The Ambassadors Opera to perform here

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): If at first the sesquipedalian name of The Ambassadors of Opera and Concert Worldwide, Ltd. of New York sounds like a cultural wholesaler nightmare, the problem is one of semantics. And, more significantly, public ignorance.

Despite its corny, merchandising overtone, it is doing precisely what the genre needs, introducing and popularizing opera to even the most unlikely parts of the global village. A philosophy from which Indonesia's lackluster and highly-polarized classical music world should learn a few things or two.

In the form of the Ambassadors Opera, founded in 1981, the company has taken countless artists from the famed New York Metropolitan Opera as well as other prestigious theaters around the world to 36 countries on all five continents.

As it digs into the rich earth of cultural diversity, spanning places as diverse as the Middle East, the Fiji Islands and Kenya, we might as well be talking of something resembling missionary zeal. Last but not least, we're talking some 60 performances in 16 years -- by no means an idle feat.

Although a steadier profusion of eminent, world-class instrumentalists are winging their way to the local stages, opera is still somewhat of a rarity in Indonesia, for reasons both qualitative and quantitative.

Embodying perhaps the pinnacle of gross misinterpretations that clump all forms of Western classical music as "exclusive", "elitist" and "expensive", it is either an object of ill-informed curiosity or plain indifference. And yet, the roaming musical ambassadors have decided to take a risk even here.

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 24, Hotel Sahid Jaya's Puri Agung will host the Ambassadors Opera in all its mainstream glory. There will be another performance the following day, but it is restricted to the hotel's patrons and other selected invitees.

Expect no oddities, exoticism or experimental atonalities in Tuesday's program. Instead, the well-crafted program advertises something like "The Very Best of Opera" or some such generalized Aquarius titles, comprising arias from some of the world's universally-loved operas such as Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's La Traviata and Puccini's Madame Butterfly; some of jazz's most endearing tunes such as Gershwin's Someone to Love Over Me and those taken from his musical Porgy and Bess (Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So) and a medley of Cole Porter's best-loved compositions. For a bonus, expect a slap-bang selection of the ubiquitous Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical hits and time-tested commercial darlings, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina from Evita, Memory from Cats and Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera.

Leading an all-star group of eight performers in Tuesday's performance will be the company's co-founders Joan Grillo and Richard Kness. Grillo has once been described as a "sumptuous voiced Carmen" by The New York Times in her portrayal of Carmen. Her dramatic mezzo-soprano voice has also graced the prestigious stages of the Metropolitan Opera House, the Paris Opera, the London Opera and the Vienna Staatsoper.

Her husband Richard Kness is an acknowledged veteran in the opera business, most notably as a prominent helden tenor.

Also singing to the piano accompaniment of veteran accompanist Michael Pilafian will be seasoned baritone Lee Roisum; versatile tenor Frank Porretta III, and acclaimed sopranos Victoria Litherland and Monica Ramirez.

It is unlikely that The Ambassadors Opera's decision to present only selected arias and not a fully-staged complete opera as it once did in Singapore stems from coincidence. First, it is both a realistic appraisal and reflection of the general audience's mainstream taste. Second, Jakarta still lacks the facilities (not to mention the technical expertise) to support a fully-staged opera.

And while The Ambassadors Opera's two-day stint in Jakarta is astoundingly good news for quality-starved opera aficionados and music-lovers in general (not to mention society's beau monde addicted to highbrowism), its forbiddingly pricey admission ticket of Rp 200,000 (US$81.73) may well upset many. But it is somewhat inevitable that this project will go down in local history as another exclusive affair of society's upper-crust. After all, quality -- especially one that involves eight first- rate musicians -- has its own price.

True, one remarkable opera performance may have very little impact on the evolution of classical music appreciation here. Yet the scarcity of first-rate performances from world-class outfits, as with the present dearth of locally-produced, consistently high-quality classical music in Indonesia, is essentially an issue of priority.

And as long as the local music world cannot rise beyond its current self-righteous, isolated little niches, one may just be thankful that such occasions, however expensive and infrequent, can be facilitated.

There's no denying that Sahid Jaya Hotel is trying hard, and for that alone, it deserves some credit. But while Puri Agung's propensity towards "charity concerts" and "commercialized classics" have brought such flashy successes as Peabo Bryson and Richard Clayderman into the city's capital, its increasing desirability as a chamber music venue stems more from the rising demand for bigger audience capacity than a truly formidable acoustics system (in the musical sense of the word). But prestige is a rare and coveted commodity, and is more often than not worth the price.