By: Martha Thomas


photo by La Kaye Mbah


Looking for fresh  fans in Little Italy, a red-sauce stalwart tries some new song and dance

It’s a Thursday evening in an upstairs dining room at Germano’s Trattoria in Little Italy, and a 27-year-old singer named David Frankenberger is performing “Mister Cellophane” from the Kander and Ebb musical Chicago. The number—known as a “character song” in musical-theater lingo—is the comic lament of a guy who doesn’t get noticed, no matter what he does. For some reason, Frankenberger is also wearing a red rubber nose—an unnecessary touch, says Maris Wicker, a seasoned cabaret performer seated at a nearby table. “There’s no need to jump through hoops,” she says.

Cabaret, after all, is supposed to be about the performer, the audience, and the music. And—because this is Little Italy—it’s also about the food, a mix of tried-and-true Italian-American faves and some more modern variations: lasagna layered with red sauce, artichoke-stuffed veal scallopini blanketed in melted provolone, buttery lobster in homemade ravioli, crisp-skinned whole fish, a basket of chewy white bread, and Chianti by the glass. As the audience eats, the show goes on.

With an enthusiasm that belies its staid guise, this 30-year-old restaurant in the heart of Little Italy has added something new to the menu: performing arts. In addition to cabaret, Germano’s is hosting singers from the Baltimore Opera, live jazz on Tuesday nights, theater from a forgotten Italian master, and even an occasional evening that gives student-performers from Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA) an opportunity to work before a paying audience, albeit one that may be more interested in their osso buco than in whatever’s happening on stage.


Singing for supper: Sally Martin and pianist Ron Chiles perform at Germano’s Trattoria. | photo by Aisha M. Khan


The pressure for places such as Germano’s to stand out on the cobbled streets of Little Italy is palpable; diners these days are being lured to hipper spaces in Harbor East to the south and Fells Point/Canton to the east. “Germano has owned this place for thirty years,” says Cyd Wolf, referring to her husband and business partner, 61-year-old Germano Fabiani. “We asked ourselves, ‘What do we want to do with the next phase of our lives?’ And we decided to do this.” She envisions turning the restaurant into “a venue for emerging artists,” she says. “I gave Germano a plan, and he said, ‘Run with it.’”

Donald Kennedy, Germano’s general manager for more than twenty years, describes the changes as a way to make patrons take a fresh look at Little Italy. “It’s challenging to maintain a dining public as these other neighborhoods with their own attractions keep popping up around us.” Kennedy, who has a BFA in directing and studied acting at Northwestern University, had long wanted to bring theater to the space. “Over the years, Cyd and Germano and I had talked about doing something in the upstairs room,” he says.

The idea also dovetails nicely with Cyd and Germano’s theatrical leanings: The couple’s older daughter, Alessandra, is a sophomore in the acting program at the BSA; current booking manager Juli Wolf, Cyd’s sister-in-law, has a daughter, Branda Lock, who has acted professionally since graduating from Susquehanna University two years ago. 

The restaurant’s Thursday evening cabaret series got off the ground first. In April, Juli and Cyd, who took on the role as executive producer, got in touch with Carolyn Black-Sotir, a singer who has performed cabaret-style shows throughout the United States and abroad—including the recent By George! By Ira! By Gershwin! honoring George Gershwin’s centennial, broadcast on PBS. “They asked me to come by and see the room,” Black-Sotir says. “There was no lighting, no sound. We talked about how things could be set up.” A small upright was purchased from Ron’s Piano Warehouse, and Black-Sotir, now the cabaret’s artistic director, went about booking performers.

Cabaret is as much about the setting, where patrons drink and often eat, as it is about the style of music. But performers are not just background music. They demand more attention than, say, a piano player in a lounge or restaurant. Germano’s take on the genre is decidedly traditional, with most of its performers drawing from “the American Songbook”—lounge standards or chestnuts from Broadway musicals—and selling their songs with a mix of comedy, theater, and dance. “You engage the audience in a story,” says Washington-based singer Sally Martin, “and in the process you reveal something of yourself.”

