DAVID L. CARSON* LANCE OLDS*
in
Director: Danny Ashkenasi Piano: Nicholas Fox
Stage Man.: Kimberly Wadsworth* Lights: Maryvel Bergen
"Both simple and with vast implications, these two aspects of Ashkenasi's newest work are handled with subtle, forceful, and deft hand. ... The audience is lucky here, because this show is all about Danny Ashkenasi's remarkable abilities as composer and director. Catherine Gayer carries a voice that would be envied by those blokes on microphone at the Met, and both David L. Carson and Lance Olds as the angels are competent singers and actors who bring great humor and humanity to their roles. ... Ashkenasi's repetitive, melancholic, joyous, and, at times, darkly hilarious composition, as reflected by the specificity, discipline and occasionally toungue-in-cheek range of his direction, suffuses the show with the operatic, and cosmic, spectacle that is in Ashkenasi's own imagination. It, in turn, is then shared with us. ... When writer Helga Krauss and Ashkenasi allow the simple straight lines of this soprano's life to be simple, the universality and beauty of Ashkenasi's imagination shines through."
"The opera is an affectionate showcase written for... Catherine Gayer. Her tone is still clear ... her acting is committed. Mr. Ashkenasi's music [has] dimensionality and touches of poignancy. The score shuttles ... between tuneful musical theatre bits and slightly more edgy modern writing."
AM New York, 7/29, page 30:
THEATER: WHAT THE CRITICS LIKE OFF- AND OFF-OFF BROADWAY
BEYOND - This one-act chamber opera is a tour de force for Catherine Gayer, one of Germany's leading operatic sopranos. The London Observer notes that "she sang with prodigious artistry, negotiating the most taxing passages with incredible ease and unfailing beauty of tone."
"Beyond, a piercing musical rumination..., is directed with a swirling sense of surprise by Ashkenasi; he manipulates each microscopic, whimsical hook in the libretto to inject lighthearted magic whenever he can. ... The grandly operatic scope and quality of Ashkenasi's music ... is by turns questioning, despairing, and sexual, ... being richly musical and gorgeous to the ear ... Gayer has the surging soprano one would expect from an opera star. [Her performance] engages you with its fierce determination ... David L. Carson and Lance Olds [give] gently winking performances as the two angels...Nicholas Fox is the fine pianist."
220 East 4th Street (betw. Ave A & B)
Fri 8/12 5pm
Sun 8/14 9:15pm
Wed 8/17 4:30pm
Fri 8/19 7:30pm
Sun 8/21 12pm (Noon)
all performances in 2005
"Catherine Gayer proves she hasn't lost her touch. She is a singer for whom no music could be too difficult. brilliant...excellent...her program was tough, challenging and full of rewards." - Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"Catherine Gayer throws off the most complex phrases and leaps as if they were easy and perfectly natural" - London Times
"Has the voice of a marvelous coloratura, agile and with depth " - Le Monde (Paris)
"Fascinating in any case are the dramatic and vocal metamorphoses of Catherine Gayer" - Neue Zeit (Berlin)
"A singing actress in a million" - Tokyo Times
"Catherine Gayer sang with prodigious artistry, negotiating the most taxing passages with incredible ease and unfailing beauty of tone." - Observer (London)
James Miller (Public Relations) - 201-886-8469
jvmill@verizon.net
Danny Ashkenasi & Edward Elder
(Fredrick Byers Productions) - 718 789 1292
- dragonfrog@msn.com
Fredrick Byers Productions Presents
BEYOND
A Little Night Opera
Starring Catherine Gayer
The New York International Fringe Festival-FringeNYC
A production of The Present Company
August 12-28, 2005
All Tickets: $15. For tickets visit www.FringeNYC.org or call
In New York: (212) 279-4488
or Outside New York: 1-888-FringeNYC
NEW YORK, June 6, 2005—Modern opera comes to the Fringe Festival with the world premiere of Beyond, starring internationally acclaimed opera star Catherine Gayer. This one-act chamber opera is a tour de force for Ms. Gayer, one of Germany’s leading operatic sopranos, written to showcase her vocal and dramatic abilities by her son, composer Danny Ashkenasi, creator of last year’s critically praised Fringe production, 9/11: The Book of Job.
