Just off Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, a dive bar has become the local watering hole for murderers and tyrants, adulters and virgins, Don Juans and divas. In fact, all of the great characters of grand opera have found a second home in the backroom of Freddy's Bar, where the company Opera on Tap serves up a monthly recital for the kind of audiences that might get kicked out of the Met.
"The stigma of opera is that it's pretentious and inaccessible," Opera on Tap's founder, Anne Ricci, says. "We give people the ability to hear a variety of the classic repertoire in a place where they are comfortable."
And if that means the dim, beer-stained space next to the bathroom in Freddy's Bar, so be it. T-shirts? No problem. Drinking? Encouraged.
On a recent Thursday night, a few dozen people howled with laughter in the back room as the singers described the plots of the opera selections they were singing. It was Spanish night, which meant lots of pieces from Bizet's Carmen (which is sung in French, but set in Spain) and shouts of "ole." The crowd on this evening is a mix of young arty types and opera buffs looking for the best deal in town. They seem like the typical noisy drinkers, until the arias started. Then they sat transfixed.
"It's a good reminder that opera is supposed to be entertaining and they achieve that," he says. "This would be a $300 ticket at the Metropolitan Opera, so it's nice to get in for the cost of a glass of wine."
The creative freedom offered to the singers is what draws then to perform at Opera on Tap. They aren't paid, and the company barely covers expenses when it passes the hat. But it does offer an audience and a way to practice new material.
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