Set The Night To Music

The Atlanta Opera Presents
The Abduction from the Seraglio

By Amy Meadows

    One of the most poignant scenes in the popular movie “Pretty Woman” unfolds as Julia Roberts’ Vivian is whisked away by Richard Gere’s Edward for an evening at the opera. As the couple sits in the balcony of the San Francisco Opera House, Vivian becomes visibly captivated by the gripping performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” and she experiences a range of emotions that culminates in tears as the moving love story comes to a close. In that moment, her passion for this centuries-old art form is clearly cemented.
    “I think the opera experience is the most emotionally moving experience in the performing arts,” opined Gregory Johnson, president of the Board of Directors for The Atlanta Opera. “Opera takes the great themes of drama and romance and sets them to music written by the most famous composers of all time. And the music is what brings the emotion and the power out in the drama. It’s just a fantastic experience to see a story and hear it.”
     This past October, metro area arts aficionados were given the opportunity to test this theory themselves when The Atlanta Opera, recognized as one of the fastest-growing opera companies in the country, presented its own three performances of “La Traviata” as the opening of its highly anticipated and much acclaimed 2005-06 season. The production of Verdi’s masterpiece was not only well received by enthusiastic audiences, but it also marked a turning point for the nearly 27-year-old arts institution, which continues its landmark season on March 9, 11 and 12 with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio.”
     According to Dennis Hanthorn, general director of The Atlanta Opera, the company is now entering a phase of strategic growth and change, which will allow it to reach its full potential and bring a new level of operatic mastery to the stage for residents of Atlanta and across the Southeast. And “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” helmed by famed director Dejan Miladinovic and conducted by renowned maestro Julius Rudel, is just one example of the high-caliber productions that he and his team are striving to bring to the local market — a move that will allow the organization to rival prominent opera companies in major metropolitan cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Fortunately, Atlanta has been primed to have its own opera company achieve that standard of excellence since the early 1900s, when the city’s great choral
tradition got its start.

Overture To An Opera Company
    While The Atlanta Opera officially formed in 1979, the opera community itself has a long and storied history. At the turn of the 20th century, it was not unusual for traveling companies to perform in Atlanta, a city that showed great interest in all types of music, particularly opera. In 1909, the Atlanta Music Festival Association hosted a well-attended event, which caught the eye of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. One year later, The Met presented its first performance for audiences in the New York of the South — an occasion that became an annual engagement showcasing well-known talent like tenor Enrico Caruso.
     During the years when the Metropolitan Opera dominated Atlanta’s opera scene, various local companies were established and ultimately folded. By 1976, the Georgia Opera and the Atlanta Lyric Opera found themselves competing not only with each other, but also with The Met. When both companies failed to attract audiences, members decided to join forces in 1979 and start the Atlanta Civic Opera. That merger also floundered, and operations closed down a mere four years later. Nevertheless, in 1984, Alfred Kennedy, president of the Atlanta Civic Opera board, revived the company, which became known as The Atlanta Opera in 1985, around the same time The Met ended its 76-year relationship with Atlanta.
     The Atlanta Opera was ready to fill the void left by the Metropolitan Opera; the company, however, initially found it difficult to garner the same interest The Met enjoyed. “I think it was just very difficult for the opera community to embrace local opera after having experienced the Metropolitan Opera for decades and decades,” Johnson explained. Yet, The Atlanta Opera persevered, continuing to operate under the management of artistic director William Fred Scott and performing at the Woodruff Arts Center’s Symphony Hall for steadily growing audiences. Over the years, the company expanded and changed venues, moving from Symphony Hall to the Fox Theatre and, eventually, the 4,600-seat Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center in 2003. Then, in 2004, with Scott’s retirement looming, the Board of Directors began a six-month search for a new general director, someone who could handle both the artistic and fiscal sides of the company and breathe new life into the organization.

