New York City is a place where people have been inspired to build empires.  People dream here.  People work here.  From far away, people aspire to come and succeed here.  But mostly, people just live here.  There likely is not an ethnic, cultural, or religious group extant in the world that is not represented here in some form or another, co-existing in the prototypical melting pot that is New York City.  Each culture is showcased by a vibrant community with its own sights, smells, tastes, traditions, and language living in its own little slice of the big city.  However, given the relatively small size of New York, these communities often need to share space and can butt up against each other, potentially creating an undercurrent of unease in the streets.  On a daily basis, New York City is a success – its various subcultures coexist and add to the whole.  On a daily basis, people go on about their day-to-day and interact without conflict.  But every so often...

There is a spark.  Which ignites into an incident.  Left uncontrolled, it turns into a tragedy.

It is into this appropriate and timely setting that Brooklyn's Genesis Repertory Ensemble restates one of Shakespeare's signature tragedies, Romeo and Juliet.  Verona, Italy becomes Brooklyn, USA, and the Montagues and Capulets are a Russian-Jewish and a Palestinean-Arab family, respectively.  While the entirety of Shakespeare's original text is respected – this is not a metaphorical take a la West Side Story – don't be surprised to hear some liberties taken such as the use of "Pelham Parkway" or "Brooklyn" in place of the original Italian locales or some Hebrew and Arabic epithets in the aftermath of the culture clash that opens the performance.  Similarly, after being blessed by Friar Lawrence, Romeo's reply of "Baruch Ha-Shem...  What?  I'm Jewish." proved to be a hit with the audience.

On Thursday, January 20, we once again invited Ben Spierman, Associate Artistic Director for the Bronx Opera, back to visit with us for another USTownhall RealStories interview.  The Bronx Opera, now in its 44th Season, is presenting the rarely performed comic opera, Fra Diavolo by French composer, Daniel Auber from 1830.  The Bronx Opera's production updates the setting to 1930 and is completely performed and sung in English.

It was at the Lovinger Theatre in the Bronx's Lehman College on January 15 and 16, and moves to the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College for its January 22 and 23 engagements.

Mr. Spierman was also kind enough to tease his upcoming production of Don Giovanni by Mozart, which will premiere in May 2011.

On Thursday May 6, 2010, we broadcast an episode of our Internet Radio Show with Mr. Spierman as it was set to mount  its production of Don Pasquale, a comic opera by famed Italian composer, Donizetti.  As with Fra Diavolo, this was a limited engagement of four performances.  On May 7 & 8, the opera was staged at the Lovinger Theatre at Lehman College in the Bronx, while on May 14 & 15, it was performed at Hofstra University's John Cranford Adams Playhouse in Long Island.

On Saturday, January 9, 2010, we did a video interview with Mr. Spierman for our USTownhall RealStories webcast, which took place shortly before the curtian rose on opening night of the comic opera, Die Drei Pintos by Gustav Mahler.  Squarely within the comic opera genre in early-1800s Europe, there are many similarities between Die Drei Pintos and Fra Diavolo, but there are some important differences as well, which Mr. Spierman points out in our most recent interview.

To find out more information about the Bronx Opera and its production of Don Pasquale, please visit www.bronxopera.org

Click on the players below to listen to our exclusive interviews with Ben Spierman, the Associate Artistic Director of the Bronx Opera.

(3) January 20, 2011 audio interview re: Fra Diavolo

(2) May 6, 2010 audio interview re: Don Pasquale

(1) January 9, 2010 video interview re: Die Drei Pintos

As part of our continuing series spotlighting New York's independent theatre scene, we attended the January 9 opening night performance of the Bronx Opera's Die drei Pintos, a comic opera by Gustav Mahler, who finished the project begun by Carl Maria von Weber in the early 1800s.  Mahler's completed opera premiered at the Neues Stadttheater in Lipzig, Germany on January 20, 1888.  Almost exactly 122 years later, the Bronx Opera debuts their English-language version of this rarely seen opera -- only the third time in history being performed in the United States and the first time being done in New York.

The Bronx Opera's version of Die drei Pintos, featuring a fresh translation by Associate Artistic Director, Benjamin Spearman, is a frothy, fun mix of opportunistic con men, stolen identity, starcrossed lovers, and a man who is impersonated not once, but twice during the course of the story with each of his imposters being more preferable to the original.

Bored by the classics?  Can’t make head or tail of Shakespeare?  An independent theater company operating in Brooklyn known as Genesis Repertory might just change your mind.  Their mission statement  is to make art accessible to the masses, and they do that by taking those dusty old classics and bringing them right into the 21st century, all the while making sure that the original intent, themes, and text are respected.

Genesis Repertory began in 1999 with its first production, a modernized version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which they set in America during the Kennedy administration.  The Merchant of Venice, famous for the somewhat anit-Semitic caricature of Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, was restaged in Nazi Germany on the eve of Kristallnacht (appropriate as Hitler had the play broadcast over German airwaves as part of his propaganda campaign against the Jews shortly after the real Kristallnacht).  Macbeth was transported to Argentina of the 1940s, while A Midsummer Night’s Dream was set in Central Park at the turn of the millennium.  Numerous other productions, most of which were also based on the works of Shakespeare, were likewise reimagined.