But On-Site Opera’s performance at the Lost Draft café on Valentine’s Day was a lot more pleasant.
Bach’s secular cantata about a coffee-addicted daughter is already uncannily relevant, and this performance was no slow drip; the audience was in and out in 45 minutes.
Geoffrey McDonald’s arrangement for violin, cello, flute, and guitar — joyfully played by members of the American Modern Ensemble — lent a “coffeehouse open mic” vibe, though I missed the harpsichord continuo.
Warm-voiced tenor Bernard Holcomb, as the beanie-wearing barista narrator, was delightful throughout. “You can call me Joe,” he sang in the first recitative, pouring cupful after steaming cupful. This “tasting #1,” served black, with “green apple notes,” was accompanied by cookies.
The bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, in a tan trench coat out of Seinfeld, shone as Schlendrian, with his exasperated expressions. “Raising daughters is no picnic,” he sang, “It’s in one ear and out the other.”
The very loose English translation, also by McDonald, took a lot of artistic licenses. Bach’s original, as far as I know, didn’t include the words “caffeine” or “oat milk.” Indeed, the libretto was full of clichés like “not a pretty picture,” and other White American Vernacular English.
Of course, it would have been better in German. Perhaps with “fake” subtitles à la Sapphira Cristál. But if On Site’s goal was legibility, it succeeded at that.
Soprano Christine Lyons sparkled as the rebellious Lieschen, who was introduced, Starbucks-style, with her name (spelled correctly!) on a cup. “Coffee, coffee,” she sang. “I’ve got to have it.”
Lyons, though surely a tad older than Lieschen’s character, was hilariously convincing, always on her iPhone. All the singers, in fact, resembled people you might meet on the street. That is, until they opened their mouths.
The “tasting #2” — an “African brew” called “Kahawa chungu” — was, thankfully, decaf for those who didn’t wish to be wired at 7 p.m.
As the story goes, Schlendrian tells his daughter she must quit coffee before marriage. But Lieschen fools him by acting in cahoots with her suitors.
In one scene, Lieschen makes an online dating profile on a laptop covered in coffee-themed stickers. But, in the end, it’s the eavesdropping barista who gets the girl.
In the final trio, the singers — Cokorinos, Lyons, and Holcomb — had almost too good projection. Spoons were practically rattling. “Bach’s meaning we cannot extract,” they sang. “Did dad’s back then withhold a latte?”
The “tasting #3” was the “Queen’s Cup,” a mixture of coffee and tea, in the “spirit of compromise”
Though a little patronizing for the seasoned opera goer, On Site’s cantata would have been perfect for a brooding teen. Afterwards, the young man next to me said to his parents, “That was actually pretty cool.”
Let’s hope it was the “gateway drug” to, say, Emma Kirkby’s recording with the Academy of Ancient Music.
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