Opera Review: "That infernal nonsense 'Pinafore'" gets a colorful staging at Winter Opera

I don’t know about you, but I could sure use some good laughs right about now. Fortunately, Winter Opera is serving up a heaping helping of them this weekend (Friday and Sunday, November 8 and 10) with a jolly good production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore or The Lass That Loved a Sailor.” It’s impeccably sung, credibly acted, and smartly turned out in an ensemble of colorful costumes (Jen Blum-Tatara) and cheerfully cartoonish set (the ubiquitous Scott Loebl).

Gary Moss and ensemble
Photo: ProPhotoSTL

Yes, Stage Director John Stephens has the Sight Gag Meter turned up to 11, which I occasionally found annoying when I saw the final dress rehearsal Wednesday night. But perhaps that was partly due to the psychic hangover from Tuesday night. It is, in any case, no reason for you not to go and enjoy this tasty little pre-Thanksgiving treat—especially if, like me, you find yourself perpetually starving for more Savoyard silliness here in Mound City.

Winter Opera has been at the forefront of bringing back operetta classics for several years now, and while a couple of the works in question have definitely passed their “sell by” dates, most of them have been delights. And the combination of Sullivan’s irresistible music and Gilbert’s pointed (and sometime still startlingly relevant) satire never fails to amuse.

As is often the case, Winter Opera has assembled a stellar cast of (mostly) WOSTL regulars.

As Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty who firmly believes that his privileged birth makes him a stable genius who women find irresistible (the “startlingly relevant” part), baritone Gary Moss demonstrates once again the vocal and comedic strengths that have made him a familiar face at WOSTL. Baritone Jacob Lassetter, whose stentorian tones distinguished Union Avenue Opera’s “Pinafore” in 2018, is a proper mix of authority and befuddlement as Captain Corcoran.

Brian Skoog and Brittany Hebel
Photo: ProPhotoSTL

Brian Skoog makes an impressive WOSTL debut as Ralph Rackstraw, the sturdy sailor in love with Corcoran's daughter Josephine. His clear tenor and relentlessly cheerful approach to the role could not be better. Soprano Brittany Hebel, who was utterly winning in WOSTL’s “Naughty Marietta” back in March, scores another hit as Josephine. The lead soprano in fin de siècle operetta, as I wrote back then, was typically a role that called for solid top notes and vocal flexibility. Hebel has all that along with a fine comic sense. Much as I hate to suggest yet another production of G&S’s “Pirates of Penzance,” I sure would like to see what she’d do with the role of Mabel.

In another fine WOSTL debut, mezzo Emily Harmon has given the role of Little Buttercup (whose Deep Secret is one of the most shamelessly ludicrous examples of Gilbert’s “topsy-turvy” plot devices) a lively sense of playfulness, particularly in her “Things are seldom what they seem” duet with Lassetter in Act II.

Jacob Lassetter (C), Joel Rogier (R) and chorus
Photo: ProPhotoSTL

Bass-baritone Tyler Putnam punches out the ineptly villainous Dick Deadeye’s low notes with ease. Joel Rogier, a familiar face and voice on local stages, gets a welcome chance to show off his powerful lower register as the stalwart Bill Bobstay. And the multi-talented Janelle Pierce (composer, conductor, educator, and more) proves that she’s also a solid singing actress as Cousin Hebe.

Scott Schoonover—best known as the Artistic Director and Conductor of Union Avenue Opera—leads the 20-piece orchestra in a crisp if (at least to my ears) strangely re-orchestrated version of the score. As is often the case, he’s also the chorus master, and the quality of his work shows in the musical power of the small but mighty chorus. Sullivan loved to write interlocking counter melodies for the chorus (my favorite is still “When the foeman bears his steel” in “Pirates”) and these singers delivered them with wonderful clarity.

