The Ambassadors Opera to perform here

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.