Leonard's Musings on Opera

In April 2004, I was asked to recommend a Marc Blitzstein opera for performance at the 2005 Bard College Aaron Copland Festival. I sent details on two Blitzstein works that have never been performed (“Parabola And Circula” and “The Condemned”) and two of his posthumous works I completed that have yet to be fully staged with orchestra (“Tales Of Malamud” and “Sacco And Vanzetti)”. Instead, Leon Botstein chose to conduct the work of Blitzstein's most often heard on the opera stage (c. 75 productions, to date): “Regina,” based on Lillian Hellman's play “The Little Foxes.” And this barely four months after Patti LuPone starred in a semi-staged production at the Kennedy Center last March. It's hard to fault the choice, though, since Lauren Flanigan was available for the title role, and it is always interesting to watch and hear in whatever she does. The differences in the productions were considerable: Washington took every cut imaginable, but Steven Mercurio's conducting brought out every nuance, as the usually three-act work was re-divided with only one intermission between the two scenes of Act II. LuPone did not have the high C that usually brings down the curtain, so the first three notes of that last four-note phrase (not the whole part, pace OPERA NEWS) were taken down an octave for her. Flanigan, on the other hand, had high and low notes to burn, but insisted on singing some of the lowestan octave higher, most notably the end of the mordant waltz, "Things." When asked why, she replied, "I sang that low note 8 times in Florida, and it never worked." If she thought it was a button, it works even less well in the upper octave, though. Blitzstein knew what he was doing. LuPone's experience with Blitzstein extends back to her seductive Moll in “The Cradle Will Rock” two decades ago, and she seemed to be playing Regina forall the seductiveness she could find in the role. Flanigan's was more the suppressed rage underneath the facade of gentility and "gallantry." An especially striking touch was her destroying the strongbox that had held her husband's bonds, though one wonders how she could then have made good on the threat to use it as evidence against her brothers later on.

The Bard production retained every note of the published score, though none of the cut sketches John Mauceri rescued for the Scottish Opera version of 1991, and some passages were a bit too quick for clarity. Lauren Skuce as Alexandra managed nicely to sing the slowest "What Will It Be" I've ever heard. Kelly Kaduce was a lovely Birdie. Peter Schneider's staging was a bit strange, with characters speaking across the stage to each other even when it seemed not entirely appropriate. Judy Pfaff's set, with its spiral helix, reminded one of the line in “Fiddler On The Roof” about the staircase "leading nowhere, just for show." Jason Collins and Lee Gregory as Leo and Marshall, respectively, proved that there are no small parts.

A Bare-Bones “Sweeney Todd”

by Leonard Lehrman

If Patti LuPone's Regina seemed to take a noli me tangere diva attitude, her Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd” at the Eugene O'Neill Theater definitely gets down and dirty (bumping and grinding while playing the tuba and various percussion instruments) along with the rest of the multi-talented 10-member cast who also, rather incredibly, play all the music as well as sing it.

Well, almost all of it. Having conducted a community theater production of the work in the Bronx 18 years ago with an orchestra (that I) scaled down from the original 27 to 15, I know what musical supervisor Sarah Travis was up against in adapting Stephen Sondheim's often sumptuous score, inspired by a musical tradition that goes back (via Brecht, Weill, and Blitzstein) to the 18th-century ballad operas of John Gay.

The soaring sections of "Kiss Me" in Act I don't really lift off without a real string section underneath them. And while the lovers Benjamin Magnuson and Lauren Molina soar away on their cellos, and sing their hearts out, it's not easy for them to do so simultaneously, so they don't.

Donna Lynne Champlin, who learned accordion for the production, contributes on several instruments and sports a fake moustache to play Pirelli the barber as a trouser role, losing some of the fun with Italian tenor parody the original score had.

