great things about it that people seem to like.

Elise Quagliata

And our Carmen, Elise Quagliata, has been at Union Avenue many, many times over the past several years and has gone on to have a pretty sizable career. Among a couple of roles that she does a lot is Carmen. I've gotten to see major clips of her doing the show and I keep wanting to engage her in this conversation. It happened that she had free time during the summer, so she's going to be our Carmen.

I can tell you already in rehearsals, it's so fun to watch her work and see. Just all the different things that she brings to it and all the different productions that she has been through in her life, all the different ideas that are there

Chuck Lavazzi
Well, and there are so few really meaty leading roles for women with lower voices.

Joel Balzun

Scott Schoonover
That's true. That's a good point.

Chuck Lavazzi  
So it's always good to see them on stage.

Scott Schoonover
Our Don Jose and Escamillo (Brendan Tuohy and Joel Balzun) are both making their debuts with us and they're wonderful. And then Meroë Khalia, who played the governess last year in “The Turn of the Screw,” is playing Michaela, which is the really touching sweet role of the home girlfriend of Jose, who comes twice to try to find him and give him messages from his mother. And she has a beautiful aria in the show.

Chuck Lavazzi  
I think this is a very hard part to do credibly because she's written as such a cliche victim.

Scott Schoonover  
She is. I agree with that in terms of the character. But the other thing about it is the Bizet gives her the only really beautiful music in the whole piece. It was so touching to hear her sing that aria. I think people are going to really love her.

Chuck Lavazzi  
What kind of a production concept are you doing? Is it more or less traditional?

Meroë Khalia

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, it's pretty traditional. We have a unit set that is used in different ways. It's a beautiful set and it's got a backdrop. It's very traditional Seville, the time period they're used to. The soldiers are in the yellow uniforms that they're supposed to be in and all that kind of stuff.

Mark Freiman is directing this one. I think he has a nice eye for the pictures of the stage. A lot of little nice details go into what he's doing. The concept I would say is “just tell them the story.”

Chuck Lavazzi  
So let's go on to what I think is the really unusual one here: The concert version of “Aida.” I don't know if there are any companies in St. Louis that could actually do it as written because of its size. So how are you approaching this? Is it going to be just a concert setting, semi-staged, or what?

Scott Schoonover  
We're going to have a basically blank stage with the blacks [black curtains] around the back and then the chorus will be seated. There's a chorus of 30, which is a pretty big group. There are 16 men and 14 women. And it's a really big sound.

They'll be seated on stage and then in front of them will be the principals. And they're going to stand and come to the front of the stage when they would be on stage. There won't be any projections or anything like that. The only thing that will sort of change is that when the chorus is singing, they'll be lit and when they're not singing, they won't be lit.

Marsha Thompson

So it focuses the energy on the front of the stage when it's just the principals. The principals are singing from memory, and they'll be in concert attire, but they're going to be acting. They're going to be relating to one another as they would in the opera.

Our Aida, Marsha Thompson, is a bit of a known quantity. She was our Abigaille in “Nabucco” a few years ago and she's sung Aida several times already in her career. Our Radames, Limmie Pullia, just covered [understudied] the role at the Metropolitan Opera and he got to go on stage in the part, to great success. He’s from Southern Missouri and so he was like, “yeah, I really would love to be able to do this in my home state.”

Limmie Pullia

Melodie Wilson, who is a favorite here, is our Amneris. There are lots of roles in the show, but those are the three that have the bulk of the arias.

It's going to be really full in there, similar to [our production of] “Ragtime” in a way, but even bigger. Interestingly, we got a lot of the ragtime folks back in to do “Aida,” which is kind of cool.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Regarding the size of the chorus and cast, what kind of challenges does that present to you as a music director in terms of making sure everything is sonically clear?

Melodie Wilson

Scott Schoonover 
I talk to them about that a lot in rehearsals. I often make the endings of phrases a little shorter, so that  there's a space in between. So, for example, if there's a quarter note at the end of a phrase, I'll usually make that into a short eighth note, so that we actually get in that space. It sounds a little truncated in the rehearsal room, but when you go in the auditorium, it sounds exactly right. We have to overstep everything up a little bit in terms of articulation to make it work.