Beyond begins with a car crash. A soprano hovers between life and death. Guided by two angels who become husband, lover, son, therapist…and plastic surgeon, she journeys Beyond. With an original libretto in German (Jenseits) by Helga Krauss, presented here in an English translation by the composer, Beyond sits squarely in the tradition of contemporary opera. It is musically challenging yet accessible, touched with humor and lightness.
In her long career with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Catherine Gayer has sung leading roles in everything from Rigoletto to Rosenkavalier. Her appearances in Europe, America and Asia include engagements at La Scala, Covent Garden and with the Berlin Philharmonic. Operas composed specifically for her include Luigi Nono’s notorious Intoleranza, Aribert Reiman’s Melusine, and Dieter Siebert’s Sinking of the Titanic.
Danny Ashkenasi’s previous musical credits include Hexen, produced widely throughout Germany, and 9/11: The Book of Job, which Backstage Magazine called “a powerful testament both to the nature of despair and the indomitable will of mankind.”
Beyond is directed by the composer and produced by Fredrick Byers Productions. A concert reading of Beyond was performed at the Village Temple in March 2004. The FringeNYC 05 production is the world premiere of the staged version.
Corriere d.Sera /Milan
"Unique and special"
Haaretz (Tel Aviv)
"vibrant soprano"
- Il Giorno (Milan)
"impeccable interpretation"
- Republica (Rome)
"The breadth of her voice is uncommenly fascinating. Deserved Ovations." - Wiener Zeitung (Vienna)
"Catherine Gayer gives the evening its raison d'etre." - The Scotsman (Edinburgh)
"la bella voce del soprano Catherine Gayer" - Corriere d'Informazione (Milan)
"Moving musical ... a powerful testament ... culmnating in a cathartic finale ... The image of the biblical hero standing among the businessmen and women is an indelible one that won't be soon forgotten. Ashkenasi staged his own work, and the challenging concept reached fruition under his guidance. His cast proved to be an accomplished chorus of voices."
- Elias Stamac, Backstage Magazine
"Promises musical beauty and delivers ... artfully captures many of the vivid emotions of that day. From classical to modern jazzy pop, the score runs the spectrum to properly evoke the many emotions reflected in the piece. Even a segment that lifts directly from Steven Sondheim's quintessentional description of New York detachment, "Another Hundred People", is powerfully transformed into a lament for the hundreds and hundreds of voices silenced by terrorism.
- Jena Tesse Fox, BroadwayWorld.com
"Exhilirating as the biblical story and the disaster story counterpoint one another and provide the fugue line for each other's musical story ... Original in scope and design, "9/11 - The Book of Job" is worth a visit, a listen and a taking to heart."
- David Roberts, Theare Reviews Limited
"Passionate ... precarious ... beautiful ...With its solid cast and poetic tone, "9/11 - The Book of Job"is a truthful artifact of Ashkeasi's turmoil and our national post 9/11 pathos."
- Matt Freeman, NYTheatre.com
"Beautiful and soul-filling musical ... a moving, challenging memorial to that day, its many victems, and the profound questions it provoked."
- Suzanne Travers, now at Herald News (W. Patterson, NJ)
"Catherine Gayer has vocal material that spans from the rich cultivated voice of a primadonna like [Elizabeth] Schwarzkopf to the nonchalant flexibility of a Marlene Dietrich or Lotte Lenya." - Berliner Tageszeitung (Berlin)
"Catherine Gayer, with her impassioned stage presence, her sensual theatricality, her vocal brilliance, is the evening's forcefully cheered center of attention." B.Z. (Berlin)
"A grand and beautiful voice which she disciplines and refines marvelously with unequaled musicality." - Le Soir Bruxelles (Brussels)
"Catherine Gayer has won a victory...singing texts so brilliantly in the highest vocal range and so vibrantly that [this modern work] sounds like a classic. This I have never heard before and has my greatest admiration." - Handelsblad (Den Haag)
"Gayer's versatility and competence are impressive. A gripping evening." - Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger (Cologne)
"Catherine Gayer, voice of childhood, flowers, and the moon, miraculously describes [...]the fringes of poetry and the heart." - Le Monde (Paris)
"Catherine Gayer belongs to that class of singer, where the psychological illumination of the text and the dramatic accents don't overwhelm the musical architecture ... prolonged applause for a brilliant vocal performance." - Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt)
"Catherine Gayer fascinated by elegantly turning simple melodies to gold; again and again she seemed herself enthralled by the wonder of the composition, which she thoughtfully and feelingly engages." - Heideberger Tageblatt (Heidelberg)