Whitefish Bay sisters take over New York’s Metropolitan Opera
About the same time the Milwaukee Brewers opened the 2024 season by sweeping the New York Mets, the Pogorelc sisters of Whitefish Bay were taking over New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Soprano Emily Pogorelc made her Met Opera debut March 26 in the major role of Lisette in Puccini’s “La Rondine.” Behind the scenes, her sister Alison played an equally critical role as assistant stage director, focusing on one of the opera’s largest and most complex scenes.
Their Milwaukee friends can see their work this month without buying an airplane ticket, thanks to the Met’s Live in HD program of cinema transmissions.
“La Rondine” will be shown in movie theaters around the country at 11:55 a.m. Central Time April 20, including Marcus Theatres’ North Shore Cinema in Mequon, South Shore Cinema in Oak Creek, Menomonee Falls Cinema in Menomonee Falls and Majestic Cinema in Waukesha, as well as Silverspot Cinema in Brookfield, (Search for other participating cinemas at metopera.
How the Pogorelc sisters joined the Metropolitan Opera
Alison came to the Met first, hired by former Milwaukeean Paula Suozzi as an assistant stage director for several productions.
Emily, a soprano, has been going back and forth between Europe and the United States for operatic roles and vocal performances. But it was a performance in her hometown that won her the Met role, she said.
“I got this role because of ‘ Romeo and Juliet’ in Milwaukee,” Emily said, referring to Florentine Opera’s production of Gounod’s opera in October 2022, when she sang the role of Juliet. A Met scout saw her performance.
While she had already been on the Met Opera’s radar, on the ensuing plane ride from Milwaukee to Munich, she received the Met offer. “How special is that, to do a project at home and get that recognition after?” Emily said.
When she learned Emily would be in “La Rondine,” Alison requested to work on that show.
Much of Alison’s work as assistant stage director focused on the big cafe scene in the second act of Puccini’s opera, with more than 60 chorus members and other performers creating the action. There are no stage managers in Met rehearsal halls, Alison said. So in addition to standard directing tasks of knowing and teaching the staging, her work in rehearsal includes giving cues and making sure props are set up correctly.
Some of the critical work of staging is working backward, Alison said. If a character is writing at a table on stage, how do they get the pencil? So she works backward to figure out which character brings them a pencil in a way that makes sense dramatically. She enjoys the archaeology of going over old scores and annotations of past Met productions — in this case, back to the original Met “La Rondine” in 1928.
“Everybody is so invested in their character,” Emily said. If you walked onstage during the cafe scene, and you were start interacting with people, they would start interacting with you as waiters, bartenders, etc. As a principle performer, you can even change what you do a little bit each time and the other performers will go with you, Emily said.
“She created that world basically, which is so amazing,” Emily said, praising her sister.
Emily has won critical praise for her performance as Lisette. “Pogorelc’s assertive maid had a brightly cutting sound and a spunky point of view,” Oussama Zahr wrote in the New York Times review. “Pogorelc was excellent,” George Grella wrote in New York Classical Review. “She also seemed to be enjoying herself more on stage than anyone else, projecting a sense of elan one usually finds in musical theater.”
So, as a director, did younger sister Alison get to tell Emily what to do?
“Yes,” Emily said, then immediately clarified, “I asked” her to.
“There’s nothing like the relationship that we have … just the way that we can give each other honest feedback.
“Sometimes I would come off stage and I’d go to Alison … what do you think because something didn’t work for me.”
Opera singers, concentrating on what they need to sing next and say next, can look a little stiff onstage, Emily said.
“Alison helps me remind me of bringing (out) the humanity of my character, which I really, really love and appreciate.”