Opera Preview: The Big 30—a chat with Union Avenue Opera's Scott Schoonover

I caught up with Scott Schoonover, the Artistic Director and Conductor of Union Avenue Opera, for a chat about the company’s 20204 season. This interview is based on our Zoom call, with the usual edits for clarity and brevity (“the soul of wit,” as Shakespeare wrote).

Chuck Lavazzi
So you're opening with Bizet’s “Carmen” and then a concert staging of Verdi’s “Aida” and finally Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

Scott Schoonover
Right.

Chuck Lavazzi
Often the third show at UAO is a Broadway musical. I see others doing this. Is this going to be something you're going to be doing more of in the future?

Scott Schoonover
I think we'll continue to do it. It's not that we plan necessarily to do it every single year for the rest of our lives, but for the moment, it's working for us. And it's been a real boon to ticket sales, especially post pandemic, trying to get things back up on their feet.

And also, we ended up having a lot of fun with it. It’s sort of a different medium of storytelling and for us the fun of opera is the storytelling. And from what we hear from our audiences, they really enjoy seeing those musicals and hearing them sung without mics, which is really an interesting change from what they get to hear other places.

Chuck Lavazzi
Yes, that is a rare experience. As an audience member and as a critic, I've kind of gotten tired of going to see musicals that are always amplified. Half the time I find that the amplification makes a lot of the lyrics incomprehensible.

Scott Schoonover
I know. Me too. Yeah

Chuck Lavazzi  
This raises another question. Is it sometimes difficult to find shows, non-operas, that will work in an operatic setting? I mean, obviously, “Ragtime” works because it's almost an opera, and Sondheim shows have a lot of musical depth to them.

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, and sort of Golden Age shows, Rodgers and Hammerstein, those sorts of things. I mean, they were written to be unamplified in the beginning.

Sondheim is an interesting guy because in my brain, he has a classical sense about him. “A Little Night Music” was my first choice in that sense because I felt like it really was operatic in so many ways.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Well, “Sweeney Todd” also.

Scott Schoonover
Yeah. And I intend to do “Sweeney Todd” at some point, for sure. And I’m also a big fan of Kurt Weil, which I want to do in the future too. We aren't going to announce our 2025 season until our big gala this fall. But we're working on some options for that. And also, of course, the first two shows this season.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Well, let's start with “Carmen.” I mean, this is one that's very popular.

Scott Schoonover  
For the 30th season, I wanted to do three kind of big ensemble shows that had a lot of popular appeal to kind of make a big statement. And “Carmen” certainly is always the most popular piece when we put out an audience survey.  

I think it's just one of those operas that people know. They enjoy hearing the music and it's got all the elements of a popular show. It's got this rebellious, sexy character who is at the center of it. And it's a dramatic story. There are things that tug at your heartstrings. There's a kid's chorus. There are all sorts of great things about it that people seem to like.

Elise Quagliata

And our Carmen, Elise Quagliata, has been at Union Avenue many, many times over the past several years and has gone on to have a pretty sizable career. Among a couple of roles that she does a lot is Carmen. I've gotten to see major clips of her doing the show and I keep wanting to engage her in this conversation. It happened that she had free time during the summer, so she's going to be our Carmen.

I can tell you already in rehearsals, it's so fun to watch her work and see. Just all the different things that she brings to it and all the different productions that she has been through in her life, all the different ideas that are there

Chuck Lavazzi
Well, and there are so few really meaty leading roles for women with lower voices.

Joel Balzun

Scott Schoonover
That's true. That's a good point.

Chuck Lavazzi  
So it's always good to see them on stage.

Scott Schoonover
Our Don Jose and Escamillo (Brendan Tuohy and Joel Balzun) are both making their debuts with us and they're wonderful. And then Meroë Khalia, who played the governess last year in “The Turn of the Screw,” is playing Michaela, which is the really touching sweet role of the home girlfriend of Jose, who comes twice to try to find him and give him messages from his mother. And she has a beautiful aria in the show.

Chuck Lavazzi  
I think this is a very hard part to do credibly because she's written as such a cliche victim.

Scott Schoonover  
She is. I agree with that in terms of the character. But the other thing about it is the Bizet gives her the only really beautiful music in the whole piece. It was so touching to hear her sing that aria. I think people are going to really love her.

Chuck Lavazzi  
What kind of a production concept are you doing? Is it more or less traditional?

