Arts & Entertainment
Of queens and minions
Washington National Opera features high-stakes and high-jinks in new season
Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role of ‘Anna Bolena.’ (Photo by Cade Martin, courtesy WNO)
‘Anna Bolena’
Washington National Opera
Sept. 15-Oct. 6
‘Don Giovanni’
Sept. 20-Oct. 13
Kennedy Center
2700 F St., NW
$25-$300
202-467-4600
kennedy-center.org
From epic royals to legendary libertines, Washington National Opera’s 2012-2013 season openers are a perfect fit for capital city audiences mired in a presidential election year.
First out of the gate is Gaetano Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena,” opening Sept. 14. Starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role, the 19th-century opera follows the waning days of Anne Boleyn’s reign as Queen of England before being found guilty of adultery and beheaded.
“The opera is amazing dramatically,” says Radvanovsky, “and the music on top of it is just any soprano’s dream.”
Radvanovsky made a name for herself in the dramatic soprano repertoire of Giuseppe Verdi, but in recent years, she started branching out to explore other roles. Often compared to renowned soprano Maria Callas, who revived “Anna Bolena” from near obscurity in the 1950s, Radvanovsky’s voice possess a full-blooded timbre that’s matched by a riveting acting sense, according to her director for this production, Stephen Lawless.
“The intelligence which she brings to the playing of Anna is thrilling and moving,” says Lawless, who’s gay. “She always puts her abilities to the service of the job in hand.”
The opera culminates in a heartbreaking and defiant mad scene for Anna, yet both Lawless and Radvanovsky feel this isn’t the garden-variety hysteria portrayed in other operas, including the same composer’s calling card “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
“She’s emotionally naked,” Radvanovsky says of the queen. “The easy card to put down is to play cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs. Anna Bolena isn’t crazy; it’s just too much for her to handle, and I think that’s something that more people can relate to.”
“She finds inner resources that I suspect she never knew she had,” Lawless says about the doomed queen, adding that her death transforms tragedy into “something glorious.”
DESPITE THE TUDOR-ERA setting for the story, the opera’s themes bear striking relevance to today’s social and political climate. Donizetti contrasts Anna’s undoing with the ascendency of the social-climbing Jane Seymour, who has caught the eye of Henry VIII and will become queen after Anna’s decapitation. However, Anna’s betrayal of a true love from girlhood haunts her throughout out the story, reminding Jane Seymour and audiences that dreams of power can’t buy happiness.
“I started singing when I was 11,” says Radvanovsky. “When I was 18 years old, I said, ‘By the time, I’m 30, I’m going to be singing at the Met.’” This dream came true for the singer, as did her chance to sing with legendary tenor Placido Domingo. She sang with him during “Cyrano de Bergerac” on her 35th birthday, causing her to ask the older legend what she should do now that she’d accomplished her goals.
“He told me, ‘Oh, Sondra. You must go get a new dream.’”
Now in her 40s, Radvanovsky feels that anyone, from the American people trying to choose a president to a young girl aspiring to be queen of 16th-century England, needs to focus on the moment at hand instead of an unpredictable future.
“If [Anna] had lived in the moment, she would have seen that she wasn’t in love with [Henry], but she was looking a year ahead. We are looking into politics in the same way. We put so much hope in these dreams, hoping that Obama or whoever continues down the road we want.”
Lawless, a British native, sees the opera’s connection to today’s audience in a slightly darker hue, recounting how Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the United Kingdom during the recent Olympics. While there, he was asked about Pussy Riot, the female punk band who staged a protest act against Putin weeks before his recent election to the presidency.
“He said, ‘I hope the courts will be lenient with her,’” remembers Lawless, “and that’s exactly a Henry [VIII] statement. It’s that kind of abuse of power that gives this piece its ironic resonance. Henry’s abuse of power should make you as angry as the Pussy Riot thing.”
WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA’S next piece, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” follows close on the heels of “Anna Bolena” and opens Sept. 20. The infamous womanizer of the title gets his karmic comeuppance by opera’s end, attended throughout by his long-suffering servant, Leporello, played by gay bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams.
