WEST SIDE STORY – REVIEW OF 2018 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

James Karas

A great production of a great musical.

That is a succinct review of The Glimmerglass Festival production of West Side Story directed by the Festival’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello. It is a co-production with the Houston Grand Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago and one can fairly say that she pulled out all the stops and the result is triumphal.

 

Vanessa Becerra as Maria and Joseph Leppek as Tony in "West Side Story." 

Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

She has a great work to work with. West Side Story has a masterful score by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Arthur Laurents. That is three theatrical geniuses combining forces to bring an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Broadway in 1957. Jerome Robbins’ choreography remains extraordinary and unsurpassable. This is no pleasant dancing but an integral part of the plot that not only adds dramatic punch to the story but is an essential part of it. Remove the dancing and you have caused irreparable harm to the musical.

The original choreography is reproduced by Julio Monge. The scenery by Peter J. Davison and the costumes by Jessica Jahn show the seedy side of New York and the clothes worn by gang members, as far as we can tell. They do the job superbly.

West Side Story needs talented principals like Tony, Maria and Anita, and the main members of the two gangs and this production has them all. Aside from the love plot between Maria and Tony and the effervescent Anita, the musical is an ensemble performance because it is the portrait of two social groups at war. Who are they? Open the news and you will find them in most corners of the great United States. In this case they are Puerto Ricans and “real Americans” for which read white bigots.

 

Joseph Leppek as Tony, Vanessa Becerra as Maria and Amanda Castro as Anita in 

"West Side Story." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Vanessa Becerra as Maria has a ringing voice and shows emotional intensity of the highest order. Tony (Joseph Leppek) is man in love with the voice and the passion to show it. The gang members do dance routines that are athletic, perfectly timed and executed with dramatic power and marvelous passion. Amanda Castro makes the perfect insouciant recent immigrant who is full of optimism but can tell the difference between a dream and a daydream.

The “adults” of the show are the very sympathetic Doc (Dale Travis) and the cops, Lieutenant Schrank (Zachary Owen) and Officer Krupke (Maxwell Levy) who are perhaps exactly how we imagine police officers.

David Charles Abell conducts The Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra bringing out Bernstein’s wonderful songs and music to an audience that seemed to be thrilled by every note.

A magnificent night at the theatre. 

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 West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) and Arthur Laurents (book) is being performed thirteen times between July 7 and August 24, 2018 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN – REVIEW OF 2018 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

James Karas

There are productions and recordings of Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen but it is not an opera that has joined the standard repertoire. You are grateful for any production and especially thankful for one that is done well. E. Loren Meeker’s production for The Glimmerglass Festival qualifies as such as Artistic Director Francesca Zambello deserves a bow for her choice of an off-the-beaten track work.

The Cunning Little Vixen is a fairy tale about a vixen (sung marvelously by the agile Joanna Latini) fox from her youth to her death. As a cub, she is captured and taken home as a pet by the Forester (the ever sonorous Eric Owens). After killing the Forester’s hens, she escapes back to the forest where she grows up and finds love with another fox. Her cunning fails her and she is killed.

 

Joanna Latini as the Vixen and Eric Owens as the Forester in Janáček's "The Cunning Little Vixen." 

Photo: Karli Cadel/ The Glimmerglass Festival

The opera’s characters are mostly animals and insects including hens, grasshoppers, frogs, dragonflies, a wolf, a badger, a mosquito, a dog, a boar, a woodpecker …and you get the idea. Aside from the Forester and his wife (Kayla Siembieda), there is a Schoolmaster (Dylan Morrongiello), a Parson (Zachary Owen), Pasek the Innkeeper (Brian Wallin), his wife (Gretchen Krupp) and Harasta, the Poacher (Wm. Clay Thompson).

It should be noted that the entire cast with the exception of Eric Owens is made up of Glimmerglass’s Young Artists Program and the Glimmerglass Youth Chorus. Most of the young men and women take on more than one role and the performances are simply admirable.   

The Cunning Little Vixen is an orchestral piece, an opera and a ballet. There are some beautiful orchestral interludes and a great deal of dancing. With a few changes and additions, I think the work can easily be converted to a full-blown ballet. As such the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra by Joseph Colaneri performs brilliantly. The dancing as choreographed by Eric Sean Fogel is done quite well.

