The director R.B. Schlather gathered the cast of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” for a quick pep talk before running through the opera last weekend. Not all the costumes were ready, and not everyone in the orchestra could be there, but they were about to see whether the show they had been rehearsing for several weeks even worked.
“You’re getting to go through this thing for the first time,” Schlather told them, speaking also to the creative team and crew of his new “Cesare” production, which opens at Hudson Hall in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday. “Don’t worry. I encourage you today to just go for it.”
There was a bit of applause from the balcony: The rehearsal was open to the public, and some locals had shown up to get a taste of the work in progress. Staff of the production and hall left their perches to say hello to people they knew, some of whom were just passing through with their to-go coffees, shopping bags and dogs.
Boundaries between artists and audiences aren’t always so porous, but in Hudson, locals are as represented onstage as off. Partly out of necessity, but also because of Schlather’s ethos, opera here is something more like community theater, executed at the level of a major company.
Some of the “Cesare” performers are commuting from a residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park nearby; others are just driving in from their houses. When they come together, it’s in a luxurious way that would be unimaginable 120 miles south in New York City. The artists have more freedom and, crucially, more time.
“At Hudson Hall, it’s about community,” said the bass-baritone Douglas Ray Williams, who lives in the Berkshires. “It’s about who lives around the corner and is fabulous at hair, or can help manage our wardrobe, or even sing a role in the opera.”
This “Cesare” is Schlather’s third production at Hudson Hall since the building reopened in 2017 after an extensive restoration. He has an international career, but the opera culture that he is developing there is different. And, the costume designer and his longtime colleague Terese Wadden said, it may be a product of his upbringing in Cooperstown, N.Y., home of the Glimmerglass Festival, which is similarly remote and scrappy, yet also a destination with a global reach.
Places like Glimmerglass, where Schlather did some of his earliest work, show that “if you want to find a creative space, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in Manhattan or Brooklyn,” Wadden said.
“It’s where you are,” she added.
Schlather, though, happens to be in Hudson, where art and wealth have slowly migrated from New York City for years. He and his husband, the choreographer Adam H. Weinert, have lived there since 2014. Not long after moving in, they introduced themselves to Tambra Dillon, Hudson Hall’s executive director. At the time, Schlather was directing Handel’s “Orlando” at the Whitebox Art Center in Manhattan, a kind of art installation approach to opera in which the rehearsals were open to the public and broadcast.
Schlather invited Dillon to see the show, then they began discussing what they could produce together. They found a grant program for projects related to the centennial for women’s suffrage and decided to stage Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s “The Mother of Us All.” That opera’s hero is Susan B. Anthony, who spoke at Hudson Hall multiple times.
“We just went for it,” Dillon recalled, “but the only way we could afford to do it is if we cast it from the community.” Fortunately, the mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens lived nearby. Schlather took her out to lunch to explain his vision for his immersive production. She was skeptical, worried that it wouldn’t sell, but said yes.
Landing a singer like Martens, Schlather said, made him think about how the Hudson area “is such a hub, there’s so much talent.” His production, which opened in 2017, ended up selling out its run and opening the door for more shows.
But, because Hudson Hall is not an opera company, any new productions that Schlather came up with would have to be built from the ground up again. It took a long time, and waiting out a pandemic, for his next project to come to fruition: Handel’s “Rodelinda,” in fall 2023.
To make it happen, Schlather drew from his network of artists and the local community. By then, more friends had moved to to the area, like Wadden, or were considering a move. When it was time to take press photos for “Rodelinda,” the production still hadn’t found candelabra for the set, and stores were closed. But someone from an auction house up the street showed up at the last minute with three different pairs to choose from, and a woman who lived around the corner brought in a box of white taper candles.
“Rodelinda” was a critical and commercial success, and, in a clever move, Schlather told journalists that it was just the first in a series of Handel operas at Hudson Hall. That was news to Dillon, but her response was: “Amazing. God willing, it will be.”
Now, Schlather and Hudson Hall have a rhythm in place: a new Handel production every 18 months. (Next is the rarity “Deidamia.”) Hudson may not seem like a natural destination for Handel operas, but Schlather is a natural to make it one. Williams, a star of “Rodelinda” who is singing again in “Cesare,” said that Schlather “absolutely believes in Handel as a dramatist.”
“I’ve worked with other opera directors who think that Handel needs to be fixed or needs to be sexed up, or the audience is going to be bored,” he added. “But R.B. totally believes that Handel is exciting as is.”
Schlather’s “Rodelinda” had the expressive detail typically reserved for spoken theater. But in Hudson Hall, his productions are made in the auditorium, on the set, with the instrumentalists. At most opera houses, rehearsals are in multiple spaces, with each element siloed until the final days before opening.
The Handel productions have also benefited from their de facto resident orchestra, the period ensemble Ruckus, which performs opera with the spirit of a band from a music hall or dance party. “This is really opera as chamber music,” said the bassoonist Clay Zeller-Townson, the group’s founder and artistic director. “It feels like all our vectors of music-making can be brought to the table.”
In New York, Zeller-Townson said, musicians are more scattered. But in Hudson, “Cesare” has felt like an intensive residency, which allows the Ruckus players to develop the character of the music alongside the singers from the first day of rehearsal.
“We have to be here the whole time,” he said. “We need time to experiment and make terrible decisions, then be gently nudged away from the bad ideas and hopefully land on the good ones.”
The rehearsal conditions for “Cesare” are virtually unheard-of in opera, but they were created by Schlather in Hudson to be, as he said, “ideal.” Because it is not being made by a company, everyone is there because they want to be, he added, “with commitment, investment and curiosity.” His goal is to make people in Hudson feel the same way about the finished product.
Around town, people stop him in restaurants or shops to comment on “Rodelinda” and ask how “Cesare” is coming along. During an interview at Cafe Mutton last weekend, the server, who recognized Schlather immediately, asked about the show and checked her work schedule to see when she could come. He swore the moment wasn’t staged.
“For me, this is a passion project, a labor of love and a dream come true,” Schlather said afterward. “So if it gets more people to get their foot in the door and experience the power of opera, that’s great. This isn’t for everyone, but it can be for anyone.”
Joshua Barone is the assistant classical music and dance editor on the Culture Desk and a contributing classical music critic.
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