 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, we're back. In every way we're back. We're back from our trip. That's one thing we're back. In fact, next hour Carol, Monally, and I are going to do a retrospective on what it's like to go to Alaska by a cruise ship, you know. She went, you know, serendipitously one week and I was there the next week and we didn't, neither of us realized that we were going to be there on the same ship, the same trip. So we're going to compare notes and see who had a better time. Okay, and today we're going to talk about opera, and I love opera. I've been going to the Hawaii Opera Theater since I could, way back. 1970 or thereabouts that I started going. And one of the people who sits right near me in the opera is Lynn Johnson. That's right. Couple rows behind on the left, I think. Yeah, we wave to each other each time. So happens that Lynn Johnson teaches about the opera. She teaches about each separate opera. She teaches on the lanai, and I guess you'd say the eva lanai of the opera house there. Ward Center. Ward? Ward Lanai. Ward Lanai. And she tells you about the opera in advance and, you know, it really helps to have somebody explain it to you in advance, tell you the plot, the high points you should be looking for. She's also a professor at the School of Music in UH Manoa. Yes, I was. I was going to teach this year and I've finally retired. Okay. I'm going to go. Well, that way you can spend more time with us. That's right. But I'll continue doing the opera talks and teaching classes about opera. I hope so. It's a big thing for me. So welcome to the show, Lynn Johnson. Thank you. Very happy to be here. It's great to have you here. It's great to talk about Carmen. Carmen's coming up. So let's first, let's get it off the deck. Carmen is playing on October 13th, 15th, and 17th at the play sale. You bet. And it's one of the ABC operas, you remember that, of course. Yes. Aida. Bohem. Bohem, of course. Beef of Bohem. My personal favorite. I always cry at Bohem. I cry at all of them, actually. And Carmen. Carmen will always touch you. It's got so much energy, so much feist, you know, and they're real people almost. Oh, it's a fabulous opera. And that's why we bring it off the deck. I mean, it's just so, it's so emotional, and the music is amazing. Yes, it is. Yeah. And it's memorable. It's one of those operas where you walk out humming the tunes. That's right. You want to hum anything now? That's from Carmen. That's from Carmen. And there are many others like that. And the people are, you know, they're so, they're real in their own way, you know. You can slip into their skins. The good guys, and maybe they're not so good guys. Yeah. Well, let's talk, let's talk about HOT for a minute. What is HOT? What does that stand for? And how long has it been around? And what does it do? Well, Hawaii Opera Theater has been around, well, I think it, I think in its own skin, it's maybe been around since 1970, something like that. Before that, it was part of the Honolulu Symphony. And you had part of the board that were opera people, and you had part of the board that were symphony people. And finally, the opera people decided to break off. And it was in the 1970s. And since then, it's been on its own. And we do typically three operas every year. Now we've added a fourth, a chamber opera. So we have three big ones at Blaisdale. And then this year, in a couple of years so far, we're adding a small opera with a more intimate setting that doesn't run as long and is usually a modern opera. So the new opera we're going to be doing this year was actually written, had its debut in 2014. Oh, wow, it's three years ago. 2014. And as a matter of fact, I don't know if we can maybe show a picture of it. Sure, we can. I think it's called As One. As One. Can we find As One and show that? I'd like to see that too. So get a description of it. There we go. As One. So you look at that, and you think, what is that all about? Well, you've got Sasha Cook, who happens to be a cousin of mine. It's not right. And she is an amazing singer. She loved her. Her father grew up here. He could not keep a tune in a buggy. He cannot sing happy birthday in tune. But he loves singing. And here his oldest opera has become this fabulous mezzo-soprano. And this is her husband, Kelly Margraff. They are going to be doing this opera. It consists of these two people and a string quartet. It lasts about one minute, an hour and a half. It's all about a chance gender. Interesting. That's Mary Margaret. And her husband plays Hannah before. And the wife, Sasha Cook, plays Hannah after. And it's all about self-identity, about finding your true identity, about there's humor, there's pay-toss. It's an amazing opera. And it's very edgy, and it's going to be in January. January. Okay. So is that part of a season ticket? It's part of a season ticket. And by the way, I have to put in a plug. If you are a new opera goer, or you've never actually bought a season ticket before, you can get the whole season for half price. Ooh. Yeah. The whole season. That's a good move on everybody. And I've been calling my friends and saying, you got to do this. Yeah. And you call Gaylene Williams at the opera box office. And you tell her, Lynn sent you, and you get this half price. Remember that? Lynn sent you. