DATELINE NEW YORK: Springtime in the city (06/21/98)

DATELINE NEW YORK: Springtime in the city

by Helen Smindak

An international duo

Canadian pianist Christina Petrowska, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music who made a spectacular New York debut at the age of 14, appeared at Merkin Concert Hall recently in a new role - that of accompanist for Canadian baritone Louis Quilico, a star for decades at the Metropolitan Opera. The two internationally known musicians, a married couple since 1993, collaborate artistically in recitals, broadcasts and recordings devoted to arias, art songs and operatic transcriptions of music by French, Russian and Italian composers.

Ms. Petrowska has an international reputation as one of contemporary music's foremost interpreters, while Mr. Quilico has won acclaim for his performances in leading opera houses throughout the world, particularly as a great Verdi singer. Together, they make beautiful music.

At Merkin Hall, Ms. Petrowska's seamless, crystalline technique and interpretive skills matched Mr. Quilico's vocal and dramatic power in a varied program of songs - from Borodin's somber "Air du Prince Igor" and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Romance Orientale" to Debussy's wistfully nostalgic "Nuit d'étoiles" and the eloquent aria "Eri tu" from Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera." Also performed were compositions by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Gretchaninoff and Duparc.

The performance of two songs from Frank Loesser's delightful musical "Most Happy Fella" - "Rosabella" and "Mama" - drew a powerful response from the audience, which obviously remembered Mr. Quilico's celebrated portrayal of the title character during the musical's recent Broadway run.

Well-wishers who crowded around the couple at a post-concert reception were happy to learn that Mr. Quilico has just finished recording "Most Happy Fella" and that the two artists plan to come to New York for a return engagement in the fall.

Mingling with the guests was Ms. Petrowska's 24-year-old daughter, Dominique Bregent. In 1979, at the age of 5, Ms. Bregent gave two violin recitals at the Ukrainian Institute of America in memory of her beloved friend, Julian Revay, the UIA director who passed away on April 30 that year.

Ms. Petrowska, a professor of piano performance and musicology at York University in Toronto, has toured widely in Europe, North America and the Middle East, and has recorded with CBC Records, RCI and JLH Lasersound. She is an accomplished writer who has authored two books, "Opera Illustrated: An Artistic Odyssey" and "Mr. Rigoletto: In Conversation with Louis Quilico."

Digital art by Dorosh

Daria Dorosh has been engaged for 35 years in the fields of fashion, fine art, photography and digital technology. With the onset of the computer age, she began to mesh these four separate fields, and in her 11th one-person exhibition at the A.I.R. Gallery last month she showed digital prints that reflect the intersection of these fields.

In an attempt to express a new range of ideas and observations, Ms. Dorosh collected layers of the past with a digital camera and altered them in Photoshop (a computer program). Using various papers and fabrics, she created prints on an Epson desktop inkjet printer and a Hewlett-Packard 2500CP large-format inkjet printer.

Ranging in size from a five-inch square to a 34-by-40-inch work, the 28 prints in the "Scraps and Shadows" exhibit revealed subject matter that is personal and intimate: articles of clothing, a group of palm-size sculptures, photographs taken in a local thrift shop and documentation of an on-site installation done in Italy in 1991.

Ms. Dorosh believes that opposites co-exist in the digital domain, and says that tiny pixels of color and light, the footprints of numbers, can be visited with a zoom, or one can pull back and see "a clutter of recognizable objects."

"Perhaps clutter is the dark side of minimalism. I am attracted to the beauty of these opposites: the computer provides a choice of vantage point."

Internet browsers can check out the website at http://idt.net/dbas to view six or seven pieces from the "Scraps and Shadows" exhibit.

Ms. Dorosh's earlier exhibitions at the A.I.R. Gallery revealed an ongoing exploration on the nature of art and the environment in which it is perceived. In 1982 her oil paintings were shown with photographs and chairs, while in 1984 colored abstract paintings by Ms. Dorosh were displayed in conjunction with objects made by four architects.

Born in Ukraine and educated at the Fashion Institute of Technology and The Cooper Union, Ms. Dorosh is a professor of fashion design at FIT. She and her husband, John Tomlinson, manage the DVA Studio in Manhattan's Tribeca area (open by appointment only).

An exquisite work

The Yara Theater Workshops begun by Virlana Tkacz at Harvard in 1988 were the springboard for creating the Yara Arts Group, now a resident theater company with the internationally acclaimed La MaMa Experimental Theater in New York. Since its debut in 1990, the Yara Group has staged original theater productions each year at La MaMa - pieces that blend poetry, song, historical material and scientific texts as they explore timely issues rooted in the East.

"Virtual Souls," inspired by Oleh Lysheha's poem "Swan" and presented in 1997, featured the music and myths of the Buryat people of Mongolia who live near Lake Baikal. That production led to the group's latest workshop piece, "Flight," an all-sung work that delves further into Buryat music and legends. Presented recently at La MaMa, it depicted an American in Siberia today who finds herself in the footsteps of a 16th century Buryat princess; their worlds entwine as a shaman (a Mongolian holy man who uses magic) leaves his body and takes flight at the height of a trance.

