Symphony, Rep, Florentine put some performances online
After the coronavirus pandemic forced abrupt cancellations of public shows, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Florentine Opera have responded by creating or releasing performances online to stay engaged with their audiences:
❚ The Florentine made a video of its staging of Peter Brook’s “The Tragedy of Carmen” available to ticket-holders through a password-protected website for a one-week period ending March 25.
❚ The Rep videoed a performance of Danai Gurira’s drama “Eclipsed,” which was in mid-run when the ban came down. It’s available for anyone to watch online, for $15 through April 1, at
❚ The Milwaukee Symphony has made more than a dozen audio recordings of past concerts available to stream free online at mso.org, including the March 14 concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
Both the Florentine and Rep videos are three-camera professional productions, made possible through the gracious and speedy agreement of many unions and rights holders.
“We’re watching the bloom of digital performance representation right now, and it’s fascinating to see how different people are pulling it together,” said Florentine general director Maggey Oplinger.
“Nothing we are able to do will come close to matching the power of live music,” said Milwaukee Symphony president and executive director Mark Niehaus.
But until safer-in-place conditions end, he and his performing arts colleagues will be planning and creating content as best they can.
Doing ‘meaningful things’ digitally
For example, the MSO has posted a video of principal horn player Matthew Annin playing Brahms’s gentle Intermezzo Op 118, No. 2.
“Our musicians are busily at work creating content,” Niehaus said, adding that more music should surface through social media in a matter of days. “This is an opportunity for us to go outside of our normal channels and do some more meaningful things.”
Milwaukee Rep executive director Chad Bauman said artistic director Mark Clements is working with his staff on ways, during this social-distancing time, to “connect the artist’s living room to the consumer’s living room.”
Backstage, all three groups continue to plan artistically and financially for next season. In the symphony’s case, that includes continuing construction on its new home, the Bradley Symphony Center, which is scheduled to begin hosting public events in late September.
Niehaus said the symphony center project, which is actually a conglomeration of seven overlapping construction projects, is more than halfway done. Some elements, such as the north addition, are nearly finished. “This building will open. The question is, will it open on time, and we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen,” he said.
Preparing for virus’ impact on staff, and business
The coronavirus has brought them personal disruption and heartache, too. The Florentine’s Oplinger said she is homeschooling five children while running an opera company from her house. Bauman said he and his husband said tearful goodbyes to the German high school exchange student staying with them, who had to go home three months early.
“It damn near killed us,” he said. To this point, neither the MSO nor the Florentine has laid off any employees. The only Rep layoffs were of eight stagehands, a situation mandated by a collective bargaining agreement when the productions ended early, Bauman said. Otherwise, “we have taken the position that we are trying to employ everybody that we can for three months,” he said.
In the longer run, Bauman said he was as concerned about an economic recession as he is about the health impact of the virus. To that end, he wants to keep people employed, so they can continue to pay their bills.
None of the organizations know of any employees who have been diagnosed with the virus. But Bauman said the Rep has planned for the possibility.
“We have an emergency response that will provide extra financial and health resources to any of our employees that are diagnosed,” he said.
The three leaders have been heartened by the responses of their patrons. “Subscriptions are strong for next year,” Niehaus said.
“We got a lot of phone calls about how people can help us, which shows how wonderfully loyal our audiences are,” Bauman said. “(The) best thing that our patrons can do right now is to have faith that the world will return to normal and renew their subscriptions.”
Niehaus looks back to the symphony’s response to the recession of 2008 for inspiration now.
“We came together and we did some really hard work; as an organization, we spoke with one voice,” he said. “We intend to do exactly the same thing when we get to come out of this gate, we’re going to come out firing on all cylinders.”
Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins @jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.