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a great bargain. I wonder if I can be a first time. Well, you can't do that. You can't do that. But you and I, but we've had the luxury of knowing all these operas all this time. And the other ones are going to be playing. You have, of course, you have Carmen. And then you're going to have, as one, and you're going to have the daughter, the regiment. Oh, sure. That played before. That's by Donizetti. That's in French. Yeah. And first one is in French, even though it's set in Spain. Yeah. And then you have Eugene O'Nagan, which is going to be in Russian. These are ambitious operas. And let's try Kausi. These are, these are bad, that's all. Beautiful, beautiful music. And so, you know, in Carmen, she dies. And the daughters of the regiment, she gets married. And then Eugene O'Nagan, well, it's kind of in between. It's very Russian. She doesn't die, but it's very Russian. You know, she doesn't get the guy she wants. She gets somebody else. And he found out too later that she was the right girl. And so it's kind of a little bit in between. And then in, as one, he becomes a girl. And she's very happy. There's always a transformation. There's always a transformation. Why do I feel so impassioned at operas? What is it that makes me feel that way? Nearly, well, at most operas, I feel that way. Well, you know, opera is the most, the most exciting genre of music because it has everything. You have the orchestra. So those of you who love symphonic music and all the instruments, you have that. And then you have the voices. And you know, it's different between opera and musical comedy. The voices... It's not generally not funny. Well, no, some operas are... It can be funny. Operas can be very funny. Cozy fortuiti, for example. The real difference is the voices are not mic'd. Of course. They're not mic'd in opera. So if you want to be an opera singer, it's not something like law school. I think I'll be a lawyer. You know, you go to school. You either are born with it or you're not. So you've got to have the chops. What is it that you have to be born with? The ability to belt it out? Is that one of the strengths? I think it's... I think you have to have both the power and the quality of singing. I mean, somebody like Leonton Price. You know, her mother was a maid, right? And the woman of the house heard this amazing singing going on with the daughters. Your daughter's got this amazing voice. You've got to do something about that. You know? So they're born with it. Yeah. And it's our job to recognize them because they are musical heroes. That's right. That's right. It's fabulous to follow opera. I think it's fabulous. And of course it's interesting because it's done in all different languages. And this year we don't have anything in Italian. Which is unusual. I guess it's essential. Well, it's just unusual, you know? But no, I guess... You know, it just happens. You know, we have French and The Art of the Regiment written by Donizetti is actually going to be sung in French because he was in Paris when he wrote it. And then as one is going to be in English. And then we have Russians. So we have all these... I mean, usually you think of Italian. You think, you know, that's where opera started, right? But, you know, next year it might be all Italian. Who knows? It might be all Italian. Right. It's really wonderful the way HOT develops these operas. I mean, you reach out to the world. Yeah. You interview, you know, recruit speakers, singers from all over the world. I have a list here somewhere of all the speakers, singers that come in. They come in from everywhere. They're part of an international network. We have an international network. And what's also really neat is that we have some fabulous local talent. So for Carmen, we're bringing in Kate Aldrich, who'll be fabulous. She was here. But we also have Kip Wilburn, who lives here. Yes. Leon Williams, who lives here. Yes. He didn't always live here. No, that's true. He traveled here for the opera to sing, to star, to play in operas over the years and then decided he liked Hawaii so much he was going to stay. Yeah. Yeah. So we have some extraordinary talent. Kip Wilburn will be playing Don Jose. Uh-huh. Well, that's the leading role. