ORLANDO

Installation April 2015 \ Whitebox Art Center, Chinatown \ opera by Händel \ music director Geoffrey McDonald \ directed by R. B. Schlather \ set Paul Tate DePoo \ costume Terese Wadden \ lights JAX Messenger \ producing associate Daniel Stermer \ stage manager Jason Kaiser \ supertitles Steven Jude Tietjen \ hair and makeup Amelia Bay \ with Hadleigh Adams, Brennan Hall, Kiera Duffy, Anya Matanovic, and Drew Minter

“R. B. Schlather’s production of Handel’s Orlando opened on Sunday for a two-evening run, but the performance really started almost three weeks ago. A vital part of Mr. Schlather’s project at the Whitebox Art Center on the Lower East Side, in this Orlando and Handel’s Alcina last September, is demystifying opera and its creation. Broadcasting practically all his rehearsals over the Internet, Mr. Schlather also opened them to the public, and the public came. Yoko Ono was among those who wandered in off Broome Street over the past few weeks to watch a bit of Orlando, Handel’s glorious 1733 tragicomedy of competing loves. As the Hebrew goes, “dayenu”: The open rehearsals would have been enough. But the final product was so winning — as touching and delightful as the very touching and delightful Alcina, if not more so — that it redoubled the gift Mr. Schlather has given the New York cultural scene.”

— Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

“A fascinating species of performance art.”

— Holland Cotter, New York Times

“The daring young director has responded to the crisis in contemporary opera by removing the distinction between production and performance, turning the rehearsal process into an ongoing art installation that members of the public can observe at will. Having begun his exploration of Handel’s trilogy of operas based on texts by Ariosto with an acclaimed showing of Alcina, Schlather returns to the Whitebox Art Center with this piece, one of the most compactly powerful of the composer’s stage works, directing a cast that includes the up-and-coming Met soprano Kiera Duffy and the veteran countertenor Drew Minter.”

— New Yorker Magazine

“The rehearsal process and performances were free, open to the public and livestreamed, and attendees at both were encouraged to Instagram their experiences. By reducing Handel’s love quadrangle to its essence, then recreating the drama with recognizable denizens of the 1970s Lower East Side and presenting it in a storefront gallery in that very neighborhood, Schlather created an intense, accessible, immersive experience that illuminated the emotional heart of Handel’s work… The production would lose something if removed from the space — which is part of the point; it’s installation opera — but Schlather’s gift for visceral, high-stakes human drama is certainly transferable… the entire theatrical experience, taken as a whole, was revelatory.”

— Opera News

“The staging put great physical demands on the singers, who climbed and crawled on, over, around and under the playing area. It is to Mr. Schlather’s immense credit that all this activity felt utterly organic. If there’s one word to sum up the whole Orlando experience, it’s “style.” Everything fit, everything worked together, everything gelled, opening the mind to the infinite possibility of performance.“

— Observer

Gotham Chamber Opera's late-summer demise at least had a counterbalance earlier in the year (April) with Handel's Orlando at the Whitebox Art Center that showed just how much innovative operatic talent is out there, starting with stage director R. B. Schlather. He flooded this operatic study in madness with modern-day imagery - mightily executed by a cast including Kiera Duffy and Drew Minter and conducted by Geoffrey McDonald. Schlather should have his own opera company.

— WQXR, Best Performances 2015

“His singers offer unafraid, impassioned performances that speak to Schlather’s ability to demolish the barriers of propriety and politeness that seem to plague much of traditional operatic performance.”