Finding willing artists turned out to be easy. The Baltimore-D.C. area is crawling with performers who love the style but have trouble getting work, despite glimmerings of a cabaret renaissance in other American cities. In New York City, the elegant Carlyle, Regency, and Algonquin hotels still have regular cabaret performers, and there are a handful of Manhattan clubs, such as Michael’s Pub and Don’t Tell Mama, where the genre continues to flourish. But in this region, “it’s challenging to find venues,” says Martin. She has performed at the Corcoran Gallery, a cabaret series at the Signature Theater in Arlington, and at the French and German embassies. The Omni Shoreham’s art deco Marquis Lounge had been one of the few places for cabaret in D.C.; now it only hosts private parties, leaving area performers to cobble together their own gigs.

Currently, Germano’s cabaret schedule includes a mix of experienced performers and those, such as the clown-nosed Frankenberger, in the early stages of their careers. The artists keep the $10 per person cover charge, which can be good money for novices (depending on the crowd—the room holds up to ninety people, but rarely reaches capacity). The restaurant enforces a $15 food and drink minimum—inexpensive enough, says Cyd, for younger performers to invite friends, and a far cry from New York prices. (A couple could easily drop $1,000 for dinner and a show at the Café Carlyle.)

“It’s great that they’re providing an incubator,” says Tim McReynolds, who accompanied Black-Sotir (on piano and as a fellow performer) for a couple of sell-out evenings last spring and will be appearing with her in February. “Some of the kids are amazingly talented, and this is a good place for them to test their wings.”

In fact, part of Germano’s mission is just that: to give young performers a chance to stand in front of an audience. One Thursday each month, students from Baltimore School for the Arts take over the upstairs room. Along with acts by students interested in musical theater, says Donald Hicken, head of BSA’s theater program, the high schoolers have been performing ten-minute plays. It’s not quite dinner theater, where audience members finish their meals and settle in for a full-fledged performance. Here, the plays and the eating are intertwined, with servers patiently waiting for each short play to end before bustling to the table with a plate of rapidly cooling manicotti or to refill a wine glass. Most of the paying guests appear to be beaming parents, so it hardly matters. And the experience, Hicken says, is good for the kids: “There’s a great deal of intimacy” in this kind of setting. “You have to scale your work to a small room. You can’t get away with too much when you have people 3 feet away from you.”

Theater in an even more obscure vein has been happening on Wednesday nights. For six weeks throughout the fall, Germano’s revived works by little-known 16th-century playwright Angelo Beolco, known as Ruzante. General manager Kennedy stumbled upon Ruzante, who influenced the improvisational drama known as Comedia dell’Arte, while researching short theatrical pieces. Germano’s friend Alessandro Olivi—also the chairman of the department of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Bayview—turned out to be a passionate Ruzante fan who grew up in Ruzante’s birthplace, Padua. Olivi translated some of Ruzante’s works, many of which were written in a tricky Paduan dialect, and also appeared onstage to introduce the productions. The Ruzante Project, as it was called, had minimal staging and the feel of a lavishly catered open rehearsal. While watching the monologues, diners tucked into crespelli—crabmeat wrapped crepe-like in pasta with tomato sauce and bubbling melted cheese—and chewy homemade ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta.

In a way, Little Italy makes an apt setting for this well-sauced mix of drama and dining. This is Baltimore’s most theatrical neighborhood. Its narrow streets and dowager trattorias provide a fanciful stage for an old-fashioned idea of Italian cuisine. Served now with a little extra make-believe on the side.

—Martha Thomas wrote about the power lunch scene in the September 2008 Urbanite.




RECIPE
Pumpkin Risotto with Sage and Roasted Garlic

1½ cups Arborio rice
Pumpkin puree (roast 1 small pumpkin
without skin and then mash)
1 head roasted garlic
Approx. 4–6 cups chicken stock
¼ cup white wine
2 tbs butter
6 sage leaves, chopped
1 onion, diced
½ cup grated Parmigiano cheese
(or more to taste)
 
Melt butter over medium-high heat and sauté onion until golden. Add rice and stir well, coating grains with butter. Wet with white wine and stir until mostly absorbed. Stir in pumpkin puree, roasted garlic, sage, and 1 cup hot chicken stock. Lower heat and stir constantly over low heat, adding stock in ½-cup increments as needed. When rice is creamy and tender—about 20 minutes—remove from heat and finish with Parmigiano cheese. Serves 4.

—Recipe adapted from Germano’s Trattoria




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