Arts Listings

Project Opera Stages Leoncavallo’s ‘Pagliacci’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday February 12, 2008

Pagliacci, Leoncavallo’s “gritty realism” classic of verismo opera, the tale of the fatal crossover between stage and real life in a troupe of carnival performers, will be performed by Project Opera, founded by musical director-conductor Robert Ashens, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights at the Hillside Club, on Cedar near Spruce, a venue associated with the beginnings and early years of Berkeley Opera—and one which has recently seen a diverse renaissance of concert programming. 

Featuring Todd Donovan as Tonio, Mark Narins as Canio, Eliza O’Malley as Nedda, Ross Halper as Beppe and Anders Froehlich as Silvio, with orchestra and chorus of local musicians and singers, Pagliacci’s fame has been so great that, according to Ashens, “it’s often been featured in pop culture, such as the movie The Untouchables, and lampooned on “Seinfeld” and “The Simpsons.” 

“My concentration with this particular project has been to return to a former approach in opera preparation,” said Ashens, who is also an opera coach, “continuous and intensive coachings prior to actual rehearsal. Rather than dictating to the singers what interpretation I want, the coaching sessions are highly collaborative, making it quite organic ... When that’s accomplished, stage director Ross Halper will give the movements shape and reasoning ...” 

The performance will begin with a brief talk and demonstration by Ashens, leading into the opera. 

The Hillside Club serves as concert venue for more than opera. At a recent show featuring “Hemispheres” (Paul McCandless of “Oregon” and the original “Paul Winter Consort” and Sheldon Brown on woodwinds, Frank Martin on piano, Bill Douglass on bass and woodwinds and Ian Dogole on percussion), a lively audience of about 80 was rapt by the often piquant tonality of the batteries of reed instruments in the frontline, offset by weaving rhythms—and, in the second set, the Kurdish and Persian verses (one by Rumi) sung by guest vocalist Hossein Massoudi. A profound blend of jazz, world and new musics, the audience’s delight was mirrored by the enthusiasm of the band in their first appearance at the club. 

Bruce Koball, who ran the electronics and served as M.C., later pointed out, “What you saw the other night has only been happening recently. The Hillside Club has been coming back after a near-death experience. Four or five years ago, the place was dark maybe 250 nights a year. Membership was under 70. But thanks to the foresight of a few members, after Jeff Ubois moved into the neighborhood and stopped in to see what was here—and within a year was president—the long history of the club as a center for arts and culture was reactivated. The old and new guards came together.” 

Ubois brought in Koball and drummer Brian Bowman, whose series of house concerts had just come to an untimely end. Since that time, the club has produced “75 or 76 shows,” according to Koball, “in an all-volunteer effort, with no guarantees for the performers, but the club only taking a little slice of the gate to pay the bills. Musicians love it—we have more requests now than we could possibly handle—the warmth and the beautiful acoustics of the club. But it’s also about getting an audience here, and we’ve been successful in all but a very few instances.” 

Koball cited Paulina Borssok, who serves as house manager, and Bill Woodcock as the two other members who are the “partners in crime ... in this labor of love.” He also gives credit to former club president John Govers “who saw the value” of a new concert series. 

The club was founded by three Berkeley women, hill-dwellers, appalled by the development already swamping what they loved about Berkeley in the later days of the 19th century. Architect Bernard Maybeck was president in 1910 and designed an earlier clubhouse, which burned in the disastrous Berkeley fire of 1923. “Talking in terms of continuity,” said Koball, “we have a member, now aged 102 or 103, who helped put out that fire. I’m proud of what the club’s become—and hope we can keep it alive another hundred years.”