Renée
Fleming as Hanna, Kelli O'Hara as Valencienne, and Alek Shrader as Camille de
Rosillon in
Lehár's The Merry Widow. Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Reviewed by James
Karas
The Metropolitan Opera has successfully married two very suitable candidates
for nuptials: operetta and Broadway. The question is why did it take so long?
Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow almost defines the
operetta genre and when done well it can provide a delightful night at the
theatre. The Broadway musical is one of the largest components of the New York entertainment
industry not to mention that it is a uniquely American contribution to culture.
What it lacks in snob appeal it makes up for in energy, popularity and just
plain fun. What operetta has in high cultural experience it often lacks in fun
especially if done in a foreign language.
The Met has brought in Broadway Director and Choreographer Susan Stroman
to create a Merry Widow that is full
of energy, humour, high kicking dancing and a visual and aural pleasure.
The production is done in English avoiding the easiest way of killing
this operetta which is to do it in German. The cast is uniformly superb with
some excellent singers and dancers and just as importantly genuinely funny
actors.
Soprano Renée Fleming has the role of Countess Hanna Glawari and surely
she is everybody’s dream of a merry widow. Hanna is lively, beautiful and,
thanks to her husband’s uncommon good sense in dying on their wedding night, loaded.
Make that is in possession of twenty million whatevers,
a sum sufficient to save the fatherland Pontevedria from bankruptcy. Fleming
looks like a mature woman and that is a bonus on top of her silken voice.
Scene from
The
Merry Widow. Photo credit: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
With those looks and that bank account, Hanna has many suitors but the
fatherland can only be saved if she married a Pontevedrian. That would be Count
Danilo, an attaché at the Pontevedrian embassy in Paris, who prefers Chez
Maxim’s to the office. Baritone Nathan Gunn is tall, dark and handsome, to coin
a phrase, say, and with his powerful voice and swaggering manner fits the role.
Gunn has made his reputation in the opera house but he is equally adept singing
on Broadway, therefore, an ideal part for “this” match in every way.
Veteran baritone Thomas Allen is the foolish ambassador Baron Mirko
Zeta. The vocal demands are not onerous and he gets the laughs as a gullible
and cuckolded husband. His wife Valencienne is played by Broadway star Kelli
O’Hara who is lively, funny and a delight to the ear and the eye.
Tenor Alek Shrader comes from the world of opera and he is handsome,
sings well and looks like the perfect candidate for Hanna’s hand and fortune
but as Camille de Rosillon he is unsuitable - he is French. Besides, the only reason
he wants to marry Hanna is so he can have Valencienne i.e. make it respectable
to be seen with another man’s wife.
Carson Elrod played the delightful nincompoop Njegus, an employee at the
Pontevedria embassy, who always managed to put his foot in his mouth and
produced laughter.
Aside from the performers that I mentioned, the marriage of Broadway and
operetta is effected by Stroman by giving the production a marvelous mixture of
the two related forms. The outstanding Broadway dancers, the Met chorus, the
humour, the energy and approachability of the operetta are all meticulously
combined by Stroman to give us sheer entertainment. The Met Opera Orchestra
conducted by Sir Andrew Davis added to the enjoyment.
The art-nouveau sets designed by Julian Crouch and the gorgeous costumes
by William Ivey Long create an atmosphere of opulence, grace and beauty that
exists only in our imagination and now on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
____
The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar was transmitted Live
in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on January 17, 2015 at the Cineplex VIP Don
Mills Shops at Don Mills, Toronto Ontario and other theatres. Encores will be
shown on February 28 and March 2, 2015. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events
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