The beadle and the judge, Alexander Gemignani and Mark Jacoby, play mean trumpets and have lovely voices, though the latter, one of the best lyric tenors still working on Broadway, is miscast in what should be a bass-baritone role. And with no conductor, Michael Cerveris in the title role (and occasionally on guitar) doesn't really keep the pace from dragging in the Act II "Johanna" ensemble. Nonetheless, the show is a hoot - and a hot ticket. The opening was officially Nov. 3rd, and we had hoped to see it on Halloween, but the press weren't admitted that night; instead we attended on Kristallnacht (Nov. 9th), and afterwards, for the benefit of a school group in the audience, got to hear all the actors tell their sagas of how they had gotten their roles and learned them. All except one: Patti LuPone. Well, guess she is a diva after all, even here.

New Operas and the Importance of Librettists

by Leonard Lehrman

[This article origially appeared in our Summer/Fall 2006 issue but without the context of the above two articles. We reprint it to make the set complete.]

Both on Broadway and in the opera house, it would be hard to name anyone currently working either as composer or librettist more gifted than Stephen Sondheim. The late Cy Coleman, the subject of an entertaining and loving tribute at the 92nd Street Y May 23, came close to writing opera, or operetta, only once in his long career, with On the Twentieth Century, in collaboration with Betty Comden and the late Adolph Green, who got their start working with Leonard Bernstein. Judy Kaye, who replaced Madeleine Kahn in the female lead in that show and has gone on to a stellar Broadway career, sang the beautiful duet "Our Private World" as a solo. (Was there no baritone available to pair with her? One wonders.)

Writer Charles Kondek has created a gorgeous libretto, at least for the first act of Cantor Gerald Cohen's opera in progress, Sarah and Hagar, heard in concert at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan May 22. Kondek's previous libretti included works set by Harold Blumenfeld and the late Hugo Weisgall (his Esther, which starred Lauren Flanigan ). (The latter was Cohen's teacher at Jewish Theological Seminary.) The direction the piece will take in Act II is eagerly awaited.

Librettist Charles Bernstein was represented by two operas staged in New York in 2005: Shadowtime by Brian Ferneyhough , a meditation on the life and work of Walter Benjamin, presented in Munich in May 2004 and at the Lincoln Center Festival in June 2005; and Blind Witness News, an earlier opera with music by Ben Yarmolinsky , presented by Cantiamo Opera four times in December at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on the Upper West Side.

Point of disclosure: I've been a friend and colleague of Charles's since we did a Marat/Sade at Harvard together 36 years ago, and Composers Concordance presented a setting I wrote of a poem of his sung by Paul Sperry and Helene Williams May 27, 2004. But I think I can still say, impartially, that the Ferneyhough was intermittently fascinating, while the Yarmolinsky was unremittingly entertaining.

The latest entry in the new opera sweepstakes, Tobias Picker's An American Tragedy, based on the eponymous Theodore Dreiser novel, opened at the Met Dec. 2, 2005, fervently conducted by James Conlon, with a dream cast that included Nathan Gunn as Clyde Griffiths, Patricia Racette as his first love interest Roberta Alden, Susan Graham as his second love interest Sondra Finchley , and Dolora Zajick as his mother, who completely steals the show in the last act. The night we saw it, Dec. 16, Graham was ill, and replaced by a radiant Kirstin Chavez, who sang as though the role had been written for her. (We found out later - from the composer - that it had been, but Graham, with greater star power, got to premiere it.)

The work has been diligently researched, with sets by Adrienne Lobel based on photographs of the actual sites in which the real-life characters lived (in and around Cortland, NY), whom Dreiser adapted in his novel. Francesca Zambello is credited both as director and as dramaturge.

One hesitates to criticize too harshly such a well-intentioned venture, except to say that Gene Scheer is not unfortunately in the same class with any of the above librettists. In its American historical love triangle structure, the work bears a strong resemblance to Douglas Moore's & John Latouche's Ballad of Baby Doe. But the earlier work is much stronger, primarily because of Latouche's poetic contribution. Racette's letter aria at the beginning of Picker's second act comes closest to that poetry, and indeed the music seems closest to Moore at that moment. But at other times there seems to be a disjunction between word and tone, with the orchestra veering off onto Stravinskian tangents that are never uninteresting but only rarely compelling.

One hopes for better operas to be written for these wonderful singers.