“I have played it once before, where he was very dark,” he says of the character. “I’ve since come to realize that’s not right. It needs to be multi-layered. We need to remember that it’s a ‘dramma giocoso’ — a dark comedy.”
Paul (left) and Andrew Foster-Williams. Andrew plays Leporello in Washington National Opera’s production of Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni.’ (Photo courtesy WNO)
The singer travels the world with his partner, photographer Paul Foster-Williams, who grew into an avid opera devotee because of his 14-year relationship with Andrew.
“I didn’t come from an opera background,” Paul says. “Now, I would do anything to go and see opera. It gives you the most returns in any art form.”
Paul compares opera with baseball, a realization he came to after going to see a Nationals game while staying in D.C. last spring for Andrew’s turn in “Werther.”
“I had no idea what was going on,” Paul says, laughing. “If you go to the football or soccer game and you don’t know the rules, you might not ever go to another game. It’s the same with opera. The more you experience, the more you get it, the more you will be come absolutely addicted to it, I promise.”
“The reasons people enjoy baseball is because they understand the rules,” Andrew adds. “They learned the rules, therefore they understand the skill of the players.”
The charming British couple hastens to add that opera is performed with translation surtitles projected above the stage, so no one need sit through hours of unintelligible bellowing.
THE FOSTER-WILLIAMSES are clearly a couple who have their own rules down pat. They say they’ve had to develop particular ways of living a life that’s eternally on the road.
“We land in a place,” says Paul. “Andrew goes out and gets provisions. I try to make the apartment feel like a home. We don’t speak to each other at least for a couple of hours.”
“If you’re going to have an argument, it’s then,” Andrew concurs.
“I think some people would end up killing each other,” says Paul. “We’re very lucky. Other people go to separate jobs, and they have separate things to share. What we’re sharing is the discovery of different places together.”
Some productions settle them in a city for a couple of months, while others find them hopping four continents in one week, as it did last spring. After finishing up in D.C., they went to London, Hong Kong and finally Sydney, Australia, which was locked in the grips of winter.
“We had to buy new clothes and leave some new clothes,” Andrew says.
Despite the chaos, the couple remains passionately committed to the arts. Paul’s photography has had to take on a new character, as long-term projects are out of the question now, so he ends up photographing the artists Andrew works with as well as the city locations Paul explores during his partner’s long rehearsal hours.
“Experiencing so much music traveling with Andrew, I think I understand singers well. Singers adapt to each evening, each audience, the atmosphere that evening. It’s so organic, it’s so alive all the time.”
Andrew sums up the role of the artist as an obligation to restoring the humanity to operatic characters.
“This is about making opera real again. The fate of it rests in the hands of the artists singing it.”
Eight contestants vied for Mr., Miss and Mx. Capital Pride 2024 at a pageant at Penn Social on Saturday. Xander Childs Valentino was crowned Mr. Capital Pride, Dylan B. Dickherson White was crowned Mx. Capital Pride and Sasha Adams Sanchez was crowned Miss Capital Pride.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny
‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org
In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.
Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable.
After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door.
The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying.
Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.)
Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script.
This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander.
Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific.
The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor.
New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively.
The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.
“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices.
Nightlife
Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival
An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend
When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.
This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.
While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.
“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”
Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”
Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.
This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”
Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.
Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF.
Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.
Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town.
With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.
Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).
HHS reverses Trump-era anti-LGBTQ rule
PHOTOS: Capital Pride Pageant
Md. governor signs Freedom to Read Act
The rise of virtual home tours
Round House explores serious issues related to privilege
Catching up with the asexuals and aromantics of D.C.
Argentina government dismisses transgender public sector employees
Maine governor signs transgender, abortion sanctuary bill into law
Mexican Senate approves bill to ban conversion therapy
Bowser budget proposal calls for $5.25 million for 2025 World Pride
-
District of Columbia4 days agoCatching up with the asexuals and aromantics of D.C.
-
South America4 days agoArgentina government dismisses transgender public sector employees
-
Maine5 days agoMaine governor signs transgender, abortion sanctuary bill into law
-
Mexico3 days agoMexican Senate approves bill to ban conversion therapy