While hardly an opera singer, I have had the great good fortune to sing in one opera, to write a play which was turned into the libretto for another, and star in a huge production of Showboat with The Cleveland Opera. I also directed and sang in Sterlingman for Amphimusic, both operas by Klaus Roy.

Zoopera: The Cleveland Opera production in which I sang, was a work commissioned by Cleveland Opera for the benefit of the Cleveland Zoo. It was performed in the beautiful outdoor amphitheater at the zoo. Called "Zoopera, The Enchanted Garden" it had a libretto by Leonard Trawick and a terrific score by Klaus Roy. I had sung the title role in his other opera, Sterlingman, for Amphimusic a few years earlier, and this delightful man called me at home one evening and told me that he had written a role with me in mind. He explained that he conceived it for a basso non-produndo who can act. I told him, "I'm your man." As staged by CO Artistic Director,David Bamberger, the results were delightful.

REVIEW:

SUN PRESS: Zoopera enchanting by Philippa Kiraly

"Break a leg!" is the classic expression of good luck in the theater before a first night. Klaus George Roy, composer of the Zooper "The Enchanted Garden," went further. He suited the action to the words, and broke his left leg last month in a New York park. Whether it contributed to the success of "The Enchanted Garden." which premiered at the Sohio Amphitheater of the Metroparks Zoo over Labor Day weekend, is a moot point, but it shows willingness to try.

This "zoopera," an opera for the Zoo, commissioned by the Cleveland Zoological Society from Roy and librettist Leonard Trawick, is an allegory with a moral. The slight but wittily written story tells of an enchanted island where animals and plants flourish, ruled over, of course by a benign princess. However, a dragon, who is not with it environmentally, has arrived and is busy chomping up one species after another, and the demoralized princess appeals for assistance by means of a letter in a bottle. Five animal friends make the journey to help: a lion, seal, monkey, cockatoo and goat. After finding a trumpet (a conch shell) at the bottom of the sea, and a mirror (of mica) at the evening star--though why these are necessary to vanquish the dragon is never made clear--the dragon disappears, the enchanted garden becomes an enchanted zoological garden, and the princess becomes a zoo attendant. End of story.

As sung by members of Cleveland Opera, accompanied by Judith Ryder, piano, and Gregory Geisert, percussion, the music of the opera is neat and clever, musically fitting, without being in the least profound. Hardly avant garde, but not Stephen Sondheim either, it has movement, rhythm and melody with jagged intervals which give it character.

Of the cast, Aija Jirgensons stood out as the cocatoo, giving the impression she had spent considerable time beside the cockatoo cage at the zoo learning how to be one. She kept a constant bubble of laughter going in the audience. Her three-clawed footgear, about the proportions of those belonging to Mickey Mouse, were just the highlight of an entrancing costume, and how she managed to emphasize their delicate prominence without falling over them is a mystery.

Wayne Turney as the lion had the most rewarding lines and made the most of them, as a cowardly king of beasts with immodest pretensions, always being cut down to size by the other animals. Turney may be an actor rather than an opera singer, but he has a serviceable bass voice and good pitch just right for this production, and his diction is impeccable.

The old goat, James Shrader; the seal, Rodney Caldwell; the monkey, Pamela Taylor; and the princess, Nancy Hudson Snell, all turned in lively performances. The dragon does not appear in person; he is represented by ominous noises off stage, and occasional puffs of smoke.

The costumes, by Kim Weiss Nelson, are wonderfull imaginative, and the sets, by Keith Nagy, are tropical island special, with an impressive stone structure among the palm trees--vaguely reminicscent of an Aztec warehouse forgotten in the forest.