Emily Harmon and chorus
Photo: ProPhotoSTL

In fact, “wonderful clarity” describes all of the singing in this “Pinafore.” The English supertitles are there if you need them, but based on what I heard Wednesday night it’s not likely that you will. How nice to hear all of Gilbert’s wonderfully elaborate jokes so well.

Performances of “H.M.S. Pinafore” are Friday, November 8, at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 10, at 2 pm at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. It’s a shame that Winter Opera’s runs are so brief, but that’s all the more reason to catch them when you can. Check out their website for more information.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Theatre Review: The sands of time have not been kind to "The Desert Song"

The 1926 operetta “The Desert Song,” with music by Sigmund Romberg and a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, and Frank Mandel, was an unqualified hit on Broadway (471 performances) and in London (432). In his Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, historian Stanley Green described it as “the most durable of all Bway [sic] operettas.” In Operetta: A Theatrical History, Richard Traubner called it “one of the 1920s’ greatest operettas.”

“The Desert Song” was filmed three times (each one more unlike the original than the last one) and was, until recently, a favorite of student and community theatres. The Muny produced it a dozen times between 1930 and 1979. It also presented the last local staging of it (in concert form) back in 1996.

Lauren Nash Silverstein and Colin Levin
Photo: Rebecca Haas

It hasn’t been seen here since then to the best of my knowledge. This Friday and Sunday (March 3 and 5) Winter Opera St. Louis (WOSTL) is giving those of us who know the work only through recordings or the silver screen the chance to find out what all the fuss was about.

This “Desert Song” has a new book by Ball State University theatre professor David Little that’s intended to downplay the sexism and trite Orientalism of the original while still retaining all of the music and characters. Having seen the final dress rehearsal on Wednesday, I’m not sure the results are entirely successful. Winter Opera’s cast members are outstanding singers and credible actors, but there’s only so much a performer can do with a libretto that, despite the revisions, still feels antiquated and silly.

The 1926 “Desert Song” was a mashup of standard operetta tropes and then-current events and literary trends. The real-world events included the 1925 uprising of the Riffs against the occupying French army in Morocco and the adventures of T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia”). Fictional influences included the silent screen passion of Rudolph Valentino and the sexually tinged fiction of Elinor Glyn. Little’s revision appears to retain the literary inspirations but turns Morocco into the fictional Sharabhat and the French into the Marnish.

He needn’t have bothered. Hammerstein and Harbach’s Morocco is just as unreal as Little’s Sharabhat, and the plot—a mélange of “Robin Hood,” “Zorro,” and “The Sheik”—is absurd no matter where it takes place.

The capsule version goes like this:

Under the leadership of the mysterious masked hero known only as The Red Shadow, the Riffs are conducting a guerilla war to rid themselves of the oppressive French (sorry: Marnish) army under the command of General Birabeau, whose apparently feckless son Pierre is secretly The Red Shadow. In his red mask, Pierre falls hard for the enticing Margo Bonvalet despite her engagement to the dull Capitan Fontaine. Fontaine, meanwhile, has not quite gotten over his infatuation with the sensual and treacherous dancing girl Azuri. Throw in a comic romantic subplot with the somewhat fey reporter Bennie Kidd and his brassy blond secretary Susan and, for no discernable reason, a troupe of Spanish dancers who are (sort of) prisoners in the harem of The Red Shadow’s ally Ali Ben Ali, and you have a narrative that requires maximum suspension of disbelief.

Lauren Nash Silberstein and Jason Mallory
Photo: Rebecca Haas

The performances of Winter Opera’s fine cast and the playing of the small but mighty orchestra under the baton of Dario Salvi are what make “Desert Song” entertaining enough to be worth nearly three hours of your time, at least for lovers of operetta. Others might find it less enticing.

Pride of place must go to the Margo of soprano Lauren Nash Silberstein, whose clear voice leaps easily up to those high notes so fond of operetta composers. When I saw her in Winter Opera’s “La Rondine” last fall, I described her as “sparkling and charismatic.” She is here as well, despite the sheer silliness of her character. Apparently taking the advice of Liza in “Lady in the Dark” (“Don’t make up your mind!”), Margo waffles back and forth in her affections so frequently that she seems a bit demented. Nash Silberstein’s performance was great fun to watch nevertheless, which is a signal accomplishment.