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's take a moment and talk about that opera. Sure. Um, this is an opera with, gee, as I said, a lot of feist, a lot of action, a lot of pathos. Um, and it's a story, it's a story that came from a book which came from a story. That's right. That's right. How did that generate? Well, that's interesting. No, there's a wonderful author, 19th century author, French called Prosper Mary May. And he wrote these things where they were not short stories. They weren't novels. They were in between. So he called them novellas. And Carmen was one of these novellas and he went to Spain and talked to this wonderful woman who was a countess and she told him this story about this man who was robbed by a gypsy and then the gypsy fell in love with him. He fell in love with her and then he killed a man on her behalf and then he found out that she was married and so she got mad. He got mad and then he killed her husband and then she fell in love with a toreador and then he killed her and then he was in jail for life because of the murder. Now, obviously the Carmen that we have is she was not married. She's not married. But there's a lot of similar points. But there's a lot of similar points and I think one of the real interesting things is that Carmen is a gypsy and in the 19th century the gypsies are associated with what they call the other. In other words, the woman who is outside of the mainstream. Especially the woman, no? Especially the woman who's outside of the mainstream and she is exotic and of course that was the 19th century you had colonialism, right? And so you had France opening up, you know, learning about the world through all the various colonies and people like Delacroix wrote these, you know, did these wonderful pictures showing these exotic women, right? And so Carmen is a gypsy and there shows, you know, that Moorish influence that exotic woman who is dangerous. She represents a threat to the household. So you have in Carmen, the opera Carmen, you have Mika Ella who's a good girl, you know. She represents the household. She represents the household, the good girl and this is where Don Jose is supposed to end up. He's supposed to end up with a nice girl like Mika Ella. She comes right in the first act and says, you know, your mother misses you and she's thinking of you and it turns out that his mother wants him to marry her, you know. It's a girl every mother wants every son to marry. That's right. That's right. And he's, you know, his heart is leaning in that direction and then he needs Carmen and it's like he got crack cocaine, you know. He's addicted to Carmen and so he throws his whole life away and if you're looking at, let's say a trajectory, maybe Don Jose starts off here and he ends up down here. He gives up his job. He gives up his, you know, his future. He gives up everything for Carmen and what does she do? She leaves him. She falls in love with the bullfighter. Escamillo. Escamillo. Escamillo. Yeah. It's so, the real tragedy is Don Jose. But you can see it devolving. Oh, yeah. You can, you know, it's that slope, the devolution down, but there are points along the way where you know that Don Jose is losing it. Well, he makes choices. Yeah. You know, he makes choices. First of all, he tries to ignore Carmen. He can't ignore her and then because she, you know, she sings the Habanera. You can't resist the Habanera. That's one of the arias. That's one of the arias. Right. It's, you know, it's a Russian, it's a Spanish dance with that wonderful rhythm. But what it does, it does something really interesting musically. It descends by half notes, which means it goes from white note to black note to white note to black note. And so you're going down this very subtle going down and it means that, you know what, Don Jose, you're going to fall in love. And what's interesting, another aria that has the same thing is Delilah's aria in Samson and Delilah. She's another exotic woman, dangerous woman. And they both sing this sort of half note thing and it's just irresistible. Men cannot avoid that they just, they just are smitten. Has anything changed since then? No, I don't think so. We can take a short break. We're going to come back. We're going to get into those steps that Don Jose goes through step by step until, you know, it's all washed up for him. We'll be right back after this break with Lynn Johnson. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube, and broadcasts on cable OC 16 and O'Lello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Is it a feeling? Is it a place? Is it an idea? A dive heart, we believe freedom is all of these and more, regardless of your ability. Dive Heart wants to help you escape the bonds of this world and defy gravity. Since 2001, Dive Heart has helped children, adults, and veterans of all abilities go where they have never gone before. Dive Heart has helped them transition to their new normal. Search diveheart.org and share our mission with others, and in the process help people of all abilities imagine the possibilities. We're back with Lynn Johnson. She's a member of the board of HOT Hawaii Opera Theater, and she teaches, has taught music at the music school. But she gives and will continue to give lectures on the, let's see, with the ward, Lanai, and plays there. And also, I give talks at the Doris Duke Theater. And this one will be the one for Carmen I believe will be on October 4th, 10 o'clock in the morning. And what I do is not only talk about Carmen, I'll show pictures, do a little PowerPoint, and then I introduce the cast. So people get to meet who