Re | Joice: 30 Years of Ryan Brown at Opera Lafayette

As Opera Lafayette’s Founder, Artistic Director, Conductor, and frequently Violinist, Ryan Brown has been doing this for 30 years! OL’s production Thursday night was a tribute to their only leader for all that time.

Founder, Artistic Director, and Conductor Ryan Brown leading the Opera Lafayette Orchestra. Photo by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

Begun originally as the Violins of Lafayette in 1995, the focus was music only. Singing, dance, and semi-staged operas were added later, eventually to include fully staged operas, and the name was changed to Opera Lafayette for the 2001-2002 season. I began attending OL performances in 2017 and one of my early reports stated: “Do you think time travel is possible...If you’d like to visit France in the eighteenth century, Opera Lafayette could be your conduit.” Along the way, Starship OL has also visited the 17th and 19th centuries and included music from a few other countries relevant to France; the authenticity of their performances is enhanced by using period instruments, and many performances are available as recordings. The company’s activities included community outreach to share the history of the works and the roles that music played in history. These things have been done with extraordinary scholarship, artistry, and passion under Ryan Brown’s leadership.

Ensemble photo for “Re | Joice: 30 Years of Ryan Brown at Opera Lafayette”. Photo by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

The first portion of the evening’s program was mainly constructed around selections from previous OL productions performed beautifully by a 21-piece orchestra under Maestro Brown’s masterful direction. The 18th century music was melodious, sometimes pathos filled, sometimes spirited, and responded to the performers singing arias with expert timing and emphasis; sometimes the interplay of the orchestra, or even individual instruments, with the singers was delightful. Meant to be a harmonious whole, the program began with dramatic arias, bridged by an entr’acte of pomp, then some meaningful comedic arias, and an inspirational ending. The outstanding group of singers included Opera Lafayette veterans, sopranos Pascale Beaudin, soprano Paulina Francisco, and bass-baritone John Taylor Ward along with OL newcomers, tenor James Reese and tenor Gene Stenger. In succession each artist added to the beauty and elegance of the production, some using comic or dramatic gestures that enhanced their performances.

The performances began with a selection from Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny’s opéra comique, Le Déserteur (1769). John Taylor Ward set the tone for the evening using a warm baritone voice to sing “Ah, je respire” with feeling, making it easy to imagine him in the role. OL’s performance of this opera in 2009 led to an invitation to perform in the palace at Versailles. Next came selections from two operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck previously produced by OL, the first an aria from Armide (1777, performed by OL in 2010) sung by soprano Paula Francisco in which Armide struggles with the conflict between love and allegiance. There is no description of singing by Ms. Francisco that would be adequate to convey the beauty of her voice, her control and power, and the emotion imbued in her singing. Had she been the object of King Kong’s affection, he would have been a tame puppy. Her first aria was followed by a pleasing choral number provided by the other artists, including tenor Gene Stenger who appeared principally in the ensemble numbers.

Bass-baritone John Taylor Ward and soprano Paulina Francisco. Photos by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

Next came two arias from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice (1762, performed by OL in 2002) sung by tenor James Reese with a chorus following each. Mr. Reese, a specialist in early repertoire, has an engaging, lively stage presence that stands out and a crisp tenor voice that made his arias both pleasing and affecting. If I understood his website correctly, he may be performing again with Opera Lafayette next season. To transition from drama to comedy, Maestro Brown and orchestra played a march from André Grétry’s Le Magnifique (1773, performed by OL in 2011). The beginning of this piece was captivating but, sadly, it was very short; I wondered if Grétry developed it further. The switch to comedy began with John Taylor Ward singing an aria from François-André Danican Philidor’s Sancho Pança (1762, performed by OL in 2010) based on Don Quixote, amusingly enhanced by Mr. Ward’s facial expressions and gestures, again displaying his excellent voice and singing.

Tenor James Reese and soprano Pascale Beaudin. Photos by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

At last, it was time for Canadian soprano Pascale Beaudin (proud of her Acadian heritage) to be featured. I have had the pleasure of attending four of her previous performances with OL. Bilingual in French and English, she fits perfectly with Opera Lafayette. As usual, she sang with charm and delight an aria from Grétry’s L’Epreuve villageoise (1784, performed by OL in 2015) expressing her resolve to teach her suitor a lesson. Tenor James Reese followed with a playful singing of an aria from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée (1745), and the first portion of the program ended with an ensemble rendering of Vaudeville “Je vais revoir ma chère métairie” from Sancho Pança. Well done, all around.

