On Saturday and Sunday, local operatic group the Verdi Chorus concludes its 40th anniversary season with its spring concert, Star-Crossed!, featuring a mix of classics including sequences from Mozart’s Idomeneo and Don Giovanni, Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Lehar’s The Merry Widow and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. That final selection is of special importance to two of the shows’ three guest soloists, operatic power couple Nathan Granner and Jamie Chamberlain Granner.
The first act of Lucia di Lammermoor features a duet in which two star-crossed lovers pledge commitment to one another, which was the perfect setting for Nathan to propose marriage to Jamie. On stage during the Verdi’s 2017 fall concert, Nathan sang the duet as he proposed, an act that took years of camaraderie between the two followed months of careful planning.
The duo first sang together with a festival orchestra in Palm Springs, with Nathan noticing that his future bride was a “special talent” with a “special gift” both as a vocalist and an actor, an assessment Jamie shared of her soon-to-be husband.
“When I saw the video back, I really saw how much chemistry Nathan and I had, and it was just so obvious to me that we were such a good fit musically, and then the rest kind of happened naturally,” Jamie said.
On a cross-country drive from the east coast back to California, Nathan stopped into his home in the Kansas City area to pick up his grandmother’s wedding ring, keeping it hidden for months wondering what to do with it. The upcoming Lucia di Lammermoor performance fit the bill of a special proposal, asking Verdi Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum if he could make the on-stage moment happen. Ketchum agreed, but only if it happened after the show, since the original duet was part of the concert’s first act.
“So we finished the concert, and the audience is going crazy, and I put my hand up and I said ‘wait a minute, I have an announcement’ … [the pianist] started playing that Lucia duet, and Nathan took Jamie by the hand and put her up on my podium, and he got down on one knee and he started to sing, and the rest is history,” Ketchum said.
Calling it “the best proposal,” Jamie now has her eyes set on this weekend’s show where the two will be performing “Lucia” yet again.
“That opera … [has] a lot of special meaning for us,” Jamie said. “It was one of the first [operas] we got to do together … it’s really a fun sort of full-circle moment for us, and every time we come back to LA now … it’s really sort of a homecoming, and it’s fun to have all the friends and fans come out.”
One of the fans-turned-colleagues is the third guest soloist, Chinese-American bass Colin Ramsey, who has adored working with Jamie and Nathan in the past and stated it was a “nice call to get” from Ketchum about performing.
“The immediate feeling I got talking to everyone about this was that this was just going to be such a labor of love and such a joyous coming together … such a great opportunity and an honor to be here to celebrate something as significant as the 40th anniversary for a music organization like this,” Ramsey said.
Verdi, born from the former restaurant in Santa Monica, continues to set the standard for operatic music in the area, focusing on bringing in casual observers of the genre with affordability and the intimate setting of the First Presbyterian Church. Jamie noted that Verdi making classic opera “accessible” through venue and presentation is less intimidating for concertgoers than attending “a full-blown opera.”
“We’ve got the music that is being presented [in] an absolutely high quality, high standard way, and it is being bolstered with the addition of soloists, and all of that coming together helps make it an accessible moment for opera within the community, which is also just really important to me,” Jamie said.
Her husband added that having a close connection to the audience enhances the concert for everyone involved.
“I think it is imperative for singers and artists to reach out into the community,” Nathan said. “A lot of times people think, you know, you’re 50 feet away, you’re separated by a pit and a giant orchestra and you’ve got makeup on [and] all this other stuff. With a concert like this, you’re really right there, you’re in the same room. It’s not a giant barn of a place, [so] we’re really sharing something, and it’s not just a great thing for an audience to hear, it’s a great thing for me and us as performers as well, because we are all sharing this experience.”
For more information and to purchase tickets to Saturday’s 7:30pm and Sunday’s 4pm shows at the First Presbyterian Church, visit verdichorus.org