As promised in Saturday’s Scene, here are in-depth interviews with two fine folks who will present distinctive and delightfully unconventional events in Fort Wayne this week.

DAVID LUGO, THE LAUGHING POMMELIER

Do you know what a pommelier is?

Just as a sommelier is an expert on wine, a pommelier is an expert on cider, pomme being the French word for apple.

Do you know who the Laughing Pommelier is?

It is David Lugo.

Lugo is currently the bar manager at the Clyde Theatre. But he is not from here. He grew up in the Bronx and worked for many years as a highly trained culinary professional in New York City restaurants.

It was while he was working for a French chef that he was introduced to French cider and Calvados, a premium apple brandy.

“That’s how I got turned on to it,” he said.

Lugo started exploring ciders made in New York and he made cider at home.

“New York is a huge cider-making state,” he said.

A few years ago, he became one of 170 certified pommeliers in the world.

Lugo said he will soon start providing cider seminars for food-and-beverage professionals in Indiana on behalf of the American Cider Association.

And on Friday, Lugo will host his third cider-related event in Fort Wayne at the Pearl Event Center. Called Hard Cider & Small Bites – Spring Edition, it is a cider-and-food pairing.

“This year, I’m going to be shopping at the Barr Street Farmers Market for my ingredients,” he said. “It’ll be something that will complement the cider.”

For many of us, our ideas about hard cider were formed by historical fiction in which farmers winked and took a pull from a clay jug or stealthily invited fellow farmers down into the cellar to take sips from a dipper.

Fort Wayne’s Johnny Appleseed (aka John Chapman) has come to be known as a guy who traveled around planting apple trees just because he loved apples so much.

But here are some excerpts from an article in Smithsonian Magazine (containing facts that Lugo brought to my attention):

“The apples that Chapman brought to the frontier were completely distinct from the apples available at any modern grocery store or farmers’ market, and they weren’t primarily used for eating–they were used to make America’s beverage-of-choice at the time, hard apple cider…

“Starting in 1792, the Ohio Company of Associates made a deal with potential settlers: anyone willing to form a permanent homestead on the wilderness beyond Ohio’s first permanent settlement would be granted 100 acres of land. To prove their homesteads to be permanent, settlers were required to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees in three years, since an average apple tree took roughly ten years to bear fruit…

“Ever the savvy businessman, Chapman realized that if he could do the difficult work of planting these orchards, he could turn them around for profit to incoming frontiersmen…”

“That’s the history of America in a nutshell,” Lugo said.

The biggest differences between modern hard cider and historical cider are scientific precision, controlled brewing conditions and the apples used. Contemporary cider makers can deliver a consistent product in a way their forebears could not.

Lugo, whose nom de cider, “The Laughing Pommelier,” is meant to evoke the Laughing Buddha, said it is his goal to change people’s attitudes about cider.

“That’s exactly the point,” he said “To show people that it is just as fine as wine, that you can drink it and taste it just like you would a fine wine.”

For more information about Lugo, visit instagram.com/laughingpommelier. For more information about the event, 260.693.8049.

JODY THOMAS AND ‘FORT’ISSIMO OPERA

Entertainment at taverns and restaurants usually falls to wandering, guitar-equipped troubadours who have the ability to make several very different songs from several very different genres sound like the same genre.

Nothing wrong with that.

But once a month at 2Toms, they offer something a little different: A group called ‘Fort’issimo Opera.

It is a collection of local opera aficionados performing arias in a cabaret-style setting.

The next showcase, titled Italian Villa Vacay, happens Thursday at the brewpub.

‘Fort’issimo Opera grew out of a Brooklyn-based nonprofit program called Opera on Tap, which lost funding recently for reasons that might easily be guessed.

To keep the Fort Wayne group alive, Jody Thomas, a retired Purdue Fort Wayne voice teacher, and others restructured it and renamed it ‘Fort’issimo Opera.

The Thursday showcases are anchored by a pianist who is well-versed in playing vocal scores and the music can startle some people who aren’t used to it.

“Opera is really a highly emotional artform,” Thomas said. “However, the sound of classically trained voices is so unfamiliar that it takes most people by surprise.

“I have spoken with people who literally have never heard opera,” she said. “This was their first time and they actually enjoyed it.”

Learning to appreciate opera might be something like learning to appreciate wine, Thomas said. Many people start with the sweetest wines and more into more complex ones. Perhaps musical theater is the sweet wine of the opera world, she said.

Before you think of these Thursday showcases as sort of an operatic open mic where anybody can get up and belt away to the best of his or her ability, participants must have at minimum a bachelor’s degree in voice performance.

Opera isn’t just singing on stage. It involves acting. It involves gestures. It involves moving about the performance space. It can involve physical comedy.

The Thursday showcases are no different.

The members are not so serious about their art form that they are above poking fun at themselves.

Thomas recalled performing a duet with a fellow sexagenarian that was intended for a younger couple.

“We did this duet where he is supposed to be seducing me,” she said. “This is our geriatric nursing home flirtation. We did it where I’m trying to run away from him, you know, and we’re all over the whole restaurant. It was really funny.”

Thomas said the members of ‘Fort’issimo Opera have no intention of growing the group beyond its current scope. They don’t want to step on the toes of Debra J. Lynn, who has established a full opera company in Fort Wayne called Opera Today!

For more information about ‘Fort’issimo Opera, visit facebook.com/OOTFW. For more information about Thursday’s event, call 260.446.6246.

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