ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN: THE EAST VILLAGE OPERA COMPANY BRINGS CLASSIC ARIAS INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

Since the late ’60s, dozens of bands have recorded rock operas – from grandiose concept albums like the Who’s “Tommy,” to stage musicals like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” to the recent work of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. While the music usually rocked, it often had little to do with true opera.

The same can’t be said of the East Village Opera Company, which might be the first band to perform real opera that rocks.

On its self-titled Decca Records debut, the eleven-piece group uses electric guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards combined with a string quartet, and two lead vocalists to breathe new life into classic arias like “Habanera,” “Un Bel Di,” and “La Donna E Mobile.”

Keyboardist and arranger Peter Kiesewalter believes that today’s rock and yesterday’s opera share many similarities.

“These opera composers were just the rock stars of their time,” he said in an October 2005 interview for the News Journal. “They were often poorly behaved guys that infuriated a lot of people and really pushed the envelope of what was happening in popular music.”

While opera may be considered highbrow music today, Kiesewalter says that wasn’t the case 200 years ago.

“It really wasn’t for the upper classes, it was for everyday people,” he says. “It was music that people would sing in the streets the day after a premiere. It was the pop music of its day.”

The Ottawa, Canada native is a classically trained instrumentalist who considers himself “a rock guy” at heart. He put himself through school playing everything from Top-40 to rock to country to big band music. Eventually he moved to New York, where he became the music director and arranger of “The Downtown Messiah,” an annual presentation of Handel’s “Messiah.”

In 2001 he was hired by director Derek Diorio to write the musical score for “The Kiss of Debt,” an independent film featuring Tyley Ross as an aspiring opera singer. “The director told me that he wanted Tyley to sing fifteen opera arias in the movie, and I could arrange them anyway I wanted, as long as I didn’t do them traditionally,” Kiesewalter explained. “So I was given carte blanche to do whatever I wanted.”

A low-budget comedy with a very limited release, “The Kiss of Debt” never found an audience. Kiesewalter and Ross didn’t want their collaborative musical effort to suffer the same fate.

“At the end of the process, we decided to put the music out on an independent CD,” Kiesewalter says. “We thought nothing much would come of it, but the response right off the bat was a bit overwhelming.”

With success of the independent release, “La Donna,” Kiesewalter and Ross began drafting a permanent roster of musicians for live performances. The group established a home base at an East Village club called Joe’s Pub. The 2005 road trek marked the first time the group toured extensively.

“With eleven people in the band, it’s economically stupid, but I just couldn’t think of another way to break it down and make it cost effective,” Kiesewalter says. “We’ve been asked if we could go out as a four or five piece, and turn the string quartet into a synthesizer, but I just couldn’t do it. No matter how great the sample is, you just don’t get same the dynamic, or breath of expression that you do with real strings.”

The eclectic nature of the group’s music attracts an equally diverse audience, from rockers and hipsters, to working professionals and college students. Kiesewalter says a large number of traditional opera fans have embraced the group’s approach.

“A fair amount of older people who are subscribers to the Met, or traditional opera fans are definitely digging it,” he says. “I’m sure there are some horrified purists out there, but it’s good to know that some of the real fans are coming out and agreeing that the classic arts need a drastic reinvention in order for them to survive. We’re not trying to replace the originals, but I think for something to remain viable, it needs to be reexamined and turned on its head.

“If Mozart or Puccini were alive today, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’d be using microphones, and Pro-Tools, and samplers, and drums and electric guitars. We try to imagine what the composer would be doing with his music if he were alive today.”

While the East Village Opera Company does take a few liberties in its repertoire – like blending the keyboard and drum opening of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” into the “Overture” from “Le Nozze di Figaro” – the group adheres to musical tradition more often not. For example, the overwhelming majority of the material is sung in the original Italian or French.

“The lyrics just don’t translate gracefully into English,” Kiesewalter says. “It’s like going to see Shakespeare in Swahili. It does not have a flow, and it sounds extremely corny. The language of this poetry is so much a part of the aria. We were very adamant about sticking to the original text, and also to sing the aria in its entirely. When artists contemporize these songs, they’ll often do the most recognizable bit. In our approach, we do every section of the tune from start to finish, not just the most recognizable eight or sixteen bars.”

However, the group felt it was important to use material that would be familiar not only to opera buffs, but to the average well-rounded music fan as well.

“We weren’t shy about choosing the obvious greatest hits from the opera repertoire. The fact that we’re doing something that’s recognizable gives us context,” Kiesewalter says. “If people recognize the tune, then it defines what we do that much stronger than an unknown aria. It immediately puts a context and a framework around what we’ve done with it.”

Kiesewalter says that given the theatrical nature of the music, he’s looking forward to performing on larger stages. “With Tyley’s stage background, and the dynamics of the music, there’s never a dull moment,” he says. “We really haven’t worked out anything in terms of ’70s arena rock stage antics, but we embrace the pomposity of that style of rock much like we embrace the pomposity of opera.”