Chuck Lavazzi  
More pointed and precise.

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, exactly. But it doesn't sound like that out front. It just sounds clear, but that's what you have to do in order to make it work.

We love the acoustic of the auditorium. One of the things that I can't imagine is before the 1950s renovation of the building they used to have wooden round pews, like they have up in the balcony, and a wooden floor. I can't imagine what it sounded like in there back then before carpeting and before those padded seats. It would have been just insanely live. Now it just gives a nice balance with the orchestra being in the pit. I love our space. I wouldn't trade it

Chuck Lavazzi  
Any other special events coming up that we need to talk about?

Scott Schoonover  
Oh, I just want to say about “Into the Woods” that Jenny Wintzer is directing. She has done a lot theater producing in the St. Louis area. She used to be at COCA and has been involved Shakespeare in the Park [St. Louis Shakespeare Festival]. She's a wonderful director, and we're having a lot of fun pulling all that together.

Laura Skroska is designing the set for this. We're using the whole auditorium as the set. So it's not just the stage that's going to be decorated. I think people will enjoy that a lot.

In terms of special events, we have the Backstage Pass luncheon concerts [June 25, July 23, and August 6]. There's one for each of the shows, and it's a chance to meet the singers and to hear what the directors have in mind. You get a lunch, and you get to hear two scenes from the opera itself, and then each of the four principles sings a piece of their choosing.

And then we have our 30th anniversary gala celebration, which is Thursday, October 17th. That is a sit-down dinner where we're going to recognize lots of people who've been involved in the last 30 years. Christine Brewer is the honorary chair. It will be at the Barnett on Washington.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Cool.

Scott Schoonover
Yeah, it's gonna be a really nice evening.

The Essntials: Union Avenue Opera’s 2024 season runs from July 5th through August 24th at the Union Avenue Christian Church in the Central West End. For information and tickets, including the Backstage Pass series 30th Anniversary Gala, visit their web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Opera Review: No doubt about it, Union Avenue does a splendid job with "Doubt"

L-R: Elise Quagliata, Christine Brewer, Wes Mason
Photo: John Lamb

Union Avenue Opera is bringing its season to an impressive close with the local premiere of Doubt, a not entirely successful musical adaptation by composer Douglas J. Cuomo and playwright John Patrick Shanley of the latter's 2004 play Doubt: A Parable and its 2008 film version.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Shanley's play is a masterful examination of the dangers of both moral certainty and ethical blindness.  Set in a working-class Catholic church in the Bronx in 1964, Doubt chronicles the conflict between Father Brendan Flynn, a young progressive priest who has embraced the humanism of Vatican II, with Sister Aloysius Beauvier, an old school, steel-ruler-discipline nun.  They are at odds not only with how strictly the church school should be run but also with what Sister Aloysius believes is Father Flynn's sexual abuse of young Donald Miller, the school's first black student.  Caught between these two implacable foes is the young and idealistic Sister James, who respects both of them and who, unlike Sister Aloysius, is plagued with doubt.

L-R: Elise Quagliata, Wes Mason
Photo: John Lamb

In the opera all of these themes remain intact. But what was originally a taut, ninety-minute one act has been expanded into a full-length work running nearly two hours and forty-five minutes including intermission.   Scenes have been added in the classrooms and the church and the original four-character cast has been expanded to include adult and children's choirs. As a result, the work loses a bit of dramatic steam in places and some of the additional scenes—most notably those set in the classroom—sometimes feel more like filler than anything else.

Other additions, though, work exceptionally well.  The powerful choral number that opens the work, for example, allows us to hear individual members of the congregation reacting to Father Flynn's parable on the unifying nature of doubt.  The choral setting of Flynn's second act sermon on the evil of gossip is equally effective.

So on the whole, Doubt makes for a very compelling theatrical experience.  And for that, Union Avenue's exemplary production can take a great deal of the credit.

