Out & About
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The Buzz on Cooperstown
What could tempt a New Yorker to drive four-plus hours to Cooperstown? The bait offered Tuesday at the Prince George Hotel Ballroom on East 27th Street was a performance of “The Fly Duet,” in which soprano Brenda Rae and baritone Andrew Wilkowske (wearing insect antennae on his head) demonstrated their octave ranges in buzzes instead of “ahhs.”
The scene between Jupiter and Eurydice is from the new English translation by Kelly Rourke of Jacques Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” commissioned by Cooperstown’s Glimmerglass Opera. It will open its season July 7.
It was a delightful, fresh performance, the kind of concert that inspires long treks (and for the audience, the kind of concert that has already inspired the trip hundreds of times).
Cooperstown has charms beyond the Glimmerglass campus, with its Hugh Hardy-designed theater and soon-to-becompleted rehearsal hall. This town on the shores of Otsego Lake in the northern Catskills offers antique shops, bed and breakfasts, and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The event, which raised $450,000, honored WQXR host Nimet Habachy and State Senator James Seward. It also got the buzz going on an exciting season under the direction of Michael MacLeod.
