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Artistic director of Fort Lee opera company celebrates 90th birthday

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  • Artistic director of Fort Lee opera company celebrates 90th birthday

    The Record - NorthJersey.com, NJ
    March 1 2015


    Artistic director of Fort Lee opera company celebrates 90th birthday Sunday


    March 1, 2015 Last updated: Sunday, March 1, 2015, 10:27 AM
    By JIM BECKERMAN

    How many complete operas did soprano Lucine Amara, in her Metropolitan
    days, have stored in her head -- ready to sing at a moment's notice?

    Might as well ask how many girls Mozart's Don Giovanni has in his
    little black book. "I couldn't tell you how many," says Amara, soprano
    emeritus at the Metropolitan Opera, and artistic director of New
    Jersey Association of Verismo Opera in Fort Lee.

    Rather than enumerate them, as Mozart does in his famous "catalog
    aria," it might be easier just to name them.

    "Well listen, I had to have 'Aida,' 'Tosca,' 'Forza,' " she says,
    thinking. "Also 'Trovatore,' 'Marriage of Figaro,' 'Così Fan Tutte,'
    'Pagliacci,' 'Cavelleria Rusticana,' 'Butterfly'..."

    That's one reason Amara, celebrating her 90th birthday today, and her
    20th anniversary with Verismo this year, became -- sometimes to her
    annoyance -- the Met's reliable pinch-hitter. When this or that diva
    had a last-minute cancellation, it was often Amara to the rescue.
    "They would say, 'Lucine can sing it,' " she recalls.

    Not that Amara wasn't a Met star in her own right. She made a
    sensational debut in 1950 as the offstage Celestial Voice in Verdi's
    "Don Carlo," and she played many of the great lead and supporting
    roles during her 41-year career there: Aida, Cio-Cio San in "Madama
    Butterfly," Mimi in "La Bohème," Donna Elvira in "Don Giovanni,"
    Micaëla in "Carmen." She logged 882 Met performances, 57 radio
    broadcasts, and recordings ranging from "Pagliacci" (twice) to
    "Lohengrin."

    Last-minute sub

    But she has other memories, too. Of being roused from her sickbed with
    a fever of 102 to play in "Die Meistersinger" because no one else
    could. Of subbing midperformance for the star of "La Forza del
    Destino" (she had had a coughing fit) so abruptly that Amara went on
    in her patent leather boots because she didn't have time to change
    into sandals. Of playing a last-minute "Manon Lescaut" and suddenly
    forgetting the next line. "I went blank," she recalls. "Harry Theyard
    was my tenor. I asked him quietly, 'You wouldn't happen to know what
    my next line is?' He said, 'I don't know, babe. But I think it starts
    with quì (here).' ''

    All of which may explain why, unlike many professional metro-area
    musicians, Amara never made her home in North Jersey. "I always had to
    live in Manhattan because I had to be no further than 10 minutes from
    the opera house," she says.

    Her role with Verismo, the North Jersey opera society founded in 1989,
    has been in large part to vet (along with her daughter, singer Evelyn
    La Quaif, manager/director of the company) the singers who appear in
    their twice-yearly productions. Their "Carmen" can be seen at the
    Bergen Performing Arts Center, Englewood at 3 p.m. on April 26.

    "We're helping young artists get started," Amara says. "They're
    singing principal roles in an opera company, fully staged and with
    orchestra."

    She also gives the up-and-comers the benefit of her long stage
    experience -- something that goes beyond mere voice technique.
    "Verismo" -- "truth" -- is the late-19th-century opera school that
    stressed authentic emotions and believable (often working-class,
    sometimes sordid) situations. What Amara discovered is that many young
    opera singers have superb vocal training, but little acting sense.

    "Their hands are at their sides, and they're standing there like a
    statue singing," Amara says. "I say to them, 'Why aren't you the
    character, in the aria you're singing?' " She blames the
    conservatories. "If you make a gesture, they knock your hands down,"
    Amara says.

    Met debut in 1950

    Her own musical training began with violin, which she took up at age
    10, and her singing in Armenian churches in San Francisco, where Amara
    (born Armaganian in Hartford, Conn.) moved when she was 12. Amara is a
    first-generation American -- her mother and aunt both survived the
    Armenian Genocide of 1915, which marks its 100th anniversary this
    April. "They were put on the march through the desert," she says. "It
    was bad times."

    Amara was an instant hit when she debuted with the Met in November
    1950 -- she came in the same year as its storied general manager, Sir
    Rudolf Bing.

    "The greatest lyric soprano of our time," The New York Times called
    her at one point. Within a year, she was acting in Hollywood's "The
    Great Caruso" (1951) with Mario Lanza -- though her comments about the
    superstar tenor, in interviews, have irked diehard Lanza fans.

    Sure, Lanza had a great voice, Amara says. But he had a great ego to match.

    "We had to record first, before we filmed," she recalls. "We recorded
    the whole 'Miserere' scene [from 'Il Trovatore'], and after we went
    into the listening room to listen. And I must tell you -- this was so
    upsetting to me -- he sat there and said, 'Caruso never sounded that
    good.' Can you believe that?"

    >From N.Y.C. to N.C.

    Outsiders might assume that professional opera, being so grandiose,
    would be ordered, methodical, a well-oiled machine. But there were
    also times when it could be seat-of-the-pants crazy. Amara remembers
    getting a late afternoon phone call in New York -- it must have been
    mid-1980s -- begging her to appear that night in "Tosca" in Charlotte,
    N.C. It was a special anniversary performance; the management was
    desperate.

    "So I got into a cab, got to the Metropolitan so I could get my Tosca
    costume, got back in the cab, and we got stuck in Friday rush-hour
    traffic trying to get to JFK," she recalls. "Well, the flight left at
    4:10, and we arrived at 4:20. So what do I do? I call to get a
    [chartered] plane. But the plane is taking off from La Guardia. So ...
    we get the last two seats in a helicopter from JFK to La Guardia. Then
    we got on the plane, and we sat because it's Friday and all the big
    planes have to go up before us. Our flight finally took off at 7
    o'clock. The performance is at 8. We got there at 9:30, a Volkswagen
    met us at the airport, and we had a motorcycle police escort to the
    theater. The curtain went up at 10 o'clock."

    Another thing outsiders might assume about opera: Age is no barrier.
    Hollywood stars may be over-the-hill at 30, but the stout baritone and
    the matronly soprano are a cliché. It ain't over until you-know-who
    sings.

    Well, Amara is here to tell you that opera is as ageist as anything
    else. At the age of 50, she found that the Met was easing her into
    retirement. "I said, 'Is it my voice?,' they said no," she recalls. "I
    said, 'You're treating me like a football player, you're putting me on
    the sidelines.' "

    Which is how she ended up, in the late 1970s, suing the Met for age
    discrimination. And winning. She sang there until 1991.

    "Everything has to be young, young, young," she says. "Well, you can't
    have a 21-year-old singing Aida at the Metropolitan. The older you get
    the more mature your voice is. And then you can do the role of Aida."


    http://www.northjersey.com/arts-and-entertainment/celebrities/mainstay-of-the-met-marks-two-milestones-1.1280443?page=all



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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