Carmen is. Oh, that's great. You actually have them. And then we interview them and find out how did you get into opera? What is it like to play Carmen? And Kate Aldrich will be there. Yes. That's fabulous. So let's talk about the history of Carmen. So it premiered, I guess, in Paris Yes. in 1875. Yes. Yes. It was what they call an opera comique. And you know, Paris, the French love opera. They're just crazy about opera. So you had your grand opera. You had your Italian opera. And you had your opera comique. And that was like the Walt Disney Studio of opera. You know, you were supposed to go there and have fulfilling family entertainment. And a lot of the times you would have spoken dialogue. So the original Carmen version was with spoken dialogue. So people went to Carmen, went to this one, thinking they were going to see the little mermaid, you know? And it was like they went to see the little mermaid and they got Lolita. And it was, they were shocked. They were shocked. And the critics, you know, this is terrible. You cannot have a fallen woman at the opera comique. This is just This is her. And this was Celestine Gallemarie. She was the first Carmen. She looks like the Carmen you've been discussing. That's right. That's right. And here's a description of her. This is kind of fun. Because Bisey won. And they apparently had an affair. That's what the rumor was. We don't know. Bisey is an opera star. That's right. She is small and graceful, moves like a cat, has an impish perch face and her whole personality seems unruly and mischievous. Now to me, that's a perfect to be unruly. And the thing about Carmen is is that she is free. You know, and you look at you look at the 19th century woman in Europe. She can't own property. She can't vote, right? She's the property of her husband. She cannot marry unless her father gives approval. And so here's Carmen who's totally free. She does what she wants to do and nobody tells her what to do. And this kind of independence, men want to control it, right? And she won't let, she is free. Don't you think that made it popular? You know, people had these, these, you know, urges, these aspirations to be free and gave them a chance to move that out. Sure. Sure. I think, I think a lot of women were both threatened by Carmen and envious. Yes. Right? Shocked by her, judged her, but then secretly perhaps were envious. And now the man in, I want to say Victorian, Victorian times, because Victorian England was not only in England. It was in France too and Spain, I think. So you have a fellow Don Jose. He's, he's, he's got some prestige. He's got an important commission in the Spanish army, I guess. Yeah. And he's brought low. He's brought low. And that's, and that's another twist. You expect him to be rising and in control, controlling women anyway. He doesn't. Yeah. He falls apart. He falls apart. And it's this, like I said earlier, it's like, it's like an addict. Yeah. You know? And you give your, when you're an addict, you can't tell right from wrong. And all you want is your obsession and he's become obsessed with Carmen. So there's, there's a thing, she gives him something. She gives him a rose. That's right. Hence the association of a red rose with Carmen. It's part of, part of the symbolism of that. What's the red rose? Is that, that's a seduction. It's a tease. It's a tease, isn't it? Yeah. And she shows it to him later because she, he becomes a challenge for her because he ignores her right off the bat. He ignores her. Yeah. Yeah. And so she's, she's determined to, and then of course, I mean, and she's a lowly woman. I mean, she works in a cigarette factory. And not only that, she's, she's arrested because she's cut up the face of some other, some other worker there. She's been in trouble. She's been in trouble and she's violent and unpassioned and unruly and undisciplined. Yeah. You know, what more could you want in a woman? And cigarettes, cigarettes, it must be a symbolism in the cigarette factory itself. Not like today. I mean, you wouldn't want anybody, you know, working in a cigarette factory today. But I suppose in then it had a, it had a moral overlay of some kind, right? And she's, cigarettes are not for women. Women weren't smoking cigarettes yet. Men were smoking cigarettes. So it's, it's again, sort of a freedom thing that she should be working in a place where men have their, have their freedom, but women don't. Yeah. So the, then this is, this issue, I'm just stepping down those points where he loses it, where she refuses to answer the, the senior officer when he asks her questions. And as a result, he has her arrested or he tells Don Jose to arrest her. Yes. He has to tie her up. Zuniga, I guess it's his boss. And so he, she has to, he has to tie her up. And of course, what she does is, is basically talk him into letting her go. Yeah. And so he lets her go and then he has to go and, you know, spend some time in prison for being disobedient. So that's the first choice he makes. You know, he makes these choices. And so that's the first one. But, you know, after