Copious Notes

Musicians in the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Singers and UK Chorale settle onto the stage of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the Our Lincoln performance Feb. 2, 2009. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

The presentation of Our Lincoln at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in February was undeniably a big deal for Kentucky arts and humanities.

Artists who live and work here were presented on one of the nation’s most ­prestigious stages along with hometown kids who have made good and a few international stars, such as violinist Mark O’Connor. A production conceived and produced in Central Kentucky went to an international arts showplace and acquitted itself admirably.

I sat with a Washington cameraman who went on at length about how great the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is. It was one of numerous anecdotes about seasoned Washington arts observers who were impressed with Our Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln played by Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, left, and Henry Clay played by George MGee of Georgetown put the finishing touches on their costumes outside the entrance to the Kennedy Center.

But it is understandable that this might be lost on people who weren’t among the 1,463 people who saw the ­performance, given while the state was in the throes of an ice storm. ­Overseeing recovery ­efforts forced Gov. Steve Beshear to cancel his plans to attend.

But now Beshear and anyone else who would like to see the show can catch it in Michael Breeding’s PBS-quality DVD, which has just been released.

After raising the money to get the program to ­Washington, the Kentucky Humanities Council had to go back to the well for an ­additional $6,500 to produce the DVD, with the total costs to be recouped through sales.

What we can now see is that Breeding and his crew captured the proceedings in stunning detail, with shots that take the viewer onto the stage with the performers and also relay the grandeur of the occasion.

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Ann Rutledge (Amanda Balltrip) and Abraham Lincoln (Nick Provenzale) at a town dance in New Salem, Ill., in the world premier production of Joe Baber's "River of Time." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Note: Space is finite in newspapers, really more finite than ever. This being a new opera, I wrote a bit longer than a usual review, and a little bit longer than the printed page in Saturday’s paper will hold. This posting of our River of Time review contains portions that will not be in the print edition.

No one in Abraham Lincoln’s home state has celebrated the bicentennial of the 16th president’s birth as well as the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

At the start of the celebration in 2008, the Opera Theatre teamed with the Kentucky Humanities Council to present Our Lincoln, a multi-faceted tribute to the Hodgenville native that eventually traveled to Washington, D.C.

Before that show was even conceived, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey had commissioned an opera about Lincoln from composer Joe Baber and librettist Jim Rodgers.

That opera, River of Time, had its world premiere Thursday night at the Lexington Opera House. It’s not the unqualified success of Our Lincoln, but there is much to like and even potential for Baber’s opera to endure as a portrait of the president before he was presidential.

River of Time’s story takes Lincoln from birth through the death of his first true love, Ann Rutledge. Along the way, he fights with his dad, becomes a bookworm, grieves the deaths of the three most important women in his life and even wrestles.

That story makes for some great moments, including a slave auction in New Orleans where Lincoln declares that if he gets a chance to fight slavery, “I’m gonna hit it hard.” The scene, with a heavy dose of spirituals, is the grand opera spectacle of the show.

But for the most part, this opera strives for a soothing — sometimes too soothing — Midwestern feel, in the spirit of Aaron Copland or Samuel Barber. That’s exemplified in a small-town dance scene in which Lincoln and Ann realize that regardless of whether she is engaged to another guy, they are in love. Read the rest of this entry »

In Kentucky Chautauqua Betsy B. Smith plays Emilie Todd Helm, Edward Smith plays Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and former University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp, and Ethan Smith plays Johnny Green and Price Hollowell. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

• Click here for a look at all five new characters for Kentucky Chautauqua’s 2009-10 season.

If you call the Smiths in Cynthiana asking for a Chautauqua performer, you’ll have to be more specific.

Are you calling for Edward Smith, who plays Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and former University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp in the Kentucky Humanities Council’s living-history program?

Or do you want his wife, Betsy B. Smith, who plays Emilie Todd Helm, Mary Todd Lincoln’s sister and the wife of Confederate Gen. Benjamin Hardin Helm?