As Sister Aloysius, local favorite Christine Brewer once again displays the vocal power and dramatic conviction that have characterized her work on local opera and concert stages for many years.  The character must come across as a formidable figure who is nevertheless capable of compassion, and Ms. Brewer's portrayal is perfect on both counts.

L-R: Melody Wilson, Christine Brewer
Photo: John Lamb

Equally impressive is UAO veteran Elise Quagliata as the conflicted Sister James.  She's a talented singer seems equally comfortable with both the standard repertoire and newer works. As she did in UAO's Dead Man Walking back in 2011, Ms. Quagliata demonstrates that her clear and fluid mezzo voice comes paired with solid acting skills.

Making his UAO debut, baritone Wes Mason makes Father Flynn a very credible and complex character.  Is he villain, victim, or a bit of both?  Shanley leaves the question hanging, and Mr. Mason's nuanced performance keeps the balance intact.

As Mrs. Miller, whose son Donald is at the center of the controversy, mezzo Melody Wilson turns in one of the most remarkable performances of the evening.  The role is a small but vital one, and the scene in which Sister Aloysius tells her what she thinks she knows of the relationship between Donald and Father Flynn is an emotional high point of both the play and the opera.  Mr. Cuomo has written an unforgivingly long a cappella passage for her towards the end of the scene that requires remarkable vocal control, and she delivers it beautifully.  On opening night, her exit prompted spontaneous applause, despite the fact that Mr. Cuomo's seamless score tends to discourage that.

Speaking of Mr. Cuomo's music, its jazzy and astringent sounds neatly underscore the prose of Mr. Shanley's text, although there are times when it feels out of synch with the emotions expressed in that text.  Mr. Cuomo also displays what felt to me like an excessive fondness for drawing out individual words with long, melismatic vocal passages that seem to serve no particular dramatic purpose.  Overall, though, it's a good match for the naturalistic inflections of Mr. Shanley's dialog.

It also sounds like a challenge to play, so conductor Scott Schoonover deserves high praise for leading the orchestra through such a seamless reading of it.  The balance between the signers and the orchestra was quite good, which can be a very tricky business in the sanctuary of the Union Avenue Christian Church. And under his direction the Union Avenue chorus has never sounded better.

L-R: Wes Mason, Christine Brewer
Photo: John Lamb

Kyra Bishop's set, with its massive crucifix set at a drunken angle, mirrors the opera's subtext of faith in crisis, and the bare branches poking up through the floor remind us of the bitter New York winter.  Jeff Behm's lighting enhances the atmosphere.  Teresa Doggett's costumes are, as always, right on target.

Director Tim Ocel adds yet another triumph to his work for UAO, with smart and fluid staging that keeps the dramatic momentum going while always making the dramatic focus clear.  He is, for my money, the best opera director in town.

While I don't think setting Doubt to music enhances it in any way, it still makes for pretty potent theatre and is well worth your time, especially if you haven't been exposed to either the play or the film already.  It raises issues about the risks of moral certainty that are, if anything, more relevant now than they were when the play was first written.  And there is no doubt that Union Avenue's production is a singular accomplishment.

Closing performances of Doubt are Friday and Saturday, August 27 and 27, at 8 p.m. at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End.  For more information, visit the company web site.

Strong performances lend power to an abridged "Götterdämmerung" at Union Avenue Opera

L-R, foreground: Neil Nelson and Clay Hilley
Photo: JohnLamb

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This weekend, Union Avenue Opera concludes its 22nd season with "Götterdämmerung" ("Twilight of the Gods"), the final installment of the most ambitious project in the company's history—Wagner's mammoth operatic cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung"). It's a strong production, thanks to tremendous performances by the singers and clear, focused stage direction by Karen Coe Miller.

Using editions of the operas prepared in 1990 by British composer Jonathan Dove and director Graham Vick for companies that lacked the facilities and budgets necessary to produce Wagner's massive "music dramas" in their original form, Union Avenue Opera has proved that you can retain the narrative drive and much of the dramatic power of these works while still making substantial cuts. "Götterdämmerung" has the most drastic edits of them all, eliminating several characters and cutting the overall running time in half, from over six hours to just under three.