Lyric baritone Colin Levin is charmingly fatuous as Pierre, but his Red Shadow is more pompous than heroic. With or without the mask, though, he’s an excellent match for Nash Silberstein in vocal agility and power. Their big duets (“Then You’ll Know” and the title song) radiate exactly the kind of musical enchantment one wants to hear in an operetta.

Speaking of great voices, let’s throw a laurel wreath towards lyric tenor Taylor Comstock making his WOSTL debut as the Red Shadow’s second in command, Sid El Kar. His heroic high notes in the opening numbers “High on a Hill” and the famous “Riff Song” get the show off to a rousing musical start, backed by the solid male chorus. He also gets to show off his stunning head voice and falsetto in “One Flower in Your Garden” in Act II.

Tenor Alexander Scheuermann captures just the right comic spirit as Bennie. ”It,” his act I duet with alto Holly Janz’s Susan, is funny without stooping to camp, although the once-topical references might send many audience members to Professor Google for clarification. Janz, for her part, does the classic blonde airhead bit quite well.

Kelsey Amanda and Jason Mallory
Photo: Rebecca Haas

Another fine singer, baritone Jason Mallory is a persuasively stuck up Capitan Paul Fontaine, and his gradual meltdown under the intense heat of Kelsey Amanda’s Azuri in Act II is nicely done. As Ali Ben Ali, baritone Jacob Lassetter displays the same surprisingly potent low notes that so impressed me in his Ford at Union Avenue Opera’s “Falstaff” last August.

Other notable performances include Christian Bakhoum Sanchez’s stout hearted Clementina, rebellious head of the Spanish dance troupe, and baritone Gary Moss’s General Birabeau. A WOSTL regular, Moss has displayed his flair for comedy in many productions over the last decade or so and does it again here.

Stage Director Jon Truitt, who has shown such skill in maneuvering large casts around the Winter Opera stage in the past, has his work cut out for him here. The creators of the 1926 “Desert Song” envisioned (and originally got) a large cast with sizeable singing and dancing choruses. Neither Winter Opera’s budget nor the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center’s stage can support anything as lavish, but even so there are times when that stage is packed with people. That’s especially true during the many dance numbers which, frankly, should probably have been cut. Yes, Romberg wrote some charming music for them, but the Winter Opera choristers are much better singers than they are dancers.

The bottom line, for me, is that while I have greatly enjoyed Winter Opera’s previous forays into the realm of classic operetta—their 2016 “Merry Widow” is still the stuff of legend—attempting to rehab a theatrical antique like “The Desert Song” might have been a bridge too far. Granted, I saw a somewhat rocky dress rehearsal. But even so, Romberg, Hammerstein, Orbach, and Mandel set out to create a lavish swashbuckling spectacle, and in the hands of a company with very deep pockets and a very big stage (Lyric Opera of Chicago, for example), it could probably still be one.

You can get some sense of that from the surviving scenes of  the 1929 film version available on YouTube. “The Desert Song” does not, however, downsize that well, despite the large amount of talent involved in this production.

Performances of Winter Opera’s “The Desert Song” are Friday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm, March 3 and 5, at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. For more information, visit the Winter Opera St. Louis web site.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Review: A sparkling "Merry Widow" at Winter Opera

Kathy Pyeatt and the ensemble

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This review originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

As the first catalogs of Christmas made their way to our recycle bin last, Winter Opera opened an early Christmas present for opera lovers last weekend (October 28 and 30, 2016) with a production of Franz Lehár's durable 1905 comic operetta The Merry Widow. As bubbly as champagne and as bright as a Christmas tree, this charming and entertaining show was one of the company's best.