Reviewing the new work on the web magazine New York Theatre Wire, Melinda Given Guttmann called the one-hour theater piece "an exquisite work of art."

"The effects achieved are moving, beautiful and revelatory of an unknown world both to us and to the Buryats whose spiritual traditions have been buried by a technological, materialist era of dark times and dark nationalism," Ms. Guttmann said in her review, titled "Shamanism, Theatre, Healing."

A work-in-progress that will premiere in the fall as a finished production, "Flight" is centered around the Buddhist concept of the interconnectedness of all peoples and nature. It mingles music, movement, dance, chant and song.

"Flight" was conceived and directed by Ms. Tkacz. The music, composed and played by Obie Award-winner Genji Ito with the collaboration of Buryat composer Erzhena Zhambalov, was described by Ms. Guttmann as "an arresting, revising melange of Ito's innovations with traditional shamanic song and drum beat."

Others involved in the production were consultant Wanda Phipps, costume designer Luba Kierkosz, vocal coach Natalka Honcharenko, set designer Watoku Ueno, movement coach Cheng-Chieh Yu and graphic artist Carmen Fujois.

Browsing the festival

The Ukrainian street festival sponsored in mid-May each year by St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church turned the spotlight on some new performing talents as it turned 21 this year. With warm, sunny weather prevailing for the three-day fair, spirits ran high as spectators browsed through booths and watched stage programs.

New faces on stage included the 25 young members of the St. George Academy bandura ensemble, formed earlier this year by bandura virtuoso Julian Kytasty. In place of Mr. Kytasty, who was in Toronto for an appearance at the Ukrainian National Association convention concert, Alla Kucevych led the ensemble in two performances.

Another group that made its debut at the festival, presenting a program of Ukrainian poetry, songs and music, was the Nasha Rodyna ensemble, directed by musicologist Oksana Lykhovyd.

New soloists included vocalists Bohdan Sikora, Mykola Oleksyshyn and Lena Vedenska, a member of the Nasha Rodyna group, as well as the vocal duo of Luba and Mykola (formerly of the Oberehy ensemble of Lviv), who were joined by Victor Petliy on the keyboard.

Repeat performers included Laryssa Magun-Huryn, whose fine soprano voice was heard in three programs, and the outstanding Dumka chorus, conducted by Wasyl Hrechynsky in a Saturday evening concert inside St. George's Church.

Contributing great color and vitality to the outdoor scene were the Ukrainian folk dance groups that the public looks forward to every year - children's and teenage ensembles from New York City, Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and upstate New York, directed by Daria Genza, Petro Fil and Roma Pryma Bohachevsky.

Popular with festival-goers as always were the arts and crafts booths, in particular the art exhibit supervised by Chryzanta Hentisz, and the pysanka and ceramics table hosted by Sofia Zielyk.

Like the Surma shop, whose varied selection of pysanky, embroideries, recordings and books attracts everyone who visits the festival, Brewsky's tavern has become a Ukrainian fixture on East Seventh Street. This year, Brewsky's added an outdoor beer garden, with proceeds designated for the church and Ukrainian orphans.

Anna Baczynska was program director for the festival, with Ulana Kekish, Ivanka Mazur, Ms. Lykhovyd and Taras Mazur serving as announcers.

Kirov addenda

Dateline's guess that there were Ukrainian singers and musicians in the Kirov Opera company (see Dateline of June 7) has turned out to be correct. A Canadian reader from Mississauga, Ontario, called to say she heard "fluent Ukrainian" being spoken backstage after a performance of "Mazeppa." While visiting with Kirov baritone Vasilly Gerello, who sang in "La Traviata" last March at the Mississauga Opera House, Marusia Soroka heard Ukrainian being spoken by a number of Kirov members. According to Ms. Soroka, Mr. Gerello, who is part Ukrainian (mother Ukrainian, father Italian) and speaks Ukrainian at home with his Ukrainian wife, is scheduled to sing in the Met production of Tchaikovsky's "Pique Dame" in the spring of 1999.

The Metropolitan Opera's fact sheet on the four Kirov productions, distributed with other materials to the media, including this titillating tidbit: The American premiere of "Mazeppa," which took place in New York in 1933, was given by "a Ukrainian company." Asked to identify the company, a Met publicity representative said the information came from the Groves Dictionary of Music. "We try to be as specific as possible, but in this case that's all that was given in Groves," said the official. We'll have to do some further digging.

Another fact from the Met: Bass Adam Didur, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1929, was a principal singer in the cast of "Prince Igor" when it received its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 30, 1915. The Lviv-born singer (1873-1946), handled the roles of Prince Galitsky and Konchak in the Italian-translation production.