Maybe you want their oldest son, Ethan Smith, who plays Johnny Green, one of the few survivors of the Confederate Orphan Brigade, and Price Hollowell, a key figure in Western Kentucky’s Black Patch War.

Edward Smith gives a preview performance as Justice John Marshall Harlan June 1 at the Lexington History Center.

“Chautauqua is just kind of our thing,” says Edward, an associate theater professor at Georgetown College.

Chautauqua performers present significant characters from Kentucky’s history in 45-minute presentations. The roster includes Abraham Lincoln and Grandpa Jones.

George McGee, a Georgetown College theater professor who has played Henry Clay in Kentucky Chautauqua for years, brought the Smiths into the program.

“Betsy and I actually met in his drama class,” Edward says . “So when I came back to teach at Georgetown, I knew he (McGee) was playing Henry Clay, and he said, ‘Whenever they do a call for characters, you should audition.’”

It was a good way for the professor to keep his acting chops sharp. Smith developed the Rupp character, which he has played since 2001.

Ethan noticed what Dad was doing and decided he wanted to get in on the act. But he was 13 at the time. Chautauqua characters are people who have had a significant impact on Kentucky history. Not many young teens fit that description.

But Ethan found one in Price Hollowell, a boy who testified against the infamous Night Riders who attacked Western Kentucky farmers who did not participate in a tobacco-company boycott.

Ethan Smith as Johnny Green, one of the few surviving members of the Oprhan Brigade.

“It started as a summer project,” says Ethan, now 18. “Being a Chautauqua performer is a lot of responsibility because you represent the Humanities Council and all the other performers. So I would have understood if I wasn’t even picked to audition. But it was still a good research project, because Price Hollowell’s story is not known to many Kentuckians.”

Then, Mom got in on the acting.

“I had a V8 moment,” Becky says. “I was the history major with the communications degree who was so immersed in Civil War history as a kid. If you had told me at 9 or 10 I could have a job wearing a long dress, talking about Abe Lincoln, I’m in.”

Betsy took on Helm, the “rebel in the White House,” according to her Chautauqua billing. The character has taken her all the way to the stage of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where she and several other Chautauqua performers were part of the Our Lincoln presentation Feb. 2.

Chautauqua usually doesn’t have the actors performing that far away.

As a historian, Betsy has enjoyed the chance to help her husband and son develop their pieces. Ethan says that in developing Hollowell, he used books from his mom’s shelf that he couldn’t find anywhere else. When he decided to develop another character, she pointed him to Johnny Green’s Journal, which “you can’t just find in bookstores,” Ethan says. “It’s not Harry Potter.” He also devoured a 1,200-page history of the Orphan Brigade.

Ethan as Green and Edward as Harlan debuted their new characters Monday at the Lexington History Center before a panel that included history and theater experts.

A big part of the job, the Smiths say, is figuring out how to tell their characters’ stories in 45 minutes.

Ethan’s Green comes off as a war-weary adventurer, describing some of the hardships of the Civil War and relaying what kept him going, from dedication to the Confederate cause to a deep desire to get home to Kentucky.

Edward was intrigued by Harlan’s status as a former slave owner who was the only dissenting vote in the high court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld segregation, and other 19th-century civil rights cases.

“It intrigued me to see how he could go from this to this, to truly be a guy who changed his mind,” Edward says.

Before his performance at the Lexington History Center, Ethan Smith (left) gets some advice from his father, Edward, who has already performed.

In addition to building a 45-minute monologue, the actors have to be pretty sharp on their characters’ history and the times they lived in, because people in the audience can toss in questions.

In the Smith home, that leads to lots of chatter and work as the actors read up and talk about their subjects. And that’s not lost on the younger Smiths: Harry, 13, and Ross, 11.

Edward proudly touts their success in speech competitions and says Harry has started to ask when he’ll get to do a character.

“We do have to tell him, ‘Harry, it’s not really a birthright,’” he says.