The flexible set by Ryan McGgettigan represents a large faux tree in the forest and it is easily adaptable to represent the Forester’s house or the tavern where the men drink and talk about love or the lack of it

 

Gretchen Krupp as Pasek's Wife, Eric Owens as the Forester, Dylan Morrongiello as the Schoolmaster. 

Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Janacek adapted the stories of Rudolf Tesnohlidek for his libretto which is of course in Czech. Glimmerglass presents the opera in English in a translation by Kelley Rourke. That no doubt solves the problem of finding singers who know Czech or can memorize the libretto phonetically. But the translation does have problems. Without knowing Czech, but having heard the opera in its original language, I felt that the English translation had many more syllables. The singers had to rush through phrases that simply did not fit the music and we lost the advantage of having the words married to the music and vice versa.

You may have post-performance rumblings of your own but nothing can take away from the wisdom of choosing to produce the opera, the display of young talent nurtuted by the Festival and the overall high-caliber performance.

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The Cunning Little Vixen by Leos Janacek is being performed nine times between July 8 and August 25, 2018 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

SILENT NIGHT – REVIEW OF 2018 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

James Karas

Silent Night is one of the most moving operas that I have ever seen.

              

The silent night of the title of the opera is not the well-known Yuletide carol but a truce among Scottish, French and German soldiers on Christmas Eve 1914 to stop killing each other on the Western Front.

Kevin Puts’ opera to a libretto by Mark Campbell tells a moving story about humanity and decency in the midst of brutality. It is a paean to humanity and a condemnation of our species.

Campbell has woven several personal stories involving soldiers and officers of the warring armies around the national conflicts that brought these people to the war for the sole purpose of killing each other.

 

Arnold Livingston Geis as Nikolaus Sprink in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2018 production of 

Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's "Silent Night." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Director Tomer Zvulun has staged a superb production that captures the horror and senselessness of war and the human decency that can rise above it.

The Glimmerglass Festival stage is divided into three sections, one on top of the other, and they are occupied by Scottish, French and German platoons. The men are patriots and fighting for their countries. They are convinced of their righteousness and want to kill their enemy.

On the personal side, there are two Scottish brothers, William (Maxwell Levy) and Jonathan (Christian Sanders), who volunteer for service. But William is killed by the Germans and Jonathan, filled with hatred, promises to take revenge.

Nikolaus Sprink (Arnold Livingston Geis) and Anna Sorensen (Mary Evelyn Hangley) are singers with the Berlin Opera and he is conscripted into the German army. He is a good singer but a bad soldier. She is conscripted to sing for the Crown Prince who is camped in a nearby chalet on Christmas Eve and Nikolaos is sent to do the same. The two lovers are reconciled but how and where they will end up is another question.

Lieutenant Audebert (Michael Miller), the son of an officer, has enlisted in the French army leaving his pregnant wife behind. These are the central personal stories that are weaved into the temporary truce that miraculously happens on that Christmas Eve.

As the soldiers are shooting at each other, they realize that their enemies are people, that they have everything in common and no reason to kill each other despite the fervent patriotism and self-righteousness that they have been indoctrinated with.

During the evening the men from the three nations drink, exchange pleasantries, eat and have a good time together. In the morning hostilities are about to resume, but, again miraculously, they decide to extend the truce for a few hours in order to bury the dead.

 

Dale Travis as The British Major with members of the company in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2018 

production of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's "Silent Night." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Puts’ score is an exquisite piece of music, expressive, moving, approachable, dramatic and occasionally dissonant. Campbell’s libretto is based on the screenplay of the film Joyeux Noël by Christian Carion. The opera is sung in the three languages of the combatants with some Latin. It was commissioned by the Minnesota Opera and premiered in 2011.

One of the most moving scenes in the opera occurs when Father Palmer (William Clay Thompson), a Scottish cleric performs a Christmas service and all the soldiers join in. The German Lieutenant Horstmayer (Michael Hewitt) joins in for his first such service. He is a Jew. That means he is not a “real” German and the opera prepares us for what will happen to the Jews of Europe in the future.

The commanding officers take an extremely dim view of the truce. The Kronprinz, the British Major (Dale Travis) and the French General (Timothy Bruno) punish the junior officers involved in the truce and make sure that no such event happens again. As Campbell puts it succinctly “war is not sustainable when you come to know your enemy as a person.”

Although there are some atrocious accents as the singers try to manage Scottish, German and French intonations, the opera is well sung and affectively acted.

