Tali Ketzef should have no problem at all slotting into the sentiments that will, no doubt, abound at Kfar Blum on the last weekend of February. The 33-year-old opera singer will be one of the star performers at the next slot in this year's musical weekend series at the suitably named Pastoral Hotel at Kfar Blum February 21 to 23. The program goes by the deliciously enticing name of “Love's the Whole Story” and features an impressive lineup of Israel Opera soloists who will perform a bunch of arias from some of the most popular works in the operatic repertoire, including La Traviata, La Bohème, Rigoletto and The Barber of Seville. “We will present all kinds of well-known excerpts from operas, you know from place in the opera when the hero has yet to die, and everything is optimistic,” explains Tali Ketzef, who is on the Kfar Blum weekend bill. “The audience will be able to hum along with most of what we'll be singing.” Sounds like fun. In addition to the musical entertainment, the weekend patrons will be regaled by internationally acclaimed writer, speaker, mathematician, pianist, philosopher and game theorist Haim Shapira, who will expound on some of the ideas he crammed into his 2014 tome The Book of Love. Ketzef is fully into the amorous theme of the weekend. “Where don't you have love?” she exclaims. “Where don't you have love or intrigue in opera? You have that in Carmen and Russian operas, with Mozart and anyone.” That fits in nicely with the titular packaging of the three days at Kfar Blum, which feature program headings such as “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Burning Love.” “I'm pretty certain that those two are interconnected,” Ketzef suggests. “For love to blaze, there has to be some degree of danger in the relationship,” she chuckles. “If someone injects fuel into a relationship, they definitely season it with something dangerous.” That suits the singer to a T in her day job duties. “I connect with it all. I connect with dangerous characters, the pitiful characters and the innocent ones – even with the characters that are a little disgusting.” Opera is, of course, a very powerful and highly evocative art form, and there is generally no end of high drama in the staged works. Ketzef gets that, too, and that helps to sustain and drive her own performance levels. “It enhances your emotions. You know you are taking risks at something, and you make some sacrifice for your love that can push your love up to its limits, in a single moment. You know exactly what's at stake.” The musical weekend blurb for the Burning Love shows talks of the incendiary nature of Italian opera, shot through with “betrayal, jealousy and powerful passion. The world of Italian opera with its great heroines who love with all their being, hate mercilessly and sing the most pleasuring notes possible.” That sounds like a musical cocktail with a punch but, says Ketzef, that's the way it is supposed to be. “If you take, for example, Violetta from La Traviata. That's a role I love to sing, and I hope to sing it again sometime. She falls so deeply in love with Alfredo. As ever, tragedy lurks just around the corner.” Violetta knows her love will not last because she is very sick, which heightens her emotions even more, and she knows that Alfredo's father wants her to leave, for the honor of the family.” That, naturally, comes across in the score. “The most impassioned moment in the whole opera, in the second act, is when she tells Alfredo, love me as I love you. I love you more than anything – and then she leaves him. The music reaches a crescendo. Verdi conveys that so well.” That sounds like a surefire recipe for emotional overload. “An opera can last three hours,” notes Ketzef, “but you come out so charged, and you need to recover a bit and grasp what you've just seen.” While the Kfar Blum audiences won't be taking the brunt of a full-blown operatic piece of work, they should be suitably fired and right royally entertained up by the snippets of “golden oldies” proffered by Ketzef et al. For tickets and more information: (04) 683-6611 and www.kfarblum-hotel.co.il
