All About the Journey: Jill Gardner, Offenbach's Newest Muse

After a brief illness opening weekend, leading lady Jill Gardner is back in the role of Eurydice in Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. An alumna of Glimmerglass' Young American Artists Program, Gardner earned her bachelor's degree in piano, but decided to focus on voice instead after a fellow pianist recommended a voice teacher whose students he accompanied.
Offenbach's Eurydice is unique. In every other Orpheus opera Glimmerglass is producing this season, Eurydice takes a back seat to the heroic Orpheus, the center of the action. Offenbach puts a twist on the myth by placing Euridice as the heroic figure of the story--the only character who doesn't cave to the domineering Public Opinion. Jill sees the character of Eurydice as a multi-faceted, beyond the frivolous veneer usually linked with comic characters.
"It's easy to think that Eurydice is naive, that she doesn't know what she's doing. She's skirting the societal influence, that which is always trying to wield its sword over us in whatever guise. She is the only one that does not operate in this socially influenced way. That's why I find it interesting and that's what I ultimately want to bring to this portrayal, not just someone who sings a ton of high notes."


Despite much experience in opera and operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld marks the first comedic role for Gardner, a thrilling challenge for the young soprano. "That's another reason why I found it interesting to try myself out at this. I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I've taken the time to watch some Sex and the City and Seinfeld and even going back to watch I Love Lucy and The Carol Burnett Show. When you sit and watch it totally from the aspect of comedy--not the story, just how they deliver the comedy-- you realize how much real life actually operates in that realm. You see human nature in the most real kind of way. Your instincts are really driven to deliver the comedy in a timing and a specificity that is very multi-layered. This kind of comedic timing is very hard. I have a lot more respect for it than I did.
"When you're singing all the time, when you have music to suport your words, that already sets up a multi-layered dimension and the music often expresses so well the subjective aspect of a character. You realize with dialogue how much energy's got to be in it and how quixotic we are as human beings."

As well as being her first comedic role, this is Gardner's first opportunity to sing a show with her husband Jake Gardner. Jake plays Jupiter, the head god and one of the many men who fall in love with Eurydice. The pair sing the famous "Fly Duet" and share a few romantic moments on stage.
"It's been great. Jake and I have sung quite a bit of concert work and oratorio work together, so it's not like this is the first time we've worked together. We have a lot of respect for one another. There's a lot of give and take in our relationship that's a part of that respect. To be able to have a flirtation with one another as we do in the Offenbach is wonderful. It's fun, not only for us, but for other people as well. You want people to feel enjoyment, happiness, magic, lust, love, flirtation. There are pieces that we'd like to be able to do together where that flirtation isn't there. We'd love to be able to do Carlisle Floyd's Susannah, for instance. I think as long as that mutual respect is there and that we're always reaching for this artistic integrity, that's what guiding us. And then our mission is the same, whatever ego is there or need to control."
"Having this much time to be together with Jake is just nirvana. It's a real gift."

A Unique New Voice: Michael Maniaci

Male soprano Michael Maniaci has been acclaimed throughout the world for his otherworldly voice. He has sung on many American stages, as well as in Europe. This season, he plays Orphée in Glimmerglass' production of Orphée et Eurydice, a beautiful production populated with extraordinary voices. However, this extraordinary voice has an unusual story. Through a lucky coincidence, Michael's voice never changed.
"My larynx is smaller. My cords didn't lengthen and thicken as much as they could have, but they did fully develop, in that I don't sound like a boy when I go to sing," he said. "I haven't encountered any other men who had the experience that I did--where developmentally, this just naturally happened. I've met with and performed with some falsettists that sing in a soprano range, but I've not encountered professionally anyone else."

Although he was originally drawn to musical theatre, Maniaci realized that there were more roles for him in the world of opera. Indeed, he is one of the few male sopranos singing opera today.
"Actually there are plenty of roles. People sometimes assume quickly that it would be quite limiting, when instead it's the exact opposite. At the end of the day most people will end up narrowing their focus to about a half a dozen to ten roles. There's certainly plenty for me within early Mozart operas or the whole Handel canon."

Music from the Baroque and Classical Eras suits Michael well. During that period, many roles for men were written for the castrati, who sang in a range only approached today by countertenors and mezzo-sopranos. Michael's unchanged male soprano voice makes him perfect for opera characters that are usually considered pants roles.
"I'm fortunate in many many ways, particularly in terms of timing. If there weren't this big Baroque revival going on right now, I wouldn't be having the opportunities that I'm having. There seems to be a real interest on the part of companies and audiences in reviving these works. I've fallen in love with Baroque music; the simplicity, the beauty, the classiness, and also the way that emotion is dealt with in that period is so similar to how we deal with it today. That's why I think it resonates with emotional situations that we still have today--hundreds of years later."