Nicole Paiement conducted the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra and Chorus in what is, I can only repeat, one of the most moving productions I have ever seen.

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Silent Night by Kevin Puts (music) and Mark Campbell (libretto) is being performed nine times between July 15 and August 23, 2018 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE – REVIEW OF 2018 GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

James Karas

The Glimmerglass Festival is in full swing in upstate New York, near Cooperstown where you have to (pretend) to like baseball as you enjoy civilized offerings of operas and other events including a talk by Margaret Atwood. Put a baseball cap and a baseball in your car as a precaution, (pretend to) visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and then go to the gorgeous setting of the Alice Busch Opera Theater.

This year four major operas are offered displaying Artistic and General Director Francesca Zambello’s eclectic tastes. The ever-popular Barber of Seville is this year’s chestnut in a new production directed by Zambello. Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story brings a classic American musical on the 100^th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

 

L to R: Emily D'Angelo asRosina, Alexandria Shiner as Berta, David Walton as Count Almaviva, 

Rock Lasky as Figaro's Assistant and Joshua Hopkins as Figaro in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2018 

production of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

This year is also the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War I and the occasion is marked with a production of Silent Night by Kevin Puts. The opera is about the Christmas truce of 1914, an event on the Western Front, where soldiers temporarily stopped killing each other in Belgium.

With the fourth opera we tread on less familiar ground with Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. There are also productions of Ben Moore’s Odyssey and Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti.

Zambello gives The Barber of Seville a fresh reading presenting it as a fun chamber piece with minimal sets and a maximum of fine singing and comedy. Toronto baritone Joshua Hopkins led the cast as the virile, agile and clever Figaro. He sang superbly from the machine-gun paced ‘Largo al factotum’ through all the shenanigans that his character devises.

Toronto mezzo soprano Emily D’Angelo sang a delightful, expressive and thoroughly enjoyable Rosina. For her first big number, ‘Una voce poco fa,’ she was carried onto the stage lying on a couch and she delivered Rosina’s credo of determination and spunk mostly while seated. She would be better off standing and moving to illustrate her strength. But aside for that minor point, D’Angelo used her richly-toned mezzo voice to splendid effect and she made a Rosina that we are delighted to hear and see.

American tenor David Walton sang a spry Almaviva. He had a few bad patches but otherwise his singing was splendid for the role of the passionate and resourceful lover.

American bass-baritone Dale Travis sang well and was very funny as the foolish Doctor Bartolo. Timothy Bruno as Don Basilio, Ben Schaefer as Fiorello and Alexandra Shiner  as Berta are all from the Glimmerglass’s Young Artists Program and deserving of recognition and praise for their fine performances.

The opera is played against a turquoise background with moveable panels to indicate the scenery. The style is simple and quick, perhaps vaudeville style where placards give information such as a banner with word storm on it tell you that there is a storm. There is no balcony for Rosina but a moveable ladder is wheeled on the stage for her to stand on. When a window is required, a cardboard with a square hole is brought on. John Conklin is the designer. An original approach that combines the traditional and the modern and works exceptionally well.

 

Members of the ensemble in The Glimmerglass Festival’s 2018 production of Rossini’s 

The Barber of Seville.’Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalMembers

Zambello proves imaginative and astute in her desire to emphasize the humour of the opera. And she is successful. When Zambello greeted the audience before the performance, she told us that the price of a ticket covers only one half the cost of a seat. At that point she produced a chair cut in half to illustrate her point. When Bartolo wants to sit down, he is given the same half chair to general laughter.

The Glimmerglass Festival Chorus wore white chef’s hats and clothes. The message I guess is this is an opera put on in some mansion and the kitchen staff has been recruited to participate. Joseph Colaneri conducted The Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra at a lively pace for a very appreciative audience.

A marvelous evening at the opera.

Oh, yes. If you are a genuine baseball fan that is far more versatile than me and love opera, I have it on good authority that you can bring and even wear your baseball hat on the lawn of The Alice Busch. I have not examined the consequences of actually wearing the hat in the theatre. I am seeking an exemption for Blue Jays hat wearers as a gesture of our special relationship.

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The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini (music) and Cesare Sterbini (libretto) is being performed eleven times between July 14 and August 25, 2018 at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, New York. Tickets and information (607) 547-0700 or www.glimmerglass.org