Holly Janz and Jack Swanson

If you've never seen it either on stage or in one of its many film incarnations, know that the story of The Merry Widow revolves around Hanna, a youngish widow from the fictional Balkan nation of Pontevedro, who became a millionaire when her much older husband died on their wedding night. Living the high life in Paris, she's actively courted by young men with their eyes on the twenty million franc prize, but she secretly yearns for her first love, Count Danilo, who was forbidden to marry her many years ago by his snobbish family.

Now a minor official in the Pontevedrian embassy trying to drown his torch for Hanna in champagne and grisettes at Maxim's, Danilo is ordered by the ambassador, Baron Zeta, to woo Hanna and marry her, thereby keeping her millions from leaving the country. But, of course, Danilo's pride won't let him say those "three little words" to Hanna.

You know where this is all going, right?

There's also a subplot concerning Zeta's young wife Valencienne and her brief fling with a young Frenchman, Camille de Rosillon, as well as a recurring gag about the obsession of the embassy attache, Njegus, with the girls at Maxims. Needless to say, all ends happily with a big party.

Kathy Pyeatt and Clark Sturdevant

First and foremost among this production's many virtues is the uniform strength of its cast. Winter Opera has been somewhat uneven in this regard in previous the past, but this time around everyone is simply perfect, beginning with soprano Kathy Pyeatt, who demonstrated how to “glitter and be gay” (or quote a song title from Candide) in the crucial role of Hanna. Her voice was liquid gold all the way to the top of its range, making the popular second act aria “Vilja” a thing of beauty. She's also a fine actress, always in character even when not in focus.

Tenor Clark Sturdevant was a perfect match for Ms. Pyeatt as Danilo. The role lies a bit low for most tenors and is not infrequently sung by a baritone with a solid head voice, but Mr. Sturdevant sounded entirely comfortable with it. He, too, had solid acting chops, which gave the scenes between him and Ms. Pyeatt a convincing reality.

Among the supporting cast, mezzo Holly Janz stood out as Valencienne. The role is written for a soprano but-as both her singing here and a quick glance at her biography demonstrated-Ms. Janz is comfortable with soprano roles as well. Tenor Jack Swanson was an excellent vocal match for her as Rosillon, and their scenes together had real charm.

Baritone Gary Moss was a comically clueless Baron Zeta. I'm not sure why he was the only Pontevedrian with a vaudeville "Balkan" accent, but he certainly made it work for him. Baritone Curtis Shoemake was also a delight as the excessively enthusiastic Njegus.

The chorus is important in Merry Widow, and Chorus Master Nancy Mayo can take pride in how well her forces did their jobs, singling clearly and with impressively precise elocution. It helped that the (uncredited) English translation sounded very natural, often making the English supertitles unnecessary.

Curtis Shoemake and grisettes

Director Dean Anthony clearly has a good eye for what works well on a stage. His blocking always made sense and his pacing was unfailingly right and his choreography did an excellent job of keeping the real dancers front and center in the second act party scene while providing easily executed steps for the non-dancing singers in big ensemble numbers. The minstrel show-style tambourine number for the male principals in "Girls, Girls, Girls" was also an inspired (and well executed) bit of comedy.

Scott Schoonover did his usually fine job conducing the orchestra in a generally very well played reading of Lehár's unforgettable score. There were a few bits of sloppy brass intonation at the very beginning when I saw the show on Sunday, but otherwise the band sounded quite good. I wish Mr. Schoonover hadn't decided to cut the engaging overture, though.

Scott Loebl's sets were nothing short of beautiful, with a wonderful trompe e'loeil backdrop for the Pontevedrian embassy that looked positively three dimensional. JC Krajicek's lavish and colorful costumes added to the overall visual richness of this production.

Ultimately, the worst thing to be said about Winter Opera's Merry Widow is that there were only two performances of it. If Winter Opera is going to continue producing work of this quality, it really needs longer runs. For more information on the current season, including the annual Holidays on the Hill concerts on December 6 and 7, visit the company's web site.