A week of comic opera, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Quick background for those who don’t know: Beaumarchais was a French playwright in the 18th century who wrote a trilogy of plays about wily barber and manservant Figaro. Mozart turned the second of these, The Marriage of Figaro, into a masterpiece of an opera. Later on, after an earlier setting by Paisiello, Rossini turned the first play, The Barber of Seville, into another masterpiece (or at least wildly popular) opera. (fun fact: in college, I wrote a not-particularly-good paper comparing the Paisello version with the Rossini version, based on one listening of a recording of the Paisiello).
And I saw both of these operas this week, sandwiching a performance of Sullivan’s The Zoo.
Mozart’s Figaro is probably the opera I’m most familiar with, and I adore it. It’s one of those musical theater pieces, like Sweeney Todd, that I’d happily perform as many times as I get the chance. In grad school, when I was ‘the horn major who sang in the operas’, we did the Act 2 finale (in Italian) and I played Antonio, the gardener. That was total fun. (also a fun aside – we were supposed to pick it up at the start of the finale, but ended up tacking on the Susanna/Cherubino duet at the beginning, where Cherubino jumps out the window. The same mezzo played both Cherubino and Marzellina.)
Then a few years later, when I was actually maybe trying to become an opera singer, I ended up playing Bartolo (in English) at Delaware Valley Opera Company in Philadelphia. That was an odd thing – I wasn’t supposed to be in it, but the Figaro dropped out and I was like, “I’ll play Figaro”, But the first Bartolo insisted on getting promoted, so I moved into his slot. He was in his late 40’s, I think, I was like 24, playing the old farty buffo. This was the teeniest possible production, outdoors with piano on a stage the size of a parking space – but involved two cast members who went on to do great things. John Packard (Count Almaviva) and Susan Werner (Cherubino). John went on to create the Sean Penn role in the opera of Dead Man Walking. Susan, then still a grad student studying opera at Temple, would, at break time, play us the songs she’d written herself, which were brilliant. So much fun watching her then develop, not as an opera singer, but as a folkie singer/songwriter, sharing the stage with many of my favorites.
But I digress. Figaro is the only opera I’ve seen more than once at the Met (it was the first, actually, in the 80’s) and I really wanted to go grab a matinee. And I could not have been happier with this production. Fun fact, as I’ve discovered, if you sit in the orchestra way off to the side, the seats are not that expensive and although you might miss seeing some stuff (like Cherubino jumping out the window), you can mostly hear and see everything great. This production is set kind of the early 1920’s, and has fun costumes, a great set and fun anachronistic props like cameras and flashlights. I loved the staging. The cast was excellent across the board, but I particularly liked Michael Sumuel‘s Figaro, which was totally delightful.
The opera itself, although quite funny, is also quite real and this is what makes it into a masterpiece. Despite the shenanigans, you really see how awful the Count and Countess’s marriage has become and you really feel for her – in the whole Act 2 finale, the music makes it pretty clear that he might strike her at any moment – very tense-making. And the ensembles are brilliant. (I remember seeing more than one opera by other composers and feeling cheated because there were very few duets, trios, etc.) One thing i love about Figaro is that Susanna (his soon to be bride) is really the driver of all the action and she has a duet, one at a time, with pretty much every other principal. (No Bartolo duet, alas.)
Anyway, I laughed, I cried, I just loved it. Go see it if you can.
One of my big events of the spring was the ‘dry run’ of The Zoo that my buddy Marisa and I were producing at the local G&S Society. Just to make clear, because this got questioned by someone, these dry runs, although very much done to help us Savoynetters prepare for our shows in the summer, are not Savoynet Performing Group productions. They are simply a means to take advantage of the fact that often, a lot of our SPG cast members are in New York, and we have a very convenient “lab” of our local G&S society, who needs a concert presented each month and wants content. For The Zoo, four of the five principals are locals, so doing The Zoo here was a no-brainer. We had a rehearsal on Tuesday and did the concert/meeting on Wednesday.
The Zoo was a lot of fun, and i thought we mostly nailed it. My character, Grinder, only shows up near the end and only has two ‘singing’ scenes. I botched words on the second scene, which just means I need to go memorize it. It’s mostly there. Love couple #1 (Carboy and Laetitia) are played by real-life husband and wife Jon and Ali and they were adorable. Love couple #2 was played by Laura (who gets to sing the song about ‘gosh, I have no idea why all these men give me jewelry and stuff’) and ringer Cameron, NYGASP star and good egg.
The Zoo is only forty minutes long, so that was Act 1. Act 2 was various ‘miscast’ songs. For instance, I sang Tessa’s “When a merry maiden marries” from Gondoliers. That was a lot of fun. (and we all went out for drinks afterward, of course).
So good that that’s done – now I need to do exactly the same thing for Pinafore next month.
Saturday, I saw the other Beaumarchais masterpiece, The Barber of Seville. This was exciting because, although I’m very familiar with the opera, I’d never actually seen it on stage. Barber is also very funny, but unlike Figaro, isn’t real at all – it’s very silly and surfacy. Which is fine, and the music’s a ton of fun.
Staging was by Broadway fave Bartlett Sher and involved a lot of doors. It was very clever. All the singers were great, and there was also one actor, who played an ancient manservant, very funny. Isobel Leonard, although looking somewhat matronly in her outfit, and Lawrence Brownlee, looking dashing in his, sang the crap out of their very florid roles. Watching Figaro and Bartolo was especially fun, they’re both Italians and watching them do this was like watching talented Brits do G&S – they’ve known it all their lives, they speak the language, and they just run with it. In fact, I think the most wonderful thing was that everyone was completely comfortable with what they were doing on stage (even the super-hard stuff that us mortals can only attempt) and were just clearly having a blast. (cue Eric trying to learn a un dottor della mia sorte at one point and never quite getting there)
so if you’re in NYC and get a chance to see either Figaro or Barber, go do it, they’re great. I’d like to see Magic Flute too, but may not grab it in this run. Maybe Salome (never seen it!), schedule permitting.
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