Rehearsing a scene from Verdi’s Il Trovatore
At Boulder Opera, we are excited to announce that Gene Roberts will be joining our team once again to direct our production of Massenet’s Manon.
Gene Roberts, stage director, returns to Boulder Opera for Manon, after directing Il Trovatore, Cavalleria Rusticana, Signor Deluso and Little Red Riding Hood in previous seasons. In recent seasons Roberts directed Le Nozze di Figaro and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the Bay View Music Festival in Michigan, was a guest director of Webster University’s opera theater in St. Louis, MO and has served as the scenes’ director for the Naked Voice Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In the fall of 2019 Roberts produced and directed Luisa Fernanda at MSU Denver, where he serves as Director of Opera Theatre. This was the first bilingual production of the beloved Zarzuela in the state of Colorado.
Roberts began his professional career in Europe, where he joined the Swiss premier cast of Lloyd Webber’s das Phantom der Oper in Basel, Switzerland. Phantom led to many other opportunities throughout Europe in stage and television, including starring as Beast in the German production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (die Schöne und das Biest), a role Roberts performed over 500 times. Altogether, throughout the US and Europe, Roberts sang over 30 roles in musical theater including Tony in West Side Story and Snoopy in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, and 20 roles in opera including Basilio in Le Nozze di Figaro, Normano in Lucia di Lammermoor and Bardolfo in Falstaff.
Roberts holds a BM in vocal performance from the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, where he also studied opera stage direction, and a MM in vocal performance from the University of Houston.
A shot from Boulder Opera’s production of Il Trovatore directed by Gene Roberts.
Boulder Opera: I hear Manon is on your bucket list of operas to direct, what is so appealing about directing Manon?
Gene Roberts: Manon has absolutely been on my bucket list - for probably 30 years! I've directed scenes from this beautiful piece many times, but this is my first crack at the whole, amazing work. This opera is simply drop dead gorgeous music. Of course, there's always something irresistible about a tragedy. And this has the added element of Manon's youth. With her whole life ahead of her, we just hope she'll make choices that will bring her all that we want for her.
BOC: Tell us about your costume designer, and what is the idea behind the looks of 60's?
GR: Alyssa Ridder is the Professor of Costume design at MSU Denver, where I am Opera Director. When I brought her on board to help us tell this story, we decided to create a world that would, by its visual look, make the story more accessible to contemporary audiences than 18th century France. Alyssa and I together landed on a look which is very like the 60's, with touches of the frivolous peacock revolution. We're not going for concrete 1960's,with cultural references from that period and so forth, and of course, as Alyssa would say, peacock revolution is more British in fashion history. But the colors, the jabots, evoke the just out of reach, fabulous life that Manon is seeking. We're creating our own world as we tell this beautiful, sad story.
BOC: What are some of the challenges of directing this Grand opera into a smaller scale production?
GR: Sheer numbers of performers on stage are one element large companies use to dazzle audiences with these truly grand pieces. When you can't have that, you have to concentrate on quality. In our production we use not only inventive costume design as I've stated above, we use projections to evoke emotion, and above all you have to have quality of performances, which we have in spades. The artists headlining the production Amy Maples and Cody Laun as Manon and Des Grieux are as good as you will hear/see anywhere. The beautiful singers in the supporting roles and chorus are likewise powerhouse artists. Rehearsals have been so much fun! I simply ask people once to do something and they all fill whatever bit of staging I ask for with life and a thousand watts of light!
BOC: Tell us the story of Manon in your words.
GR: Manon is a teenage girl, whose conservative, catholic family feels she likes the pleasures of life a little too much, and are sending her off to a convent. When we first see her, she has just gotten off a bus in a small town in northern France. Her cousin, Lescaut, is to meet her there to make sure she gets on the final bus to the convent. Lescaut meets her, but goes off to gamble with his soldier buddies, telling Manon to sit and wait for him. As she waits, Manon meets the charming, young Chevalier des Grieux. The two fall instantly in love and run off to Paris together. Unfortunately, des Griuex' family and the fact that Manon isn't exactly the settling down type seem from the start to thwart the likelihood of a happy ending!
It is quite a ride. And, oh my, we ride on beautiful music all the way to the final note. Please join us. This isn't a piece you get to hear every day!
Grab your tickets for Manon, directed by Gene Roberts!
You do not want to miss our grand finale performance and one of the great French operas!