that, you think he'd learn and then he sees her again and she's entertaining these, these, these other officers and, and she bewitches him again. And it comes time for him to be called back. The bugle is there and he's supposed to go back and be with the regiment. And he has a choice. He can be a good guy and go back and do his duty or he can stay and stay with Carmen. And then, and then all of a sudden Zuniga, his officer comes and looking for Carmen and I think Don Jose is jealous. He thinks, what's, what's going on between the two of them? You know? And so, and so, yeah, it's just, it becomes very complex and all of a sudden he's in the fight with his boss and, and then some smugglers appear and they withhold, they hold his boss and restrain him and all of a sudden he's got to go. And then he has to go off with that choice and he goes off with that choice. So he's now given up his respectability. He's given up his respectability and the final choice comes when, when, I think, his girlfriend comes to the camp where Carmen is and Carmen's now beginning to get interested in the, in the, in the bullfighter. Mikaela. What a wonderful name, Mikaela. Mikaela, she's beautiful. It's, it's angelic. Isn't it? It is. In there somewhere is the notion of angelic. Yeah. And she's asking him to return to her mother. Return to be with it, you know, be with a mother and he goes back with her but then Carmen, he goes to the bullfight to see Escamillo and he knows that Carmen's going to be there and he sees Carmen so he can't resist. He knows it's a showdown. He knows it's a showdown. He knows it's a showdown. And he loses. Yeah. He loses. And the thing is you know that somehow Carmen, she preserves her liberty. She, she knows. I mean, there's this wonderful scene I think in the camp where Ms. Mercedes and Fasquita, her friends are playing with the cards and they're reading each other's futures and stuff like that and one's going to get a great man and one of them's going to do, have something and then they read Carmen's and she's going to die. So that's part of that's part of the gypsy culture. You know, the fortune telling is part of the gypsy culture. But that doesn't deter her. You know, let go of her freedom. Even if she has to die. That's right. That's right. So she knows at some level that she will die as a result of this contention between Escamillo Escamillo and Don Jose. And you hear what's interesting in the overture. You have this wonderful Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. Bumper. And then you have Carmen's deaf theme that comes right in that, right in the beginning of that overture. So you know, right from the beginning, something's going to happen. There's going to be not only fun and games, there's something very ominous. That's the word. Very ominous. Yeah. That's a powerful scene. Again, down, down, down. That's right. That's right. And it's a case where you feel sorry for Carmen, but you really feel sorry for Don Jose because he's ruined. He's ruined his entire life for this woman. And you make some assumptions there. I assume it's never on the screen, so to speak, but you assume that if he killed, if he killed her, which he does in the final moments of the opera, he is going to go to jail for a long time. Oh, yeah. You can't escape that. Oh, yeah. Just the way earlier, you assume that if he lost her as a prisoner, he would pay a price. Yes, that's right. Whether it was his fault or not, you know. It was his fault. Well, you know, that's a, to me, does the, what's the name of the character who's his boss? It begins with this. Zuniga. Zuniga is his boss. Okay. So you assume that, I assume that he figured out that Don Jose let Carmen go voluntarily. It's never spoken, but it's kind of an assumption there. And it's never actually said, but she was assumed that he knew that Don Jose let her go voluntarily. Yes. And so you're asked to, you know, build in some assumptions in how this is degrading. You know, and what's, I think what's really interesting is, is that, you say it's a matter of choices, Lynn, but it's somehow, it's, it's not. Somehow he's on a track where he can't help himself. That's right. That's right. And that's, that's why I compare it to crack. You know, somebody who's addicted to heroin, they no longer have free will. And that's the way Don Jose is. He is, he is totally obsessed with Carmen. She, she brings him, and I think she brings, she represents such passion and such highs and he's never known anything like it, right? He's never known that kind of passion in his life and he will do anything to have that in his life. So he has his own freedom in a, in a way. In a way. And, and, and so that's true. I mean, he's giving up conventionality, right? He's, he's giving up the proper life to have this wonderful, out of their time. