Center City Opera has new name and mission

With witches, temptresses, and all manner of homicidal activity, Center City Opera Theater's first season under its resurrection moniker Vulcan Lyric would seem to be operatic business as usual.

But the four productions clustered into Vulcan's 18-day festival Thursday through Aug. 16 are all new to Philadelphia. That's the plan that came out of a two-year hiatus full of soul searching, and, of course, market analysis.

"Is there a role for us? How do we fit in? We've emerged with a much clearer vision," general director Andrew Kurtz said.

The new name significantly omits the word opera - in deference to the equal time Kurtz plans to give to musical theater. And the Vulcan part? "Vulcan is the romantic god of forging creation. It's the idea of creating new work, hammered out with fire," he said. "The reason for 'Lyric' is that everything we do is telling stories with song."

If this festival has a theme, it's moral role reversal. Off-Broadway's Heathers: The Musical has such a warped sense of heroism, you almost want its high school protagonists to get away with accidentally killing their socially condescending classmates. The devil has feelings, too, in Maren of Vardø: Satan's Bride, a Jeff Myers/Royce Vavrek opera based on 16th-century Norwegian witch trials, which will be given its world premiere here.

The lotus land of the Nathaniel Hawthorne-based Rappaccini's Daughter seems irresistible (especially with composer Daniel Catan's lush harmonies), even if the opera's botanical glories are poisonous. And Vietnam prisoner of war Col. Jim Thompson, who emerges from a decade of captivity in Tom Cipullo's Glory Denied, learns that his wife, unlike Ulysses', hasn't been waiting faithfully.

While four shows opening on successive dates might seem daunting, the production of Rappaccini's Daughter played successfully this spring - with a different cast - at the University of Houston. Also easing the schedule's density: At the Prince Theater (no longer the Prince Music Theater), the 446-seat main stage is augmented by a 160-seat black-box theater that will house Glory Denied.

The company is no stranger to reinvention. Since its founding in 1999 with performances mostly on the Main Line, Center City Opera Theatre has had a multifaceted identity that mixed standard works at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater with site-specific events in public places and even productions in the Philly Fringe. "It's easy to get lost in the Fringe," Kurtz said, "which is what happened."

The current incarnation, however, hit snags amid the shifting ownership of the Prince Theater - once home of the American Music Theater Festival and occasional host to Curtis Opera Theatre - during which contracts came and went.

"I got a call from the management in July of last year saying the contract that we just negotiated had been withdrawn and the company was shutting down the building, probably never to reopen as a theater," Kurtz said. "We spent the fall trying to figure out when or where to produce this festival. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Philadelphia Film Society [which took over the Prince] saying, 'Are you still interested?' "

That was only five months ago - the blink of an eye in an industry that plans years in advance. Composer Myers had only roughed out the Maren of Vardø orchestration, not knowing when the piece would see the light of day. Luckily, he wrapped it up anyway so that when the Vulcan Lyric green light came, he was ready. But that wasn't his only leap of faith.

"It's coming together really fast," Myers said. "I don't know the director or singers or anything. There could be some surprises on my end. But I'm going to have to roll with it. I've been working on this opera for several years. It's hard to find companies to do it. And I don't want it to sit around."

Similarly, Heathers composer Larry O'Keefe has to believe his tale of high school angst will fit in with the festival's operatic bedfellows. "High school is a time of huge emotions, so why not go to an operatic place?" he said. "In the last couple decades, there's been a great cross-pollination between the arts, and we all have a couple lessons to learn from one another. . . . But I'm not sure what the public is going to think about it."

Certainly, the American Music Theater Festival cultivated an audience for hybrid works with ambitious new music theater such as 1994's Floyd Collins. And during Center City Opera's recent hiatus, Opera Philadelphia has dramatically slanted the landscape toward all manner of new work.

"I love the vision that David Devan and Opera Philadelphia have for the city," Kurtz said. "They're going to drive what opera is in this city. . . . But they aren't saturating the market. What we've done, hopefully, is claimed a place for ourselves . . . in the development of new work, but also music theater. Maybe there are some bigger challenges that I can take in a small venue that they can't take in the Academy of Music."

Future plans include collaborations with composers such as Daron Hagen and Victoria Bond, as well as with the new-music crucible American Opera Projects. The company's current budget is $350,000 - "but needs to be closer to $1 million for me to have full-time staffing." Or larger singer salaries: Kurtz often has depended on young artists.

The idea behind cluster scheduling is to create an event when little else is happening theatrically or musically in Center City.

"With summer being the height of the tourist season here, and with Philadelphia being the fifth-largest city and one of the top cultural destinations in the country, it seemed very logical that we could get people to come and visit the city, go to the Barnes, enjoy our fabulous restaurants, and come to our shows," Kurtz said.

Each show has between four and nine performances (Heathers has the most), both on weekends and weekdays, to accommodate both visitors and those locals who spend weekends away.

The lack of standard repertoire is significant. "Nobody is going to come to Philadelphia to see my Traviata," Kurtz said.

Many companies are emphasizing new work with concentrated festival scheduling. Berkeley's West Edge Opera, perhaps most analogous to Vulcan Lyric, is presenting three pieces that might not pull their box-office weight individually but make an attractively adventurous package: a chamber reduction of Berg's Lulu, Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and the West Cast premiere of a new opera about gender reassignment, As One, by Laura Kaminsky.

But with singers and scenery coming and going in quick succession, might a traffic cop be in order? Not with productions built on high-tech projections. "We can turn a show around in an hour," Kurtz said.

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Maren of Vardo: Satan's Bride

Thursday to Aug. 15. Tickets: $39-$99

Heathers

Friday to Aug. 16. Tickets: $39-$99

Rappaccini's Daughter

Saturday to Aug. 14. Tickets: $39-$99

Glory Denied

Sunday to Aug. 16. Tickets: $49

All performances at the Prince Theater, 1412 Chestnut St. Information: 215-238-1555 or www.vulcanlyric.orgEndText