Metro Pulse/Cover/The Arts Issue

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Intro

Orchestrating Change
Symphony strives to sustain fresh momentum under its new music director

Art Has Four I's
KMA's new director Todd D. Smith wants to pull the museum into your life

Big City, Big Heart

Against expectations and budget cuts, opera is on a festive surge

by Jack Neely

On East Depot Street, this two-story industrial brick building fits right in its plain block of electrical contractors and clutch rebuilders. To a passerby on the broken sidewalk, its only odd aspect is the sound emanating from behind the sliding metal garage door at 1 o'clock on a Wednesday. It's a young man's tenor voice resounding in emphatic German.

Inside, on the old warehouse's concrete floor, the black-haired man gestures as he sings, moving about as if directed by an invisible choreographer; another young man plays an upright piano. He's performing a bit of a role in Ariadne, the opera by Richard Strauss.

As he sings, another somewhat older man in khakis and a black sweater sits at a card table, scribbling rapidly on a pad of paper. When the singer comes to the climactic finale, there's no applause. The seated man says, "bravo, bravo," without exclamation points. He asks the singer to try another, older piece from Handel's Alcina. When he concludes, the seated man says, "lovely," and suggests a Mozart selection. As the singer commences, his one-man audience says, "wait, stop for a second. Start again, and imagine yourself in the Civic Auditorium."

The image means something to the singer. When he starts singing again, his voice is louder, his gestures broader. He moves more widely across the concrete floor. The seated man seems satisfied. He quizzes the singer about his background, and the singer mentions "my coach in Venice" offhandedly, as if it were around the corner on Magnolia. The man with the notepad thanks the singer, who seems grateful, and the pianist who came with him.

The fact that an Indian-born New Yorker with Venice training cares about the opinion of a guy sitting in an East Knoxville warehouse may seem unlikely. However, this listener's name is Francis Graffeo. The nervous singer and everyone else calls him Frank. He's too friendly to be called "maestro," even though he has been the energetic and resourceful director of the Knoxville Opera Co. for three years now.

His office in the same building is a little nicer than the warehouse room. "This is a great space for us," he says. "It's not exactly elegant, but it's extremely useful." Framed on a shelf is a photograph of Graffeo and diva Renee Fleming at the Paris restaurant Taillevent.

Graffeo has directed productions in Austria, Italy, and elsewhere, but he's undeniably proud of his opera company here. "What I'm proud to report is that the organization as a business runs very efficiently," he says. "Morale is high, the staff is unified. We're confident about what we're capable of."

What they're capable of is mounting several full-scale operas each year, coordinating a half-dozen different groups of singers, extras, and musicians for performances in two to four different theaters. That's what all opera companies do, and KOC seems to be doing a good job of it, especially considering recent blows to its budget. The state-funded Tennessee Arts Commission's contribution was cut by 30 percent, Alcoa's once-dependable donations were cut altogether, and city and county contributions were less than requested. Graffeo has cut the opera's production expense, which was over $1 million in 2000, by almost 30 percent.

The artist and the accountant are often represented as opposites, but an opera director has to be both. The resourceful Graffeo and his associates have found innovative methods to do their accounting through the art. They've been exploiting the eager talent of UT's vigorous opera program. Innovative staging has also helped in a big way—a recent Bijou production of Romeo and Juliet used lighting effects and a spare stage; and the Merry Widow was done as a '40s radio show in which the orchestra, freed from its pit, became the "set."

Graffeo is still jubilant about the KOC's performance of Puccini's big opera La Boheme a few days earlier. Almost 3,500 bought tickets to see its two performances at the Civic Auditorium. "We're not used to sellouts, but at the Tennessee, we would have had to turn people away," Graffeo says. "We broke ticket sales goal by $20,000."

However, he says ticket sales account for only about a third of the KOC's budget. He's not really complaining about that fact. If that proportion were greater, he says, "one snowstorm could really cause a serious problem for us."

Since he started three years ago, Graffeo has drummed up about $600,000 in new contributions to the KOC.

What KOC does besides put on operas, as of last year, is something that has been elusive in Knoxville for decades. They mount an urban festival that's successful and even festive. The wildly eclectic Rossini Festival drew thousands to Gay Street on a Saturday afternoon in April last year, adorning sold-out operatic performances at the Bijou. It was Graffeo's idea, based on his experiences as director of the Central City Opera in Colorado. The opera experience, he thinks, should begin well before the overture and end long after the fat lady sings. "There was a feeling in the street before and after operas" in Colorado, he says. He thought maybe he could stir up something similar in Knoxville.

But he sees it as more than adornment. "The Rossini Festival should elevate Rossini's work in the eyes of Knoxville and Tennessee and hopefully the whole world," he says. "The festival should draw people to the company and to opera in general. If it grows, it will present us the opportunity to produced underperformed operas of Rossini's, perhaps by presenting new works.

"If this starts to sound like Spoleto," he says, evoking the huge two-week performing-arts festival in Charleston, "damn right, it should sound like Spoleto."

Today Graffeo's carrying around a book labeled L'Italiana in Algieri. Also known as The Italian Girl in Algiers, it's one of the festival operas to be performed next month. (The other is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.)

The Italian street fair is the most festive part of it. Last year, an estimated 5,000 attended; this year, Graffeo's optimistic about attracting over 15,000. "Italian food and wine and guys juggling, swordfighting, and selling pizza—no, that doesn't relate directly to opera," Graffeo admits. "Then, neither does selling Coca-Cola at intermission." It may not have seemed to have a great deal to do with Knoxville, either. There were a few Italians living in Knoxville during Giacchino Rossini's lifetime; the composer was not one of them, but you can't argue with fun. And maybe it's becoming a Knoxville thing. This year, it'll be held April 11-14.

The opera company, about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, already is a Knoxville thing. Graffeo does much of his casting of principal singers in twice-a-year auditions in New York, but many—maybe one every week or two—come to Depot Street to audition for Graffeo. "It's a buyer's market," says Graffeo. "So many people want to be opera singers." What they get, if they're hired for a production, is a contract and three weeks in Knoxville.

Generally, it's just the principal roles that are hired from New York or elsewhere. In every other respect, the Knoxville Opera Co. is a local company. The staff, the chorus, the orchestra, and some principal singers live here. Turandot is the silver anniversary season's proudest offering: "It will be the Knoxville premiere of Puccini's crowning masterpiece," says Graffeo. "It's his Aida, a majestic, epic piece." The principal role of the mandarin will be sung by Mike Rogers; he's a local.

"Thank God I didn't have to audition somebody in New York, or pay air fare," Graffeo says. "Mike has a big voice, a beautiful voice. He's as good as my fancy cast from New York or wherever."

But the most local thing about the Knoxville Opera Co. may be its supporters. "Knoxville has such an affection for its opera company," says Graffeo. "I'm impressed with how beloved the opera is to so many people. How proud they are that we can achieve art at this level. How enthusiastic they are that this is all happening in their hometown." He hears one comment over and over: "Twenty years ago, you would never have believed it."

Graffeo is eager to share credit with others: two that he mentions more than once are production manager and chorusmaster Don Townsend and generous benefactor Monroe Trout, who underwrote last year's inaugural Rossini Festival to the tune of $100,000. Another major backer of the opera is the Robert H. and Monica M. Cole Foundation.

Graffeo's never quite satisfied, but generous donations from the community are gratifying, and affirm that what he's doing is important.

He says that he's become used to hearing singers who live in New York think of Knoxville as a comfortable "small city" where people are friendly and look you in the eye. "Knoxville is becoming a big city with a big heart," Graffeo says.