Maniaci believes this is especially true with the Gluck.
"The piece goes in and out of these brilliant juxtapositions. You start the show with this beautiful glorious overture. If you don't know the piece and you come to this opera, you think you're in for a night of grand comic opera. And suddenly it becomes this unbelievably subtle, soft thing. It's transformed into melodie. In the first act, when the chorus is gone and I'm let on stage alone for that huge chunk of time, for me that's just like singing any French melodie. It asks for very quiet static quality, but the text is alive and the music is alive. Then you go from that into a religious hearkening back to Bach and then a pre-Mozartian bravura aria. It's amazing. The piece goes through all of these peaks and valleys--it's wild."

As much as Maniaci has enjoyed performing Gluck's masterpiece, he has also enjoyed the audience's reaction to his unique voice.
"There hasn't been any stopgap with the audience. People say,'oh, this is so weird because you're not a countertenor and you don't sound like a woman--you're just this other weird thing.' Thank God it's been an asset. At the same time, I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility and frankly, pressure. I don't ever want to be successful because I'm weird. Wherever my career continues to go, I want it to be because my talents, my artistry, my musicianship, my vocalism warrants it. There's an enormous responsibility on my shoulders to make sure that I continue working my tail off to keep hashing away at those things."

Behind the Magic: Abby Rodd, Technical Director

Looking the finished product of a show, the audience only sees what’s out front—polished actors, beautiful costumes, a seamless set. Often audience members don't consider how these pieces come together—the business behind the magic. A good show keeps the audience so enthralled that they don’t need to think about it.

Technical Director Abby Rodd, a 16-year veteran of Glimmerglass Opera, is in charge of the people who bring the show to life behind the curtain, working in the field of stage operations, carpentry, rigging, or scenic art. Here's an inside look at the world of stagecraft at Glimmerglass.

Q: You’ve been here 16 years, since you were an intern in 1992. How has the company evolved since then?
Abby Rodd: There was no stage ops when I started. The carpenters ran the shows. We didn’t build any full sets in-house. I don’t know specific numbers, but I think [the size of the company] has at least doubled since I’ve been here. And the sizes of the shows and the sizes of the budgets have gone way up. But I came here knowing nothing. It was just a summer job, because I lived in Cooperstown.

Q: You said you were in charge of Stage Operations. What exactly is that?
AR: Stage Ops is a crew of 19 people and they do the changeovers from one show to the next. They're also there for running the shows and for bringing rehearsal scenery and props to rehearsal halls. They do all the fly cues and open the trapdoor.

Q: Fly cues—like flying people?
AR: We're not flying people this year—we were going to. When people do fly cues, they are pulling the ropes that make the sets fly in.

Q: So hell drops in?
AR: Well, not really. Mount Olympus comes down to cover up Earth, so the side walls come down. Then at the intermission, we change all of the walls for hell. There are essentially four sets. It works with a lot of counterweight. There are two side walls, so we have 2000 pounds of counterweight on the other side, so it’s an equal balance. So one person can fly rope and pull 2000 pounds.

Q: What do you use for the actual counterweights?
AR: They’re iron weights—they’re called pig-irons and they come in 25-40 pound bricks that we stack up on an arbor that holds it all. The rigging people install that rig and the Stage Ops people operate it under the riggers’ supervision.

Q: Shows are only running two months during the year. What is your schedule like during those two months—the official “season”?
AR: All four shows are only running for one month together. August is kind of an easy month for us. These two weeks here in June—teching the first two shows while we’re getting the third and fourth shows ready—are difficult. The weeks we’re in right now are probably the most difficult part of the summer.

Q: What about the “off-season,” September through April?
AR: Well, we started building the Glass in April. Before that, I was doing a lot of budgeting and drafting for that show and also the other shows. Two of the other shows were in contract shops being built. They started building in early February, so there were trips to where they were being built and lots of meetings. January is bidding out any contract shops and that tends to be a long process, because it never comes in on budget the first time. September’s sort of quiet, and then we start having preliminary planning meetings in October and November. We do shop maintenance and stuff. It’s a little bit more of a 9-to-5 job in the winter, until March.

Q: You mentioned drafting. John Conklin and the other production designers submit drafts for the shows. What sort of drafting do you do?
AR: They draw what it’s supposed to look like and I draw where the frame goes and how it all fits together and where—bolt-holes and where it needs to break to fit into the truck, where it needs to break to fit for storage.

Q: What would you say the biggest challenge is in coordinating these four very different shows?
AR: It’s different from year to year, really. [This year] we have a major storage issue. The stage is a specific size and we fill that four times. Our storage space to store everything in is smaller than that space, so we need to store three of those sets in the one smaller space. It all doesn’t really fit right now. Right now, the Offenbach is on stage, but we have a Gluck wall upstage and a Monteverdi wall on stage right—it’s just going to have to be there, because there’s nowhere else to put it. That’s not typical. We have more scenery this year than we’ve had ever here before, but we make it work; we just figure out how to fit things in. There’s a lot of stuff in the air—more lighting than scenery now.

Q: So you guys are the one who make the magic?
AR: I don’t think I make any magic happen. I make the set stand up.

Q: Well, that’s pretty useful.
AR: It’s more useful than lying down.