Welcome to our 50th season! Half a century of memories — an entire lore of spectacular productions, performances, and personalities — are now woven firmly into the very fabric of our communities, both locally here in Central New York and throughout the wider artistic community stretching across the globe. Glimmerglass has been a spiritual and creative home for countless artists and theater professionals and a cultural mecca for tens of thousands of patrons for five full decades.

Our thrilling 50th-anniversary program celebrates the creative process itself — the Promethean alchemy that results in the magical universes, unforgettable storytelling, and tremendous display of talent we offer every summer. This year in Rob’s Ramblings, I want to reflect not only on this vast intangible litany of memory and tradition but also on the very real people and things that make up our history, starting with our physical home, the Alice Busch Opera Theater and its brilliant architect Hugh Hardy – for our theater is truly one of America’s great cultural miracles. I may dot around our history somewhat over the year, but our Dramaturg Kelley Rourke and our Board Chair Michael Young are working together on a more complete history of the organization, which we will share with you later in the season.

Architect Hugh Hardy

Founding an opera company in the high school auditorium of a small upstate village, miles from the nearest major city, was initially dismissed as absurd by its skeptics; that twelve years later, a great new theater would arise on the banks of Otsego Lake where formerly a working turkey farm had quietly existed was inconceivable to most. And yet Glimmerglass has grown steadily to become the second largest opera company in New York State (second only to the venerable Metropolitan Opera) and one of the great summer opera festivals in the world. Its productions have been seen around the world, and it boasts a roster of some of America’s most beloved opera stars. We have the unshakeable vision and audacity of our founders to thank for this legacy, and Glimmerglass has a physical home we can all be proud of in its magnificent theater, the Alice Busch Opera Theater.

Its renowned architect, Hugh Hardy (1932-2017), was one of the great minds responsible for shaping the face and personality of New York City we now take for granted – there is barely a cultural icon in New York City in which Mr. Hardy was not involved. Radio City Music Hall’s renovation, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, The Central Synagogue, The Rainbow Room, Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater, the Joyce Theater, much of Bryant Park, many Broadway theaters, and the now sadly destroyed Windows on the World restaurant were among his handiwork. For him, architecture was theater, and his greatest achievements are spaces dedicated to the performing arts, capturing his sense of humor and showmanship (he deeply loved the theater and died after attending a performance at the Joyce Theater, which he had renovated).

A Space for Live Opera

The 1987, 918-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater, or ABOT (a gift from the late Mrs. Busch being vital to its initial construction), was the first custom-built opera house in the United States since 1966; the 43 acres of its campus, originally a working turkey farm, were donated by Tom Goodyear, the theater’s first chairman. Unlike most of America’s oversized multi-use civic auditoriums, ABOT was designed specifically for the performance of live opera, with excellent views of the stage from every seat in the house, a dedicated orchestra pit, and superb acoustics for the voice – and most crucially, the right number of seats, allowing us to perform everything from grand opera down to the most intimate of chamber works with equal impact. Its outward appearance, noble yet welcoming and accessible, was designed to blend unobtrusively into the region’s landscape of barns and farm buildings; in keeping with the construction’s respect of the natural environment, it relies on large sliding doors, closed only during performances and in inclement weather, for natural ventilation rather than increasing its carbon-footprint through expensive cooling and heating systems (if you find a subsequent performance less than ideally warm, spare a thought for the environment and redirect your ire to climate change rather than its well-meaning architect!)

There are beautiful secrets to be found within its democratic, comfortable interior. Among them is its unique ceiling, whose design is modeled on an Amish quilt (a nod to our many Amish neighbors who inhabit this beautiful rural part of upstate NY). In keeping with their tenet that only God is perfect, the ceiling’s beautiful symmetry contains one imperfection – the next time you are waiting for a performance to begin, why not try to find it?

A Proscenium Theater

ABOT is a ‘proscenium theater.’ In this familiar configuration, the audience and actors are divided into two distinct spaces, separated by a ‘proscenium arch.’ These arches were once elaborate, ornate constructions designed to show off the wealth of the theater’s patronage; in those more socially stratified times, much of the seating was deliberately situated so that audience members had as good a view of each other as of the stage. Often, the only unobscured view of the ‘action’ was from the central ‘royal’ box, with other patrons having to contend with views of the stage often severely limited by the proscenium arch itself but having excellent vantage over everyone else attending the performance.

In our theater, this ‘picture frame’ through which we view the fabulous illusions and ever-changing worlds created by our designers and directors is deliberately understated. Views of the stage are almost equally fine from any seat in the house – nowadays, we want you to focus on the unfolding drama, not your fellow patrons or the opulence of your environment. You may have heard of this proscenium arch referred to as theater’s ‘fourth wall,’ with the box of the actors’ playing space providing the other three. When actors directly address the audience outside the drama or even physically cross into the audience’s space (which we call ‘the house’), we talk of ‘breaking the fourth wall.’ Our recent production of Pagliacci took memorable advantage of this trick in the way both its physical set, and the actors spilled over into the house itself, creating the illusion that the audience was directly participating in the drama onstage; it broke down this arbitrary physical division between the real and the imaginary. Working in the other direction, our production of La Calisto featured a more elaborate false Baroque proscenium, emphasizing the illusion that you were about to view a strange, mythical world.

The advantage of a proscenium stage, as opposed to an arena stage (theater in the round), or a traverse or thrust stage (audience on two or three sides), is that it allows us to hide stage apparatus (sets, theater technology, offstage actors, stagehands) either behind the arch in the ‘wings’, or up above in the ‘flyspace’ (that large tower you see at the back of the theater). Much of the infrastructure of the backstage area is usually hidden from view by the sets, drops, and ‘legs’ we use to mask the bones of our theater.

Celebrating the Alice Busch Opera Theater

Glimmerglass’s Associate Artistic Director Emeritus, the legendary designer John Conklin, knows the Alice Busch Opera Theater as well as anyone else alive; he also knows theater in general as well as anyone else alive – I will feature John in one of my next blogs. As part of our fiftieth celebrations, he is making a very special return to the company to design the settings for all four mainstage shows. His designs this season intend not always to hide, but to reveal, use, and celebrate the physical skeleton of our theater as Mr. Hardy designed it – to remind us that our unique physical home is as much a part of the art we produce as the things we fill it with. I won’t reveal all the magic he’s cooking up (you’ll have to buy tickets for that), but I can promise that it will make for a season you won’t soon forget, and a season when you’ll want to catch as many shows as possible to get the full effect of his vision.

Glimmerglass’s Golden Jubilee is a singular moment for us to pause and reflect on the creative process itself — not only who and what make the art we love, but why we make it in the first place. A large part of the ‘why’ lies in the community the Festival inspires and fosters —and we should acknowledge that our coming together as a community takes place in one of the most perfect settings in the land. The natural beauty of our setting is unrivaled and our theater is a priceless gem, the envy of many other companies around the world. That’s something to celebrate – which you should do immediately by renewing your ticket packages (call the Box Office at 607-547-2255), booking your accommodations, and inviting all your friends to witness this once-in-a-lifetime season. And, of course, your ongoing support is critical to our next 50 years, and one great opportunity to give is through Mohawk Valley Gives, which is happening now! Don’t miss it (giving closes on Sept 22)!