Michael Borowitz is not usually a fan of completely updating opera pieces for modern audiences. However, with Monteverdi’s Ulysses, the Opéra Louisiane artistic director became inspired by the sounds of R&B and gospel and how easily they could work with the classic opera, so he decided to make a change.
“The timelessness of it speaks really well,” he says about the opera’s themes of dramatic conflict and its love story.
The tale—taken from Homer’s Odyssey—centers on Ulysses, who leaves his wife, Penelope, for 20 years, but then returns after the Trojan Wars to his previous life. While the opera will still be performed in Italian, Borowitz has updated the piece’s time period to the late ’50s and early ’60s Civil Rights era, along with updating its musical structure to a more soulful sound.
The idea for the concept came to Borowitz a few years ago when he started listening to soul singer Donny Hathaway.
Borowitz is a classically trained musician and spends most of his time working in opera or musical pieces that date back at least 100 years. While submerging himself in the R&B and gospel sound, he noticed how richly textured the music was and how talented the musicians were.
Monteverdi’s Ulysses was written in the baroque opera genre, not a favorite style of Borowitz’s. But, Monteverdi’s pieces ushered in a shift to the type of opera orchestra we know now, he says, with individual musicians who are experts in their own instruments working together to create one sound.
“[I thought] it would be an interesting idea to bring those two things together,” Borowitz says. “Bring classical baroque opera, sung in Italian, but change out the instrumentation. … Monteverdi’s original, it lends itself to a lot of improvisation. It’s simplistic as it’s written down so that people can improvise as they liked depending on the mood of the piece or whoever’s singing or whoever’s playing, and so that translates very easily into modern musicians.”
This is the first time the artistic director is arranging an R&B orchestra, which brought some challenges along the way.
“It was a matter of taking a vocal line that traditionally follows a very simplistic harmonic structure and adding underneath it something that is not simplistic at all, that is very reminiscent of the R&B and the gospel sound, but still allowing the vocal line to stay as it is,” he says.
Elise Quagliata is performing in the role of Penelope.
Ivan Griffin will play Ulysses.
Borowitz will replace the minuette pieces, classical ballroom dance numbers usually heard in Ulysses, with a funkier and rhythmic sound driven by drums.
Mezzo-soprano Elise Quagliata will play Penelope. Growing up around traditional early music, she is used to singing a lot of Monteverdi, but the update is completely different from the classic style she knows.
“It’s a pretty brave undertaking,” she says. “I think it’s … pretty remarkable that he successfully maintained the melodic line and Monteverdi’s melodic vision while underpinning it with this incredibly modern harmonic vocabulary that everybody, I think, in Louisiana speaks.”
See the show:
Ulysses: An American Mythology will take the stage at the Manship TheatreFeb. 10 and 12. Tickets and information on showtimes are available at operalouisiane.com.
This article was originally published in the February 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