Meroë Khalia

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, it's pretty traditional. We have a unit set that is used in different ways. It's a beautiful set and it's got a backdrop. It's very traditional Seville, the time period they're used to. The soldiers are in the yellow uniforms that they're supposed to be in and all that kind of stuff.

Mark Freiman is directing this one. I think he has a nice eye for the pictures of the stage. A lot of little nice details go into what he's doing. The concept I would say is “just tell them the story.”

Chuck Lavazzi  
So let's go on to what I think is the really unusual one here: The concert version of “Aida.” I don't know if there are any companies in St. Louis that could actually do it as written because of its size. So how are you approaching this? Is it going to be just a concert setting, semi-staged, or what?

Scott Schoonover  
We're going to have a basically blank stage with the blacks [black curtains] around the back and then the chorus will be seated. There's a chorus of 30, which is a pretty big group. There are 16 men and 14 women. And it's a really big sound.

They'll be seated on stage and then in front of them will be the principals. And they're going to stand and come to the front of the stage when they would be on stage. There won't be any projections or anything like that. The only thing that will sort of change is that when the chorus is singing, they'll be lit and when they're not singing, they won't be lit.

Marsha Thompson

So it focuses the energy on the front of the stage when it's just the principals. The principals are singing from memory, and they'll be in concert attire, but they're going to be acting. They're going to be relating to one another as they would in the opera.

Our Aida, Marsha Thompson, is a bit of a known quantity. She was our Abigaille in “Nabucco” a few years ago and she's sung Aida several times already in her career. Our Radames, Limmie Pullia, just covered [understudied] the role at the Metropolitan Opera and he got to go on stage in the part, to great success. He’s from Southern Missouri and so he was like, “yeah, I really would love to be able to do this in my home state.”

Limmie Pullia

Melodie Wilson, who is a favorite here, is our Amneris. There are lots of roles in the show, but those are the three that have the bulk of the arias.

It's going to be really full in there, similar to [our production of] “Ragtime” in a way, but even bigger. Interestingly, we got a lot of the ragtime folks back in to do “Aida,” which is kind of cool.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Regarding the size of the chorus and cast, what kind of challenges does that present to you as a music director in terms of making sure everything is sonically clear?

Melodie Wilson

Scott Schoonover 
I talk to them about that a lot in rehearsals. I often make the endings of phrases a little shorter, so that  there's a space in between. So, for example, if there's a quarter note at the end of a phrase, I'll usually make that into a short eighth note, so that we actually get in that space. It sounds a little truncated in the rehearsal room, but when you go in the auditorium, it sounds exactly right. We have to overstep everything up a little bit in terms of articulation to make it work.

Chuck Lavazzi  
More pointed and precise.

Scott Schoonover  
Yeah, exactly. But it doesn't sound like that out front. It just sounds clear, but that's what you have to do in order to make it work.

We love the acoustic of the auditorium. One of the things that I can't imagine is before the 1950s renovation of the building they used to have wooden round pews, like they have up in the balcony, and a wooden floor. I can't imagine what it sounded like in there back then before carpeting and before those padded seats. It would have been just insanely live. Now it just gives a nice balance with the orchestra being in the pit. I love our space. I wouldn't trade it

Chuck Lavazzi  
Any other special events coming up that we need to talk about?

Scott Schoonover  
Oh, I just want to say about “Into the Woods” that Jenny Wintzer is directing. She has done a lot theater producing in the St. Louis area. She used to be at COCA and has been involved Shakespeare in the Park [St. Louis Shakespeare Festival]. She's a wonderful director, and we're having a lot of fun pulling all that together.

Laura Skroska is designing the set for this. We're using the whole auditorium as the set. So it's not just the stage that's going to be decorated. I think people will enjoy that a lot.

In terms of special events, we have the Backstage Pass luncheon concerts [June 25, July 23, and August 6]. There's one for each of the shows, and it's a chance to meet the singers and to hear what the directors have in mind. You get a lunch, and you get to hear two scenes from the opera itself, and then each of the four principles sings a piece of their choosing.

And then we have our 30th anniversary gala celebration, which is Thursday, October 17th. That is a sit-down dinner where we're going to recognize lots of people who've been involved in the last 30 years. Christine Brewer is the honorary chair. It will be at the Barnett on Washington.

Chuck Lavazzi  
Cool.

Scott Schoonover
Yeah, it's gonna be a really nice evening.

The Essentials: Union Avenue Opera’s 2024 season runs from July 5th through August 24th at the Union Avenue Christian Church in the Central West End. For information and tickets, including the Backstage Pass series 30th Anniversary Gala, visit their web site.