An ensemble featuring soprano Paulina Francisco, tenor Gene Stenger, bass-baritone John Taylor Ward, and tenor James Reese. Photo by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

After intermission, short film clips were shown from three previous OL productions accompanied by amusing and charming commentary by Pascale Beaudin at the podium. The first clip was from the 2020 production of Beethoven’s Leonore (1805), the culmination of OL’s ambitious Leonore Project, in which Ms. Beaudin played Marcelline. Interestingly, she also played Marceline in OL’s production of Pierre Gaveaux’s Leonore, ou L’Amour du conjugal, an earlier opera version of the Leonore story. The next clip was from Ol’s 2014 Les Fêtes de L’Hymen et de L’Amour, ou Les Dieux d’Egypte (1747), a Rameau opera/ballet that enlisted three dance groups, the New York Baroque Dance Company, Kalanidhi Dance, and the Sean Curran Company. The final clip was from OL’s 2020 The Blacksmith, a Nick Olcott/Ryan Brown American adaptation of the Le Maréchal ferrant (1760), a French opéra comique by François-André Danican Philidor. Staging a comedic opera, outdoors, with seating on spaced bales of hay, beside a barn, on a ranch, in Colorado, with a film made for public viewing, was Opera Lafayette’s way of spitting in COVID’s eye and raising everyone’s spirits, not to mention keeping a few musicians and singers employed. In his program notes, Director Brown states about OL productions, “…perfection is not the goal. Happily, we've sought expression and discovery.” Do you need any more evidence? Okay, one more: not only did OL unearth buried treasures, but presented them in creative ways; take a look at the outrageous Machine Dazzles’s costumes in my blog report on their 2023 performance of Io by Rameau at this link.

At the end of the clips, Ryan Brown came out to the podium with Patrick Quigley to introduce Mr. Quigley as the incoming Artistic Director and Conductor and said it seemed like time for some Mozart.

Conductor Quigley then directed the orchestra in performing Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate (1773) with the vocal by Paulina Francisco. At first, I found myself involuntarily rejecting Conductor Quigley’s presence in front of the orchestra. This event felt personal. In a way that’s hard to explain, I feel over the years I’ve gotten more than entertainment from OL under Director Brown’s leadership, maybe sustenance of some kind, perhaps continuing proof that the world is a good place to be. However, he could not have done Conductor Quigley a better favor than introduce him leading that evening’s orchestra, accompanying that soprano’s singing. Ms. Francisco and the orchestra performed the piece with such inspirational beauty, I came around to at least not rejecting Mr. Quigley.

Conductor Brown returned for the last selection, the “O doux moment” Trio from Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini’s Oedipe à Colone (1786, performed by OL in 2004) sung beautifully by Paulina Francisco, James Reese, and John Taylor Ward. Exiting Artistic Director Brown said that the piece called for a life of love and virtue, and he wanted to end with that, and a befitting ending it was.

Stepping down Founder and Artistic Director of Opera Lafayette Ryan Brown. Photo by Jennifer Packard Photography; courtesy of Opera Lafayette.

It has been my pleasure and my privilege to attend and write about Opera Lafayette performances since January 2017. This performance made me realize how much I missed that went before! See a list of my reports below included to show the variety and sustained excellence of OL’s productions. OL’s niche included discovery of great music enshrouded in history. Many of their productions were modern premieres, music not heard since their first splash, and one, by black composer Edward Dédé, Morgiane, had never been performed before. Most OL productions were new to me. Old is new if you have not seen it before, and with Opera Lafayette, sometimes never even heard of it before. My OL mantra over the years quickly became don’t ask, just go, be entertained, be educated, and be enriched. I learned a good bit about history and how music mattered, how music was intertwined with that history. The cultural enrichment was always inclusive and never condescending. Thursday night was vintage Ryan Brown. The quality of Opera Lafayette’s delightful retrospective program and performance on Thursday night, arranged by Artistic Director Brown, revealed a man more at the height of his powers than one stepping down.

Thank you, Ryan Brown!

The Fan Experience: Opera Lafayette performs its works in both DC and NYC. On April 30, “Re | Joice: 30 Years of Ryan Brown at Opera Lafayette” was performed in NYC’s St. Bartholomew’s Church and on May 1 in the Terrace Theater of DC’s Kennedy Center. The vocals were sung in French with English subtitles projected on a screen.

For this performance there was no pre-performance talk. The program book, as of this report, still online at this link.

For your perusal of at least part of Opera Lafayette’s variety of performances, is a list below of ones I have written about since 2017; I wish I had started earlier.

OPERA LAFAYETTE: FROM VIOLINS TO OPERA, CLOAKED IN ROMANCE

January 19, 2017

OPERA LAFAYETTE AND MY FIRST LEONORE

February 22, 2017

AN ELEGANT EVENING OF EARLY MUSIC, COMPLIMENTS OF OPERA LAFAYETTE

October 27, 2017

WAS IT JUST A DREAM? TIME TRAVEL WITH OPERA LAFAYETTE

February 6, 2018

OPERA LAFAYETTE’S CERERE PLACATA: THOSE CRAZY RICH NEAPOLITANS

October 31, 2018

OPERA LAFAYETTE’S RADAMISTO: FAITHFUL WOMEN, GREAT MUSIC, AND SPIRITED DANCING

February 9, 2019