Opera makes house calls, entertaining private audiences

November 8, 2010 | By Katya Cengel | kcengel@courier-journal.com

Louis Heuser was on the second floor of his Louisville town house on a recent weekday morning when he heard his name — being sung, by a diva.

That isn't his nickname for his wife, Peggy Heuser. The woman singing his name was an opera singer rehearsing for an opera to be held in the downstairs of the Heuser home. The Heusers' grown son, Chip, recalled hearing a lot more than just his father's name, which happened to be the name of the singer's lover in the opera.

“I heard expletives and ‘shampoo' and ‘it's snowing outside' and I thought, ‘What kind of opera is this?' ” said Chip.

It is titled “Just for the Night” and it is one of three stories that encompass composer Daron Hagen's “New York Stories,” which were performed in two Main Street homes and one office for a select number of Kentucky Opera's patrons Oct. 30.

Louis, a retired surgeon, had never heard of an opera being performed in a home before. But when Kentucky Opera director David Roth explained that that is how Hagen envisioned them being set, Louis and Peggy agreed to go open their door to the visiting New York composer. The performance was held in the open first floor of their apartment, an area that encompasses a kitchen, dining room and living room and is filled with various plants, an open staircase and several of Louis' watercolor paintings. During rehearsal the biggest challenge was keeping the family's four dogs upstairs. For the actual performance, the Heusers were tasked with decorating the space with Christmas ornaments, preferably tacky or tattered ones.

Chip wasn't surprised by all the fuss.

“You want a place to come hang out, you can always come” to the Heuser home, he said. “There'll be something interesting going on for sure.”

Home invasion

The soprano was putting on a red bathrobe and wrapping her hair in a towel, the baritone was warming up his voice while fiddling with a coffeepot. Hagen strode into the open first floor of the Scherer penthouse and announced: “Home invaders!”

It was the group's second rehearsal in the sixthfloor apartment next to Louisville Slugger Field. In the hall a few minutes earlier, Kathy Scherer greeted a neighbor by explaining that they were rehearsing for an opera. The neighbor seemed unfazed, as if having an opera performed down the hall were an everyday occurrence. Kathy's husband, Phil, a real estate broker, saw the performance as a chance to promote downtown living.

His big concern was getting all the telephones unhooked before the performance, fearing a ring at just the wrong time. Kathy wanted to keep the grandchildren out until after it was all over. The piano was delivered during tornado warning sirens. The Scherers' grown son, E.P., took the call.

“E.P. goes: ‘Do you know what's going on?' He just thought it was unbelievable,” said Kathy.

“The show must go on,” added Phil.

During rehearsal, Hagen walked soprano Andrea Shokery through the space, instructing her to first face a wall of windows overlooking the river and then the stone columns that set off the open kitchen. A cleaning crew dusted and wiped in the background. Hagen wasn't concerned about the singers' voices carrying.

“When you think about it, since these operas take place in people's living rooms, the dramas themselves take place in people's living rooms, the acoustics are perfect,” he said.

It is the sort of guerrilla or street opera Hagen loves. He has written operas meant to be staged in nightclubs, pubs and even a men's club. While some of the pieces from “New York Stories” had been performed previously, Oct. 30 marked the first time all three had been staged and presented together. And it was the first time the Kentucky Opera had held a performance like this in private homes.

The event was part of a program which invites a composer to spend a week working through a composition with Kentucky Opera Studio Artists, University of Louisville voice students and students from the Academy of Music at St. Francis in the Fields. Because Hagen wanted his trilogy performed in urban homes and seating was restricted, Roth decided to limit the performance to patrons who annually donate $2,500 and above. Longtime Kentucky Opera supporter Nana Lampton helped him locate the urban settings, including her downtown office.

“We want this to be a very experimental piece with people viewing it or sort of voyeuristically viewing this in a natural setting,” said Roth.

An education

On the night in question, Hagen schooled his audience in the rules of engagement for guerrrilla opera. Watch your toes, he warned, as they headed toward the first location in a yellow school bus. And don't move once you have taken a seat, he said, adding, or you might “enter the opera in a way you hadn't had in mind.”

At the first stop, the Scherers' Spanish colonialdesigned penthouse, patrons munched on nuts and other appetizers while sipping wine and milling around the kitchen. It was like any evening gathering until Shokery showed up on the balcony in a pair of pajamas and started singing. For the next half-hour, conversation ceased as Shokery and Gabriel Preisser moved around the apartment, sometimes just a foot away from a guest's knee as they sang about love and loneliness in a work called “Broken Pieces.”

Phil Scherer watched from the balcony, hoping that the front door phone which he had not had time to disconnect would not ring. His wife was on the first floor watching a piece of paper blow dangerously close to a lit candle.

There was no ring and no fire, and the Scherers breathed a sigh of relief when the singers took a bow in their living room.

“I was really delighted that the acoustics worked fine,” said Phil.

Shokery said she liked not having to make big gestures in order to reach audience members 100 rows back.

“It made it feel so intimate and personal, and you felt like you could express it in a completely different way,” she said.

At the Heusers', the performance was even more intimate. Rather than waiters with trays, Louis Heuser walked around offering appetizers while son Chip stood in the kitchen ladling sangria. The audience sat on the interior staircase and leaned in doorways. Hagen warned that the opera, “Just for the Night,” was one that would provide a “bumpy ride.”

The singers moved within inches of the guests. When they shattered Christmas ornaments, the action was so close patrons could see the pieces.

“It's like being in the middle of the drama,” Christy Kramer said afterwards. “I mean, it's just so up close and personal.”

Peggy Heuser declared the evening to have been “fantastic” — the same word Hagen used after the third and final opera, “Cradle Song,” was performed in Lampton's downtown office. “People got to go on a very lovely journey,” he said.

Reporter Katya Cengel can be reached at (502) 582- 4224.