Music on the Menu
Sotto Sopra's Opera Nights
March 22, 2008
By Martha Thomas
Photography by Bryan Burris
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After Madame Butterfly agrees to relinquish her child, Sorrow, so he may have a brighter future in the United States, she sings an aria before taking her life. If you’re hearing this at your table at Sotto Sopra, you will likely be hungry for more — opera, that is. You’ll certainly love the seafood risotto that’s waiting in the wings. But the scene from the Puccini opera is heartbreaking, and if you’re not a regular operagoer, soprano Diane Abel’s performance may just inspire you to go out and buy a ticket.
That would make Abel’s day. The soprano, along with tenor Paul McIlvaine and soprano Kathleen Stapleton, performs once a month at Sotto Sopra’s Opera Night. Says McIlvaine: “Every so often someone comes up to me afterwards and says they’re thinking about going to a whole opera. That’s the biggest compliment we could get.”
If it’s your first time at Opera Night — launched six years ago by Riccardo Bosio, owner of the Mount Vernon restaurant — you might feel as if you’ve entered a club of regulars. The audience is attentive and involved, and McIlvaine likes to joke, mostly about tenors (”legends in their own minds”) and mezzo-sopranos (”the mother, the witch or the hooker”). But at most Sunday performances, half the audience is there for the first time. The rest are returning to celebrate a special occasion — or because they just can’t stay away.
Courses and arias are planned so dishes are delivered just after a song ends. Audience members have time to savor the food, tip a glass and chat with their companions before the singing resumes.
On a recent Sunday, the three performers opened with “The Drinking Song” from La Traviata, strolling through the restaurant to clink glasses with guests, their voices booming from the tile floors to the plaster ceiling. When they finished, a phalanx of waiters appeared with a Napoleon of sweet roasted beets and mozzarella drizzled with pesto and balsamic reduction.
The next course, asparagus soup sweetened with basil and topped with a goat cheese-smeared crostini, followed McIlvaine’s rendition of the cynical Duke’s “Questa O Quella” from Rigoletto.
Abel and Stapleton performed a duet from Lakme, followed by a sequence from Madame Butterfly, and McIlvaine returned as Don Giovanni attempting to seduce Zerlina on her wedding day. Afterwards we happily dined on filet of beef with truffle Béarnaise sauce and potato soufflé, which was followed by a palate-cleansing lemon and basil sorbet. Dessert was steamed pumpkin pudding.
Opera Night is not for the hard-core opera aficionado. If you’re expecting Gotterdammerung, you should head for La Scala or the Met. What the singers offer diners is a sampling of opera’s greatest hits. (McIlvaine says the most requested piece is “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot, made famous by the late superstar Luciano Pavarotti.)
Likewise, you won’t see million-dollar set pieces, extravagant costumes or an orchestra. This is a restaurant, after all. But as restaurants, Sotto Sopra is lush, with high ceilings, satin striped draperies, colorful murals and gilt-framed mirrors.
What you also get is eye contact with the strolling singers, energetic performances and exceedingly good food. Few men escaped the coy glances of Abel as she sashayed between tables performing the Beverly Sills standard “I Want To Be a Prima Donna” or of Stapleton as she flirted her way through an aria from La Boheme.
Greg Gatenby, a Toronto-based writer and opera lover, was in Baltimore after attending an antique postcard fair in York, Pennsylvania. He visited the Walters Art Museum and strolled up Charles Street, where he happened upon a placard outside the restaurant advertising the opera dinner. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much,” he said after Abel had briefly sat in his lap and tickled his nose with her feather boa. “I was blown away.” Furthermore, he said, “It was the bargain of the century.”
Nobody knows about expensive nights on the town like opera lovers. A ticket for a regular seat at the opera in Baltimore can cost twice as much as the $55 prix-fixe dinner at Sotto Sopra. (And, of course, the Lyric doesn’t serve dinner. Unless you’re going to swoop into Subway in your velvet cloak and black tie, you’re looking at another $100 on an evening for two. At least.)
Even the singers feel they’re getting their money’s worth. And that doesn’t refer to the tip envelopes that accompany each diner’s tab. “The acoustics are great, the audience is lots of fun and we get a free dinner,” McIlvaine says. “What’s not to love?”
For more information about Sotto Sopra’s Opera Night, call 410-625-0534 or visit www.sottosoprainc.com (click on “Special Events”). The restaurant is located at 405 N. Charles St., Baltimore.
