Underground Treasure in Venice

In which we discover Venetian Pearls and Buried Beauty 

 

San Simeone Piccolo, Venice, built 1738

The Maestro, as we call him, composed the first two acts of his new opera in the spare bedroom of our Florentine flat this winter. When the time came for him to take this work up to Austria to present it to the theatre, we put the electric piano in a snowboard bag (it fit perfectly) to make it easier to take on the train.

I know, it sounds glamorous, and maybe it is.

A glass bead coral necklace by Marisa Convento

I accompanied Erling and his piano as far as Venice, and treated myself a day to wander about the city on an unusually warm and uncrowded midwinter day, feeling a bit blue that I would not be staying for Carnivale this time. Feeling even bluer that I wasn't able to return to Venice with my mother, something we talked about a lot during her last year.  I was cheered and inspired by a visit with the great Impiraressa, Marisa Convento, a Venetian artisan reviving the traditional art of seed glass beading from her small shop in San Marco, Venetian Dreams.  Not just an expert beader, Mariso knows the history of her art, and the significance of its revival.  She works with vintage and antique glass beads, and has an impressive collection of the special "Pearls:" antique (and highly collectible) Murano-made beads used for centuries in trading around the world, and which have found their way back to the city, and into her skilled hands.

Marisa is one of the artisans involved with Venezia Autentica, a brilliant organization helping to educate visitors on how to have a more meaningful experience in a city being trampled by mass tourism.  While we commiserated on the fate of the artists in our respective cities, I could see that the fight to save Venice may well be won by her artists.  Who knows more about perseverance than a Venetian?  Than a Venetian artist? 

Buried Treasure

Just across the canal from Santa Lucia station is the strangely proportioned church of San Simeone Piccolo (above.)   Attracted by its impressive copper green dome, visitors might peek inside the circular nave, see the protective plastic sheet covering the ceiling, and then leave.  I personally have never seen the inside of this dome and the church under it is unremarkable. However, this church keeps a secret treasure in its crypt.  You can buy a candle from the attendant as admission, and go down the stairs.

Now, stay still, until your eyes get used to the dark. 

painted designs on the walls of the crypt

You will see, the entire crypt is covered in ornament and murals! Rough and sort of theatrical in style, the painting shows up pretty well in low light.  Most of the ornament is done with a very limited palette of yellow ochre,  red, white, and a bit of black.

Lit by a single candle, the crypt walls and ceiling are visible only for a few feet.

Crypt ceiling painted in ornament with red and yellow ochre

Yes it is well below ground, and yes it is damp and cold.  It appears to have been painted in the 18th century after the church was built,  and I have no idea if...  

darn it my candle went out and I have to make my way back to the entrance, where one little candle was left burning.    

Xe mejo on mocolo impissà che na candela stuà. (1)

A small chapel in the center of crypt, lit by a single light near the entrance

Radiating from a central octagonal chapel are corridors leading to small shrines and burial chambers, These were ransacked and ill-used during the Napoleonic period. Any records about who is buried here were lost at that time.  Any candelabra that may have been here... have not been replaced.

A mournful mural detail by candlelight

A small shrine inside the crypt with loose but effective trompe l'oeil painting

The stoning of St Stephen,  in a faux gold mosaic cartouche.*

I don't have a flash on my camera but I resort to using the flashlight of my phone a few times. 

Especially when I hear things.

Entrance to a family tomb

inside a tomb, with a yellow, black, and ochre color scheme

A tomb where the tunnels split into four directions. The trompe l'oeil grill on the ceiling mimics a real grill elsewhere in the crypt.

macabre decoration in the crypt of San Simeone Piccolo, lit by a single candle

Five months later, in Klagenfurt rehearsals have started.  In three hours I  am in Venice to see the spectacular retrospective of Nancy Genn at the Palazzo Fero-Fini, which corresponds with the opening the Biennale Architettura.   The art galleries are opening new shows, and prosecco is being poured in every doorway of the Dorsoduro.

Erling joins me for one day. I pay my respects to Tintoretto.  On our way back, I stay with the bags while Erling ventures into the crypt.

It is perhaps better if you go into the crypt alone.

(1) Venetian proverb: Better to have a lit candle stub than an extinguished candle. 