But don’t be surprised if this trio of Chautauqua performers eventually grows into a quintet.

• Later this summer, we’ll catch up with Bet Stewart as Rosemary Clooney.

A video production of Our Lincoln is still up in the air, but Lexington filmmaker Michael Breeding has posted a short preview on his website that gives you an idea what the show looked like. Breeding oversaw a video crew in Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts when Our Lincoln, a co-production of the Kentucky Humanities Council and University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, was presented there Feb. 2. But additional money will be needed before the footage can be produced into a DVD and/or broadcast.

Lori Hetzel conducted the Lexington Singers Children's Choir and Jefferson Johnson conducted the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Chorale and Lexington Singers in the performance of "Our Lincoln" at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Feb. 2, 2009. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

The performance of Our Lincoln on Monday night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was filmed, but the Kentucky Humanities Council needs a little more money to get it ready for DVD or TV.

Lexington filmmaker Michael Breeding was on hand to capture the concert featuring the Lexington Singers and Children’s Choir, the University of Kentucky Chorale and Symphony Orchestra, and individual performers including Nick Clooney, actor Robert Brock, tenor Gregory Turay and soprano Angela Brown.

Humanities Council Executive Director Virginia Carter said $30,000 is needed to green-light production of that footage into a DVD. She said she had paid the necessary fee to the Kennedy Center to produce as many as 5,000 DVD copies. As for television broadcast, Carter says, an additional $20,000 would have to be paid to the Kennedy Center for rights to broadcast Our Lincoln.

The original performance of Our Lincoln at the Singletary Center for the Arts in February 2008 was not filmed because money was not available to pay a film crew. Carter says she hopes that now that there is a film, the money can be secured to at least produce a DVD. She says that last year’s performance sold out with many still wanting tickets, and some people who wanted to go to Washington for the performance Monday weren’t able to because of the winter storms the previous week.

“The performers deserve a record of their appearance at the Kennedy Center,” Smith said. “And there are many others who really deserve the opportunity to enjoy the show.”

UK symphony violin players Ella Chang, left, and Jihee Kang make a portrait together on the stage of the Kennedy Center concert hall. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

Check out Jonathan Palmer’s slide show from Our Lincoln.

WASHINGTON – Last February, the Kentucky Humanities Council and the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre claimed Abraham Lincoln as the Bluegrass State’s own through music and words in the Our Lincoln concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts.

Monday night, the same artists staked that claim on a national stage: the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.

The performance of Our Lincoln at the Kennedy Center was a chance for the artists involved, including the Lexington Singers and the UK Symphony Orchestra, to play on the stage of one of the most prestigious arts venues in America. It was also a chance for Kentucky to show off.

“When I heard about this, I said, in one fell swoop, you could change a lot of people’s minds about our state,” Robert Brock, artistic director of Kentucky Repertory Theatre, said, recalling receiving his invitation to portray Lincoln’s law partner, Billy Herndon, in the show.

Brock’s performance was one of numerous pieces meant to portray the 16^th President, usually associated with Illinois, from a distinctly Kentucky perspective. The performance was created as part of the celebration of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth in Hodgenville.

Our Lincoln included Augusta’s Nick Clooney narrating Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, UK alum and Metropolitan Opera tenor Gregory Turay singing a new musical setting of The Gettysburg Address, Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane Gentry reading her poem about a Lincoln portrait in her house, and excerpts from River of Time, a forthcoming opera about Abraham Lincoln by UK composer Joseph Baber.

The program was narrated by national radio host and Louisville native Bob Edwards, and it was attended by a who’s who of Central Kentuckians including Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry, and U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and Hal Rodgers.

“This is a proud night for the State of Kentucky because of what we are about to show the nation,” University of Kentucky President Lee Todd said to about 400 people at a pre-show reception in the Kennedy Center.

The crowd included Kentuckians who made the trip to Washington, expatriate Kentuckians living in Washington, people invited by their Kentucky friends and pure concertgoers.

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