Roger Rees and Conductor Robert Bass Bring Bard and Opera Together and New York Cool says "Cheers!"

Verdi and Shakespeare to Team With Collegiate Chorale
for Concert at Carnegie Hall

Written by Elias Stimac

Talk about a dynamic double bill! Shakespeare and Verdi will be headlining at Carnegie Hall this month, just in time for the Bard’s birthday. This theatrical duo will be showcased in a special concert from The Collegiate Chorale on April 20th. The program will feature Verdi’s versions of Shakespeare classics – Otello, Macbeth, and Falstaff – as well as scenes from the original text performed by Dana Ivey and Richard Easton. The one-night-only event will also spotlight The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, sopranos Heidi Grant Murphy and Kallen Esperian, baritone Mark Delavan, and tenor Lando Bartolini.

Bass is celebrating his 25th anniversary as Music Director of the Chorale. Since 1980, he has conducted a wide repertoire including choral works and operas, and has initiated numerous commissions in his tenure. He wrote and conceived the project with newly appointed Artistic Associate Roger Rees, who will direct the scripted passages and make an appearance or two onstage as well.

Rees is of course no stranger to Shakespeare. As Associate Artist for the RSC, he portrayed Hamlet and also starred in Love’s Labours Lost, Cymbeline, and Much Ado About Nothing. Broadway credits include Uncle Vanya, The Rehearsal, Indiscretions (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), and Nicholas Nickleby, (Tony and Olivier Awards, Emmy nomination). Other notable appearances include off-Broadway’s End of the Day (Obie Award) and The Real Thing in London. He has also co-written a play, Double Double, with Eric Elice.

A multi-hyphenate in the true sense of the word, Rees was Associate Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic from 1985-86. He has directed episodes of Oz for HBO, and helmed stage productions including Arms and the Man (Roundabout), Love’s Labours Lost and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Old Globe), and The Collegiate Chorale’s Kurt Weill Evening with Bebe Neuwirth (Alice Tully Hall).

How did Rees – a classically trained stage actor who endeared himself to American television audiences with a stint on Cheers – get involved with an operatic endeavor? “I’d been asked to narrate a magnificent opera that the Collegiate Chorale did at Carnegie Hall called Oberon, and that’s how I met Robert Bass. We discovered we had similar interests across the board -- acting and singing, for example -- and out of these conversations came our friendship which eventually led to this collaboration.”

Acting and singing often mingle in stage musicals, and the tradition is carried over into the world of opera by the Chorale. Rees relates, “The voice and music traditionally through history have been celebrated together to various degrees. The collegiate chorale explores the voice and music in various circumstances, like they’ve done an evening of Kurt Weill’s music. Weill actually preferred actors to sing his songs rather than opera singers. Recently with the Chorale we did an evening of American operetta, so it’s very various kinds of responses to the human voice and music that we’re trying to explore.”

With that goal in mind, bringing Shakespeare and Verdi together for an evening seemed like a match made in heaven. “Shakerspeare wrote thirty-seven plays, and then about three hundred years later along came Verdi and he made some operas out of these plays, and what we're going to do at Carnegie Hall in this Verdi Shakespeare evening is show some of the source material and then show some of the musical embellishments that Verdi made to those original scenes. So it will be interesting in that way.”

Tickets are $15-$85. The public can call (917)-322-2140 for more information. Tickets may also be purchased through The Carnegie Hall Box Office in advance, and on Carnegie Charge at (212) 247-7800. For more information, visit www.collegiatechorale.org.