The Next Act
    Dennis Hanthorn was the perfect candidate. “In the opera industry, I’m known as a builder, building companies and turning companies around,” said the 25-year veteran who joined The Atlanta Opera after 10 years as general director of Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera Company. Therefore, his goal for Atlanta’s opera company is fairly straightforward. Here, he contended, “Our goal is to build this company to be the best company by far in the Southeast. I saw the potential of moving the company from a very strong regional opera company to a very successful and highly recognized national opera company.”
     That means bringing in a wide variety of shows that feature world-class directors, conductors and singers while operating under a balanced budget. It also entails expanding the budget, which today stands at approximately $5.8 million (about one-sixth of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s operating budget).
     The Board of Directors has taken on the latter charge with great dedication, reaching out to business partners and patrons in assorted fundraising efforts, while working to increase ticket sales and subscriptions. “Last year, our board had a 70 percent year-on-year increase in contributions to the opera,” Johnson revealed. The group also recognizes how important it is to broaden The Atlanta Opera’s constituent base, which is why it is counting on Hanthorn and his team to deliver quality productions that patrons want to see. “He knows how to grow an opera company in a very financially responsible way,” Johnson added. “And we trust Dennis Hanthorn to turn money into artistic quality. He is not only an extremely well-rounded and trained professional in this business of opera, but he also has incredible energy and optimism. Everyone he deals with gets infected with his zeal, his enthusiasm and his belief that everything is possible.”
     Recently, Hanthorn traveled extensively to see other productions and find the principal singers, conductors and directors to lead The Atlanta Opera’s locally comprised chorus and orchestra in upcoming shows. And his efforts weren’t in vain. For the first two productions of the current season, “La Traviata” and “Porgy and Bess,” he managed to attract names like conductor Arthur Fagen, conductor Stefan Lano and guest singers Jan Grissom, Raul Hernandez, Alvy Powell and Marquita Lister. Additionally, during the final production of the year, Puccini’s “Tosca,” which follows “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in May, conductor Edoardo Müller will collaborate with John De Lancie (known by television audiences as “Q” from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) and The Met’s Cynthia Lawrence, who will star in the title role.
     For Hanthorn, giving new artists the chance to debut on stage while helping established singers develop new roles through a diverse mix of productions is the key to providing variety for both the actors and the audience. “You try to maintain a balance of repertoire,” he stated, explaining that the company wants to do exceptional standard selections, expanded operas, baroque and more, including commissioning new operas and presenting American premieres. To this end, The Atlanta Opera now presents four productions per season: two popular productions offset by one “off-the-beaten-path” show, plus another the audience has not seen before.
     In any case, Hanthorn continued, “When people come to see our productions, they’re going to hear and see great high-quality performances.”

Grand, But Far From A Finale
    If the turnout for “La Traviata” and “Porgy and Bess,” the first two productions of Hanthorn’s tenure, is any indication, it seems that The Atlanta Opera is poised to achieve its goal of becoming one of the largest and finest opera companies in the region. “We see the audience growing,” Hanthorn said. “We saw a steady growth in our single ticket sales for ‘Porgy and Bess,’ and we hope to continue that with ‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’ and the final production of Puccini’s ‘Tosca.’ ”
     The buzz surrounding “The Abduction from the Seraglio” certainly indicates that the company is hitting the right note with audiences. The opera, which marks Mozart’s 250th birthday, tells the harrowing and humorous tale of Spanish nobleman Belmonte (Bruce Fowler) and his fiancée Konstanze (Elizabeth Carter), who is abducted along with her English maid Blöndchen by pirates and forced to join Pasha Selim’s harem. Belmonte concocts a plan with his servant Pedrillo to retrieve his bride-to-be, and an array of wild adventures ensues. The opera is sung in German, but The Atlanta Opera provides supertitles projected above the stage in English so patrons can follow the story.
     When European-born Julius Rudel, an internationally sought-after conductor, was approached with the opportunity to conduct “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in Atlanta, he said it was an invitation he could not refuse. He had not only heard great things about The Atlanta Opera, but also, he noted, “I love the opera; it’s beautiful and fun. The music is so extraordinarily varied and wonderful. There are all sorts of arias, duets, trios and quartets. And it has all of the things that opera is supposed to have, all of the various emotions. For example, there’s one aria that describes love,
another describes hate, another one sadness, and another one joy. All of these emotions are being portrayed musically and in the most wonderful way.”
Wonderful is certainly how one can describe the entire 2005-06 season at The Atlanta Opera. And for Hanthorn, the Board of Directors and the company’s 25-person staff, this is just the beginning.
    “There’s a lot of work ahead, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” Hanthorn admitted. “But I’m very encouraged by the growth at this point. Every great city the size of Atlanta deserves to have a great opera company. Atlanta already has all of the major professional sporting teams; now we need to have major league arts in every area so that the city has a complete tapestry.”
     Gregory Johnson could not agree more. “We’re very proud of the rapidly accelerating artistic quality that we’ve achieved. Now we are turning the corner and moving to a new level,” he observed. “I think there are a lot of people in Atlanta that do enjoy opera. Then there’s an enormous number of people in Atlanta that probably have never experienced opera, and we welcome them to experience a wonderful art form.

Photos courtesy of The Atlanta Opera.