Reviewed by James Karas
Toronto Operetta Theatre is wrapping up its 2024-2025 season with Gilbert and Sullivan’s delectable The Gondoliers. The other works that made up the season are The Student Prince and The Countess Maritza. For 2025-2026 we can expect The Mikado, Czardas Princess and My Fair Lady. We don’t wish to appear ungrateful but in the words of Oliver Twist we want more.
The Gondoliers was Gilbert and Sullivans 12th operetta and it was a big hit. It has some wonderful melodies, patter songs, ensemble pieces and comic complications, The plot is vintage operetta. The impoverished Duke of Plaza-Doro (Gregory Finney) married his infant daughter Casilda (Alyssa Bartholomew) to the heir to the throne of the King of Barataria. This is 18th century Spain and when his majesty went religiously rogue by becoming a Protestant, his infant son and heir to the throne was sent to Venice by the Grand Inquisitor (Austin Larusson). A safe Catholic domain to prevent him from being infected by his father’s apostasy.
Twenty-one years later, The Duke is searching for the heir to the throne, now grown-up who was raised by a gondolier as a gondolier with the gondolier’s son. Get it? We have two gondoliers Giuseppe and Marco but we and they do not know who the real heir is to the throne and who is the son of the gondolier. In the meantime, Casilda has fallen in love with Luiz (Marcus Tranquilli) and she is not interested in her husband from infancy. And Marco (Yanik Gosselin) and Giuseppe (Sebastian Belcourt) found two lovely girls, Gianetta (Brooke Mitchell) and Tessa (Lissy Meyerowitz) and married them. This is getting complicated and we need someone to identify the real heir, Nurse Inez (Francesca Alexander) who raised the heir knows who is who and we learn of a substitution that will make divorces unnecessary and happiness for all mandatory.
The inimitable Gregory Finney can as usual be counted on for good humour and his representation of the impoverished but proud Duke. He ventures into business as he and and we hope he finds financial security
Soprano Brooke Mitchell as Gianetta and mezzo-soprano Lissy Meyerowitz are well-voiced singers and the pair of wives who “lose” their husband as soon as the wedding ceremony is over. They make a good pair and sing beautifully as individuals.
Belcourt as Giuseppe and Gosselin as Marco make the perfect loving husbands of the above two ladies whose honeymoon is cut short before it can begin. The baritone and the tenor do creditable work as singers, lovers, strapping young men and comic characters as they wait to find out who will become king. There is a surprise waiting for them.
The operetta lists almost twenty musical numbers with an assortment of solos, duets and choruses. There is a generous supply of romantic pieces from “O rapture when alone together (Casilda and Luiz), to “Take a pair of sparkling eyes” (Marco), to “When a merry maiden marries” (Tessa). There are some opportunities for dancing but no choreographer is listed in the program and Director Guillermo Silva-Marin provided a few steps.
The operetta is set in the eighteenth century and needs fancy gowns, and wigs for the aristocrats and less elaborate costumes for the gondoliers and Contadina (peasant girls) He should have about a dozen of them (the opening chorus “list and learn” says there are 24 of them) and probably more gondoliers. Silva-Marin sensibly puts it in modern times with costumes provided by a commercial supplier. For a set, he uses some white boxes that can be moved around. Shoestring budget is the message.
The youthful Matheus Coelho do Nascimento, conductor, baritone and clarinetist, conducted energetically the orchestra of a dozen players squeezed around the apron of the stage.
_____________________
The Gondoliers by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan is being performed three times on February 28 and March 1 and 2, 2025 at the Jane Mallett Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto, Ontario. www.torontooperetta.com
