Neal Goren was waiting to be thrilled. Goren, the founder and artistic director of Gotham Chamber Opera in New York, was not thinking about technique as he watched the 2009 Richard Tucker Career Grant Auditions in New York last April, notebook in hand.
“I want to be transported,” he said during a break in the two-day competition. “If they transport me, I want them.”
Goren is always on the lookout for enthralling voices as he builds Gotham into the quality brand that critics and audiences alike have heralded for its fresh and savvy productions. Since its beginning in 2001, the company has carved out an impressive niche as a small gem amid giants like the Metropolitan Opera and the struggling New York City Opera.
Gotham’s official mission is “to present vibrant, fully staged productions of works from the Baroque era to the present that are intended for intimate venues,” according to its website. But behind the scenes, Goren’s commitment to singers is even more resonant. “My goal is that when I come to rehire them in three years, they’re too expensive,” he said. “And, yes, that has happened.”
In plucking young artists for roles early in their professional lives and making their talents shine, Gotham has given a boost to numerous careers. Some of the singers who have worked with the company include mezzo Leah Wool, tenor Alek Shrader, baritone David Adam Moore, and sopranos Georgia Jarman and Celena Shafer.
Valerie Ogbonnaya, a soprano featured last winter in the company’s four-character opera L’isola disabitata by Haydn, was a 24-year-old apprentice at Santa Fe Opera in 2007 when Goren first heard her sing. “Neal will find out what your talents are and do his best to incorporate them into the role,” Ogbonnaya said. She noted that Goren, who conducts each opera, had arranged for her to sing several high Cs that were not in Haydn’s original score. “Neal can take that kind of liberty—he finds out what you’re good at.” (For his part, Goren said Ogbonnaya “went beyond my hopes and expectations” and he predicts a “huge” career for her.)
Caroline Worra, who sang the title role in Handel’s Arianna in Creta with Gotham in 2005, said Goren smooths out potential knots by coaching singers for a full month before rehearsals begin. “That way, details like tempi, ornamentation, and diction are worked out in advance,” she said. “Everyone arrives at rehearsals so calm and prepared.”
Goren’s motto is “Worse than no opera is bad opera.” His standards are high on many levels, claimed Vale Rideout, a tenor who also was featured in L’isola disabitata. For example, a singer might think he is perfect for a role, but is asked to cover it instead. “That can be frustrating for the artist,” he admitted. “But Neal has a vision and sticks to it.”
Key to that vision is casting singers who suit the part. “They’d better sing what they look like,” Goren said in an interview. That requirement helps explain the sizzle factor in many of Gotham’s productions. A large proportion of the singers are striking in looks in one way or another. Ogbonnaya, for example, who was playing a young girl in “L’isola,” scampered around a rocky hill provocatively clad in a skimpy and somewhat tattered island costume. Bass-baritone Tom Corbeil, playing the first man Ogbonnaya’s character has ever seen, sang shirtless.
Goren has this advice for singers: “Look great. Sing repertoire that fits your look. Sing it exquisitely, so I never think about technique.”
A Detroit native who landed in New York after stints in Oregon and London, Goren began as a concert pianist and soon became an accompanist to better suit his gregarious nature. While playing for artists like Harolyn Blackwell, Kathleen Battle, and Aprile Millo, he ran into Leonard Bernstein, who suggested that he become a conductor.
“He said, ‘You act like, play like, think like a conductor,’” Goren said. “I absolutely knew he was right, but it took therapy to accept it. It’s a big thing to see yourself as a leader.”
Disillusionment with his role as an accompanist eventually persuaded him to branch out. As a student conductor, he stopped playing recitals with everyone but Leontyne Price. “The greatest musical experience of my life was with her,” he said. “Every rehearsal, every performance was a commingling of sensibilities. We would listen so acutely to each other, almost like a dance.” Other singers might ask him to “tamp down” his personality, but Price would say, “Baby, the more you give, the more I like it,” he reflected.
Goren, who is just shy of 50, with salt-and-pepper bangs and an easy smile, described how a suggestion that he start an opera company sowed the seeds for Gotham. “It was clear that the last thing New York needed was another big opera company,” he said. “What New York needed was first-class productions of operas intended for small spaces.”
He drew up the parameters: the company would perform music of the eighteenth century and earlier and the twentieth century and later, bypassing the large-scale works of the nineteenth century. He took Bernstein’s advice to “get the best people around you and let them do their jobs,” hiring noted theater artists like Mark Morris, Christopher Alden, Karole Armitage, and the puppeteer Basil Twist to design, direct, and choreograph—and signing up non-singers like the award-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant for occasional speaking parts. Gotham’s first production was an early Mozart opera, Il sogno di Scipione, which was reputed to be unstageable. Goren brought in Alden and, he says, it was one of the company’s biggest successes.
Other past productions include Bohuslav Martin’s 1928 Dada opera Les larmes du couteau, Heinrich Sutermeister’s Die schwarze Spinne, Rossini’s Il Signor Bruschino, and Ástor Piazzolla’s 1968 tango opera Maria de Buenos Aires. Many of the productions have been United States or New York stage premieres. Goren has also combined eclectic material to fashion original evenings of opera. A case in point, which teamed Goren with choreographer Armitage, was Ariadne Unhinged, a retelling of the Ariadne myth using the music of Monteverdi, Haydn, and Schoenberg. Performance venues have varied from the jewel-like Abrons Arts Center in downtown Manhattan, to the more spacious Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College near Lincoln Center, to specialized locations like the Morgan Library and Museum in midtown.
A loyal cadre of private contributors provides the bulk of the company’s operating budget, which currently stands at $700,000. Since David Bennett’s arrival as managing director in 2006, governmental and foundation support has risen dramatically. But as with all nonprofit groups, the current economic climate has provided a challenge, and Gotham has responded by moving in a collaborative direction.
The group’s next production, Haydn’s Il mondo della luna, will be staged at the Rose Planetarium of the Museum of Natural History in New York in January 2010. Both the museum and the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based American Repertory Theater will be co-producers. Diane Paulus, who directed the 2009 Tony Award-winning revival of Hair on Broadway, and who is American Repertory Theater’s artistic director, will direct “Mondo.”
Xavier Montsalvatge’s 1948 opera El gato con botas is slated for the fall of 2010, to be directed by the Tony Award-winning director Moisés Kaufman.
Goren does not hold open auditions, but he accepts résumés and CDs. It is not unusual for him to hear 30 or 50 singers for each role he casts, he says. He also hires a cover for every role. “I want to promote the best people,” he said. “Covers get a principal role the next year or the year after.” The union pay scale might be modest, but Goren says singers do not shy away.
“We’ve hardly had anyone turn us down because of money. Because we don’t pay fabulously, it’s important that we make it a joyous experience for everyone.”