All photos in this post by Lynne Rutter, 2018
except* by Erling Wold

Rattensturm a opera by Erling Wold and Peter Wagner,  13 -30 June, 2018 at the Klagenfurter Ensemble, Klagenfurt-am-Worthersee, Austria.

Churches of Venice  website in English with details on every church and its art

Venetian Dreams  Marissa Convento on Instagram
Alessia Fuga  contemporary glass bead artist

Venezia Autentica   because the more you know about Venice the more you will love it

Lynne Rutter Studio

UKSUS a surreal comic adventure

Roham Sheikhani, Nikola Printz, Laura Bohn, and Duncan Wold perform an OBERIU play within the opera UKSUS. Costumes by Laura Hazlett.

A few weeks ago Erling Wold's Fabrications staged the U.S. premiere of UKSUS, a surreal comic chamber opera based on the life and work of Russian absurdist writer Daniil Kharms.

UKSUS was originally commissioned by the Klagenfurter Ensemble in Austria, and the libretto was written by Felix Strasser and Yulia Izmaylova, who also there directed it in December of 2012.  I attended several performances of that production and really enjoyed myself, in part because I don’t speak German and had no idea what was going on and could therefore approach it with a totally open mind; I felt like a kid watching a Punch and Judy show.  I loved the music, the energy of the band,  the bizarreness, the smoke-filled bar in the smoke-filled lobby of the theater, the paintings of the trumpet player Richie Klammer, the snow outside, the embarrassingly long applause of the Austrian audiences.  Everyone fell in love with Erling and everyone wanted to do the show again and again and everyone wanted to come to San Francisco to do it again.

The cast of UKSUS:  the downtrodden cheer three times for Stalin

For the U.S. debut of UKSUS, it became obvious as time passed, that bringing over the Austrian cast was unfeasible.  A new and local cast was assembled with Jim Cave directing.   Jim is not afraid of nonsense, wackiness, surreal or absurd anything. He and Erling have worked together so many times they nearly finish each others sentences.  I was asked nicely to be involved with the scenic design, and was even offered a  budget.   But when Jim started talking about the lunatics putting on a play in the asylum my eyes rolled into the back of my head and stayed there until he changed the subject, and so began our collaboration.  Erling asked for three backdrops.  The guys went and rented a theater that required  the set to be struck every night to make room for the next day's classes,  necessitating a lot of portable bits rather than something grand and unwieldy.  

The UKSUS set pieces prior to lighting

I meant to write a post just about this scenic work: about the process of addressing the problems of the giant black space of Dance Mission Theater, the inspiration for the design, the tight budget and even tighter deadline;   leaving out the parts about the emotional turmoil I felt working on this project at a time when I was already insanely busy and already suffering from the all-too-familiar torture that is the lot of the long-suffering wife of a too-charming pathological liar.  Does anyone actually care that our lives were imploding while this all took place? Of course not.  After all, the show must go on.

UKSUS had only three performances in March, 2015. Despite full houses every night, lusty applause and effusive praise from the audience, especially from the younger attendees, some reviewers showed up with their cranky "Opera" pants on and just didn’t get it.  This piece didn't really get the attention it deserved, and so I feel compelled to speak up and publish these awesome photos I took.

  

Beth Custer is so damn cool.

Let's start with the Music.

Erling Wold's music is wonderful, transporting, by turns fun, tragic, solemn, uplifting. The orchestra gathered up like a great jazz band, rocked during the rock parts and danced through complex rhythms and delicate poignant passages thanks to our amazing conductor, Bryan Nies, whose skill is all sorts of amazing to watch as well as hear, as if everyone on the stage and in the band are strings of a single instrument, which he plays effortlessly. 

The story is ridiculous. There is no comprehensible narrative and there is no point. There is  absurdity,  nonsense, observations of everyday or imagined moments.  Pushkin makes love to his wife, an old woman falls from a window,  children are given tetanus to shut them up, the OBERIU put on a play in arty clown suits, the artist dies during one of Stalin's purges and his widow goes to Venzuela.  

Duncan Wold as Pushkin, making naughty with his wife Fefjulka (Laura Bohn)

The Old Woman falls out of a window...

These scenes are arranged in boxes; we even made hand-lettered placards to tell you which box was being opened. Erling added a somewhat pleonastic narration to the libretto, packed with context and commentary, which Jim delivered in his role as "a samovar,"  but he might not have bothered: absurdity and confusion make a nice team. 