L-R, foreground: David Dillard, Rebecca Wilson
Neil Nelson, Clay Hilley
Photo: John Lamb

That makes the plot-heavy second act, with its memory-erasing magic potions and backstabbing (both metaphorical and literal), so quick that it feels almost telegraphic. And the smaller orchestra can't quite produce the impact required for big moments like Brünnhilde's famous "immolation scene" or Siegfried's Act I Rhine journey and his Act III funeral music. But everything is sung and acted with such conviction that those are ultimately secondary considerations. Solid dramatic values go a long way towards compensating for a lack of spectacle.

Besides, as I noted back when the series began, to a certain extent the lack of theatrical flash sharpens the focus on the plot, the characters, and their implicit commentary on matters of morality and power. Wagner's libretti for the "Ring" operas starkly illustrate the cost of abusing power and personal trust—highly ironic, given the way Wagner the man did both.

Alexandra LoBianco
Photo: John Lamb

Heading the cast is the remarkable Alexandra LoBianco as Brünnhilde, the role she played in "Walküre" and "Sigfried." If there's any justice in this world she will, at some point in her career, get a chance to sing the full-length version of this role on a major stage. She has the vocal power and sheen of a first-rate dramatic soprano and the acting skill to make even the biggest moments credible.

Tenor Clay Hilley returns as Siegfried, once again matching a heroic voice with a convincing character. Bass-baritone Neil Nelson's Hagen is a captivating study in emotional conflict and avarice, delivered with a big, powerful voice that easily handles the low notes of this bass role.

Brünnhilde's sister Valkyrie Waltraute could almost be a throwaway part since she's essentially there just to deliver a lot of exposition about how Wotan is pining away in Valhalla, but alto Melissa Kornacki makes her fascinating nevertheless—beautifully sung with real depth of character.

Clay Hilley and Vassals
Photo: John Lamb

Baritone Timothy Lafontaine schemes and wheedles wonderfully as the dwarf Alberich. David Dillard and Rebecca Wilson round out the supporting cast in fine form as Gunther and his sister Gutrune, both of whom are undone by their dishonorable plotting.

Conductor Scott Schoonover has apparently beefed up Dove's reduced orchestration a bit and, some intonation issues in the brasses not withstanding, the ensemble as a whole played quite well on opening night. I missed the big emotional catharsis of the final moments, but the responsibility for that mostly lies with Mr. Dove and the small size of the orchestra pit.

Patrick Huber's unit set is the same one used for the first three operas. It's dominated by a huge screen on which images and video (designed by Michael Perkins, whose innovative work has graced many a local stage) take the place of the elaborate scenery envisioned by Wagner. They generally work well, especially in the Gibichung palace scenes in the second act, and are very effective in creating the right moods and sense of place. The screen, the catwalk above it, and the stairs to either side take up so much room that most of the action is played out in a fairly shallow area downstage. Still, Ms. Miller manages to create decent stage pictures most of the time, which is impressive.

Melissa Kornacki
Photo: John Lamb

Teresa Doggett and company have done their usual fine work with the costumes. Hagen and the pedestrian Gibichungs are done up as early 20th-century European royalty, complete with brown-shirted Vassals who look eerily like Hitler's infamous paramilitary Sturmabteilung. That immediately sets them apart from country boy Siegfried and emphasizes their division from the supernatural characters who surround them.

Union Avenue Opera has done local opera fans a real service with its four-year traversal of the Ring operas. Yes, Dove's scaled-back versions are no substitute for the real thing, but taken on their own terms they're compelling theatre. And in any case, no local opera company has a theatre equipped for the Full Richard.

If you have any interest in Wagner's "Ring" operas at all, you definitely owe it to yourself to see this "Götterdämmerung." If nothing else, it will give you bragging rights when Ms. Lobianco goes on to her inevitable stardom; you can say you saw her when. Final performances are this Friday and Saturday, August 28 and 29, at 8 PM at Union Avenue Opera, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information, visit the company web site. Note that there is a parking lot but it tends to fill up quickly, so you'll want to get there not later than 7:30 if you can.