An Angel Reappears
Greta Feeney’s island musical career comes full-halo
by Marli Guzzetta
The first time Greta Feeney donned Paulette Allemand’s vibrant costuming

During a temporary Nantucket homecoming, professional soprano Greta Feeney resumes the role she first played for the First Congregational Church’s Christmas Pageant when she was a teenager who hadn’t yet made it to Juilliard.

for the Angel Gabriel in the First Congregational Church’s Christmas Pageant, she was a Nantucket teenager.

This year — after having studied at Juilliard and after having worked for four years with the San Francisco Opera — she is resuming the role and thinks she should wear a white tuxedo for the church’s 33rd consecutive incarnation of the show.

“I’m supposed to be a fierce, male angel. So I thought it would be cool to play up that androgyny thing and bind my chest. It’s the student of modern German opera in me,” she said, half joking. “If I were directing it, I would make myself look like Christopher Walken, because Gabriel should strike fear in the heart of the people.”

After being trained at the best possible American institutions, performing with a variety of companies (including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in Manhattan, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Baroque in California) and landing a fellowship at the highly respected San Francisco Opera, where her roles included “Marzelline” in Beethoven’s Fidelio during the 2005 season, Feeney came home to reassess her relationship with the demanding lifestyle of a lyric soprano with access to the world. It’s exhausting. It requires a tremendous amount of travel and sacrifice.

“I concur with what most people say about the business; it really is every bit as hard as everyone says it is. It really is hard to live that lifestyle,” she said. “It’s good to be back home. It’s been exactly what I needed to get a sense of where that inner weathervane needs to go.”

While back on island, Feeney has been studying for the GRE and also teaching at the Nantucket Community Music Center. This spring, the NHS graduate (class of 1993) will also fill the shoes of NHS chorus director Barbara Elder while she is on sabbatical. She plans to attend a graduate school the following fall.

“It’s great to have Greta Feeney back, resuming the role she played as a teenager. It’s a nice full circle,” said Director Kathy Richen, who added that two Nantucket families will be portraying the Holy Family this year: Gabrielle and Brandt Gould and their infant son Gabriel will perform in the 4 p.m. show; and Rich and Shelly Brannigan and their son, Adney, will perform at 7 p.m.

Additionally, Bob Gardner and Barry Rector will play prophets Amos and Isaiah, and Joe Zito will make for a “very sinister” Herod in the inspirational re-telling of the trials faced by the Holy Family while trying to find a safe harbor for the birth of the Magi.

The cast will be wearing costuming by Paulette Allemand — the same costuming the show used when Feeney made her first of several performances.

This year’s pageant marks the first for new Music Director Robert Behrman, who arrived on island this May from St. Louis. He changed little about the show, because he wanted to be respectful of tradition his first year on the job.

“Given that tradition is such an important part of the way things work on this island, I thought it would be good if I went through a year doing things as they have been done so could understand them,” he said.

Behrman initially met Feeney earlier this year through the NCMC, where he teaches as well. The two became fast friends.

“We were reading music, and it just clicked,” he said. “Working with Greta is a special treat. It’s nice to know that there are artists of her caliber on the island.”

Feeney will sing two solos as Gabriel — the perennial favorite, “Oh, Holy Night” and a song she picked, “Gesu Bambino.”

CHRISTMAS

PAGEANT
When: Sunday, Dec. 17,
  4 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Where: First Congregational
  Church, 62 Centre Street
Cost: Donations accepted at the door.
For more information,
  please call 228-0950.

“It’s a very famous solo written in Italian by Pietro A. Yon, and it’s on every operatic classical compilation around. Pavarotti does it the best,” she said. “It’s the kind of song that everyone will recognize, but no one will know what it is. …I’ve never done it anywhere before.”

Even though she has been the wick of the spotlight on some very large stages, Feeney said she will still get jittery before going onstage as Gabriel.

“There’s never a time when it’s not nerve–wracking to perform, because I expect something of myself,” Feeney said. “I experience the same feelings when I sing here as when I sing at the San Francisco Opera. It’s just who I am. My own desire to give an excellent performance overrides anything else.”

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