The cast was a fantastic mix of singers and actors, mimes and clowns.  Duncan Wold, one of the writers/comedians of San Francisco’s Mission CTRL comedy troupe, starred as the poet Pushkin, who is playing the role of Kharms himself.  He approached this part as a comic actor, creating a deadpan character which added depth and contrast to his role, and it should be said that his comic timing was pitch-perfect, recalling the straight delivery a young Johnny Carson.

 

Our favorite soprano Laura Bohn,   with her soaring, beautiful voice, in this production got a chance to show off her physical theater skills, clowning, and dramatic unibrow.  Her scenes with Duncan were both hysterical and endearing.

Fefjulka and Our Mama (and a hand-painted Soviet-style poster)

Mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz  gave a hilarious performance as both Our Mama and a gender-bending Stalin (both mustached parts) all the while thrilling us with her rich and resonant voice, especially thrilling when paired with Laura Bohn’s during certain goosebump-producing moments. 

Both our soprani are magnificent clowns, and it's refreshing to watch such versatile performers who can become their characters, without being overly concerned with how 'pretty' they look or sound.

The cast of UKSUS performing as the OBERIU

Mary Forcade as the Karabister

Bob Ernst, an actor with a face and voice so compelling he could read the label of cereal box and make you believe it the Magna Carta, declares that you must drink vinegar (uksus), and you pretty well want to do it.  Speaking of amazing faces, it’s widely known that I have a crush on Roham Sheikhani, an actor and brilliant mime who in this show added an element of sanity as well as paranoia when needed.  A deus ex machina appearance by Mary Forcade as the Karabister very nearly stole the show.

The sets were designed to emphasize the diagonal lines and  bright palette of the Russian Avant Garde painters.   I looked to Kharms’ close friend Kazimir Malevich, and the Constructivist movement, and to the splendid film posters designed by Russian graphic artists  in the 1920s and 30’s.   Costume designer Laura Hazlett  brought this concept home with her supremely colorful pieces for the OBERIU performance within the show.

Pushkin (Duncan Wold)  is interrogated by Comrade Stalin (Nikola Printz)

Closing night we danced deliriously in the side aisle while the audience laughed and sighed,  and afterwards everyone wanted to do UKSUS again and asked when can we? After the party and the vodka, we dragged the sets and costumes back to the garage where are stored the costumes and bits from the last opera and the one before that.

More UKSUS-related rants at Erling Wold's blog.

all photos in this post by Lynne Rutter 

Lynne Rutter Studio

Evening in the Forbidden City

an emperor portrait painted for the San Francisco Opera opening night gala

Patrons attending the opening night of the San Francisco Opera on Friday were  treated to a colorful performance of Puccini's Turandot as well as  a special gala dinner in a majestic tented Opera Ball Pavilion, An Evening in the Forbidden City.

Event designer Robert Fountain commissioned me to help decorated the pavilion with  large scale portraits of Chinese Emperors. Of course this is right up my alley so of course I said yes.

the ghostly apparitions of Emperors in my studio

Melinda's clear favorite was the kindly old emperor in the vermillion robe.

 

With only about a week to paint these,  I called in my friend and colleague, Melinda Morey.  We had a brilliant time working together!  We were fairly literal in our painting technique - using a period  Chinese style and including a lot of rich pattern.  I was especially thrilled to be using such pure, saturated color for the magnificent robes of the Emperors: vermillion, gamboge, pure cadmium yellow, indigo, kingfisher blue...

 Emperors in the studio just after completion

Lynne with three of the 9 foot tall paintings

The Gala Pavilion was fabulously draped entirely in red, and the portraits hung and lit to great effect.
After the opera, the party continued with dancing in the Hall of the Emperors.

More inspiration:  

Bertoclucci's The Last Emperor 

Twilight in the Forbidden City by Reginald Johnston

Murals for special events?  Why, yes!

Erling in the Pink

Maestro Erling Wold, has today been made just a bit more famous, in this swell feature by Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle.
You can find this in the Sunday May 18 Datebook "Pink Section"

There is also this great photo of our renown tenor John Duykers, rehearsing his role as Edvard Mordake, in a spectacular orientalist robe by Kathleen Crowley.



PS Erling's boots are actually PINK .

update! rave reviews are pouring in.
Joshua Kosman's review in the Chronicle
SF360