The woman who has performed at such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center and with orchestras and operas nationwide now lists her Seymour driveway as one of her most powerful concert experiences ever.
Perhaps that’s because she is driven to connect one-to-one as personally and as artistically as possible with audience members, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. So Donata Cucinotta drops any emotional masks and says that maybe her most unspoken compliment from an audience member is to see their tears when she sings.
“I sing to move people,” she said.
The soprano vocalist and her guitarist/singer next-door neighbor, Dr. David Hartung, a family physician, both aim to do that — to move listeners both to tears and to laughter during their free concert at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Bartholomew County Library Plaza, 536 Fifth St. in downtown Columbus. Their performance, titled “Cul-de-sac Renaissance Concert,” is so labeled because she and next-door neighbor Hartung began performing together while social distancing in their driveways in their cul-de-sac with others on Easter Sunday during the COVID-19 quarantine.
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“That first one was just a magical event,” Cucinotta said of the multi-faceted event. “It was one of the most magical memories of my performing career. It was all so beautiful.”
So applause, applause for Mayberry moments such as passersby with pooches stopping to listen, nearby neighbors dropping in, residents’ children performing instrumental pieces from canceled spring recitals, you name it.
Cucinotta understood the pain of cancellations amid the virus. Her slated performance as Donna Elvira in the Indianapolis Opera’s scheduled presentation of Mozart’s Don Giovanni was scrapped shortly before the shows were to begin.
“I just felt numb for about a month,” she said of the depression.
But what became weekly cul-de-sac concerts in much of spring and summer restored her joy and her artful sanity in a seeming world gone mad. So somehow it seems fitting that the exuberant Cucinotta is now frequently accompanying herself on such joyful instruments as ukulele and banjo, including on her tunes on Spotify. That includes a nontraditional version of the classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
“You just can’t be sad when you’re playing the banjo,” she said.
Especially, apparently, when you’ve named you banjo Evagelina and your ukulele Layla. Plus, how can you be sad when you’re performing alongside Hartung and his homemade Seymour parody songs he’s spun off such classics as “Folsom Prison Blues” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
“It’s a huge hit to go back and forth between Donata’s opera numbers and the funny songs that I do,” Hartung said. “I’m sort of the comedy counterpoint.”
“The musical whiplash is one of our favorite parts,” Cucinotta said.
They would like to perform at other libraries and other locales. With live, in-person music still so limited, the Cul-de-sac Couple aims to turn around audience members’ doldrums via jazz, pop, rock, rock, folk, musical theater and more. Listeners can expect everything from Puccini to Old Crow Medicine Show in what Cucinotta calls “a genre-busting show.”
Plus, there could be some requests tossed into the mix to add even more zest to the musical salad.
“It’s definitely unique,” Hartung said. “And this has been a great outlet.”
