2024 Issue 2 Mar/Apr Focus - Mid-South Magazine

Pagliacci Serse, Opera Neo, August 2021. Courtesy Stephanie Doche Opera Memphis
Art starts telling us that things exist on a spectrum.
When a piece is written, if approached appropriately, it really
goes toward basic ideas of what it means to be human.
Now, this is asked with the utmost respect: Is there
anything nerdier than opera nerds? Ned Canty, Opera
Memphis' General Director and Stage Director for the
upcoming La Calisto, along with Jonathan King, Opera
Memphis' Music Director, both embrace that idea.
Canty says, "I think of a nerd as someone who is deeply
in love with a type of art or culture that does not fit into
traditional notions of what 'real men' or 'real women'
should be into. The most important tenet for me is that
you love the thing without worrying about whether other
people think you should." So, in other words, don't worry
about flying your opera nerd flag.
The city of Memphis has dramatically benefited from
opera nerds since the founding of Opera Memphis in
1956. The Metropolitan Opera and other companies
had performed in Memphis before, but Opera Memphis
brought opportunities for year-round opera performances
not yet seen before. Canty says Opera Memphis has
grown and evolved since then, most recently moving
its headquarters from East Memphis to the PeCo
neighborhood in late 2023, closer to the art center of
Memphis. The 2023-2024 season brings a mix of opera
standards and more modern offerings, such as the
"Variations on a Theme" series, which presented various
music connected to the words of poet Langston Hughes
last month.
Both Canty and King agreed that opera could be viewed
as a kind of heightened musical theater. Canty says that
many people have stereotypical ideas about opera that
have been established by popular culture from Looney
Tunes' Bugs Bunny to Seinfeld to Pretty Woman. However,
those stereotypical notions only represent a small slice of
the genre. In the course of a three- or four-year production
cycle, Opera Memphis presents a mix of standards that
people know well like, Carmen and La Boheme, balanced
by either Opera Memphis original works or relatively new
pieces. This season, Opera Memphis was interested in
La Calisto. It's a baroque opera that is rarely performed,
especially compared to romantic pieces of the 19th and
20th centuries, but is quite interesting to watch due to the
cultural and societal questions it raises.
Canty says opera is relevant now because "art starts
telling us that things exist on a spectrum. When a piece is
written, if approached appropriately, it really goes toward
basic ideas of what it means to be human. In the case
of La Calisto, which was written 400 years ago, it looks
at ideas of what it means to be a man, or a woman, or a
lover, or a follower, or any of these things, basic questions
that every person, every human being, every society asks
themselves." In prehistoric times, people answered these
questions with the gods, who turned into the Greek and
Roman gods, who turned into the characters in this opera.
La Calisto is part of Opera Memphis' Masterworks
series and will be performed with period-appropriate
instruments. In La Calisto the character of Santorini, the
little satyr, is a boy going through puberty. Characters like
that were often played by women for comedic purposes.
The casting also plays with voice and costume, similar to
some characters in Shakespeare and other theaters.
Another interesting characterization is that of Jove,
who transforms himself into the character of Diana to
seduce Calisto. The same singer plays both Diana and
Jove, who looks like Diana. Canty says the casting begged
the question about drag performance, a hot topic now
for several state legislators. Just this past June, Memphisbased
drag group Friends of George won a lawsuit that
deemed a recent anti-drag law unconstitutional.
Canty concluded, "The characterizations in La Calisto
highlighted the notion that a really wide variety of drag
and gender fluidity was happening for hundreds of years
in this art form and others, and that it was (a) something
to celebrate and (b) underlined how ridiculous that law
Mar+Apr 2024 | focuslgbt.com | Nerd 25