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what can we learn from all this? We can learn that a, that a perfectly French, Frenchman can write an opera about what takes place in Spain. That's right. In the 1850s. Yeah. Well, of course, it was, he had wonderful librettist, Halavi, and I think another one, but, but he, you know, he put, he fell in love with that idea. He just fell in love with, with the whole concept and he was inspired, you know, time. He rewrote it thirteen times. And it's been polished not only by the rewriting of the libretto, but by the stars who bring, who create the culture of the character. They portray the character in one way or the other, like the one in the photograph, the first, what was her name? Oh, Gali Marie. Yeah, Gali Marie. Silicene Gali Marie. And you know what's interesting is that Bisey himself, George Bisey, who's the composer, is a tragic figure, because he died before Carmen became a hit. And so he assumed that it was complete flop. And the first, I mean, the first production debuted in March of 1875, ran for four and a half hours. The last act didn't begin until after midnight, right? It's too long. And it's too long. Too long. And a lot of it was in English, I mean, not a lot in that English. A lot of it was spoken and so on and so forth. And the audience was kind of like, well, I don't know. And the critics just banned it. And they just assumed, he just assumed, you know, he put his heart and soul into this thing, he assumed it was a flop. He died three months after the premiere. That's a tragic feature. And it was only 36. And it was so, it didn't become a hit until it went outside of Paris. And then in a course, over time, they got rid of the spoken dialogue, substituted for, substituted recitative, and of course shortened it. And so in a way, there's no absolute definitive version of the opera, because he died before, you know, the final thing came out. What was the music, the music we hear today? The music we hear here on October, October 13th. 13th. At 8.17. 13th and 17th. Will be the music that Bizet wrote. Of course. Yeah. He wrote all the music. Yeah. I have to go. Of course I have to go. Oh, yeah. I'll see you there. Yeah. And I'll wave at you just like this, like I always do. Absolutely. And I look forward to that. I look forward to the opera. In fact, I'll be on the lanai. Okay. I want to hear what you have to say. Yeah, absolutely. No, there's always something to learn. And this is what I love about being a music ecologist is that the more you know, the better it sounds. Isn't that true? Yeah. The more you learn, the more you learn about the background, the arias, the plot, the characters, the more you pay attention and the more you take in, because opera is just a conflagration of invading your senses. You have the, you know, you have the singing and then you have the music. And then you have the sets. And now opera singers today are fabulous actors. Much more than before. Much more than before. They don't just stand there. They used to be just stand there and you belt it out. And now you have to be a fabulous actor. Yeah. And they're good looking. They're appealing. They're good looking. And they play the role. Yeah. And I can't wait to see how Carmen does in this Kate Aldrich. Yeah. And we have a picture of our, we should show a picture of Kate Aldrich, who's going to be. Okay. Why don't we show last picture. We're going to show a picture of Kate Aldrich. And you can see who Carmen is going to be. You can compare her with the one in 1875. There she is. And I have one other picture of her too. That's a knockout. Yeah. She's a knockout. And that's a course. Isn't that symbolic? You see that she's on the, the spade there and the spade symbolizes death. And there's Don Jose who's killed her. So isn't it, it's not a dramatic photograph. It is. I don't think that we're going to have that production. But, but you know, there's, the other thing I want to tell you is that there are many, many different ways in which Carmen has been portrayed. And I have a couple of different versions of pictures on there. So we, because we, we know it was set in Seville. One version has it set in 18, 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Oh, perfect. But it's been set in the west of the United States. So if you have, I think there's one of a couple of versions of Carmen that, that you have a picture of. Okay. We only have a minute left. But let's take a look at one of those anyway. Let's take a look. Yeah. Some, you know, as you said before. There's two, there's two. As you said before, it's a multidisciplinary. Now you have the one at the top and you see that she's in a convertible. Right. And this is in the west there. And then on the bottom, this is the one that was just done in Exo Provence. And it's basically, it's set in the 20th century. And this is a couple that needs marital help. And so they go and play the role of Carmen. And he plays, you know, the husband plays Don José. And then there's another woman who plays Carmen. And of course it gets, they get carried away. Right. So this is couples therapy. It's an opera for all seasons. Absolutely all seasons. Thank you very much. Yeah, what a pleasure. See you soon, I promise. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Jay. Aloha. Lots of fun.