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  • Sondheim in Waltz Time: A Little Night Music at Opera in the Heights – Houston Press

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    Although Opera in the Heights mounts a most credible A Little Night Music (1973), Stephen Sondheim’s most accessible musical, there’s a pall over Lambert Hall.

    If you’re reading this Saturday, November 22, there are only two more performances, tonight and Sunday matinee, November 23. Three performances of this iconic musical does not make a run. Why this is so might be related to the next news…

    Beloved Maestro Eiki Isomura, who for many seasons has reigned as OH’s music and artistic director, has moved back to Philadelphia for family health reasons. Concurrent with his OH duties, he was – and still is – the opera producer at Temple University. A stalwart captain for Opera in the Heights, he led over 40 productions during his superlative tenure and gave us some remarkable performances that still linger in memory: an incandescent Madame Butterfly in his own Japanese translation; The Little Prince; L’italiani in Algeri; Lucia di Lammermoor; a ‘50s be-bob Elixir of Love; the regional premiere of Scalia/Ginsberg in a co-production with Holocaust Museum Houston; a splendid Amahl and the Night Visitors; a galvanic tango-infused María de Buenos Aires; an intoxicating Die Fledermaus; a charm-filled La Cenerentola; a volcanic Il Trovatore. He was OH’s heart and soul and will be sorely missed. God speed, Maestro. 

    So the baton has been passed to Interim Music Director Carolyn Watson. Originally from Australia, Watson has conducted in the U.S. since 2013 at numerous regional opera and symphony companies from Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Michigan, Indiana and now Texas.

    In her first appearance at Lambert Hall, Watson led a reduced orchestra (a string quartet with piano and clarinet) in a revised score. There are no “Liebeslieder Singers” to wryly comment on the action, but the quartet’s music has been melded onto the main characters, which makes a good compromise. OH just saved the expense of four additional players.

    After the disappointment of Follies (1971) – now certified as one of his greatest shows (“Time heals everything,” as Jerry Herman once wrote) – Sondheim wanted to write a romantic comedy, perhaps even a hit. Now, everybody knows that you can’t sit down and write one, for who knows what the public will respond to, what songs might become standards, or what will play out-of-town to encourage that word-of-mouth excitement to get butts into the seats.

    He and his famed director Hal Prince thought that Jean Anouilh’s Ring Around the Moon would do the trick, a highly stylized comedy of manners. Anouilh refused. Then playwright Hugh Wheeler, now on board as one of the creative trio, suggested Renoir’s social satire film Rules of the Game (1939) or perhaps Ingmar Bergman’s classic Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) with its rueful ambiance set in perpetual sunset. Sondheim overwhelmingly approved Bergman. The Swedish director agreed to the rights, and off the three went to create a show.

    Exceptionally sung and performed by Opera in the Heights, and directed sporadically by Alyssa Weathersby, the musical is its own “theme and variations.” Sondheim loved to challenge himself, often to show off. Instead of a string of numbers that might sound as if the same composer wrote them, how about a musical whose very theme is in waltz time: ¾ meter? Then you can vary it by subdividing it into 6/8 or even 12 beats. It’s a grand idea, and Sondheim conquers it. The score sparkles even in this reduced orchestration. It is quintessential Sondheim with rhyming lyrics that rival the best of W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan fame. 

    A sublime choice for a musical comedy, now re-titled A Little Night Music, like Bergman’s movie, the musical is infused with the theme and variations on love: the loss of it, the want of it, the physical-ness of it, the remembrance of it.

    Stuffy lawyer Frederik (baritone Scott Clark) once had an affair with now somewhat-famous actress Desiree (mezzo-soprano Melanie Ashkar). She plays in the provinces where everyone thinks she’s a star. She was the love of his life, and he hers, but he gave her up. Life upon the wicked stage, you know, is not for stuffy lawyers. Years later he has married a very young Anne (soprano Laura Corina Sanders), still a virgin after months of marriage, but he dreams of Desiree. He sees her at the theater and then visits her for a tryst.

    However, Desiree has a lover, the married toxic brute Count Magnus (baritone Kellen Schrimper), who carries on affairs in full knowledge of his wife Charlotte (mezzo-soprano Riley Vagis). Situations get complicated, of course, and they all meet at the country estate of Desiree’s worldly mother and ex-courtesan Madame Armfeldt (mezzo-soprano Jana Ellsworth), whose many past liaisons have given her “a duchy…extravagantly overstaffed châteaus…fire opal pendants…and a tiny Titian.” Frederik’s son Henrik (tenor Ben Rorabaugh) unsuccessfully beds Petra, but secretly loves Anne. While Desiree’s daughter, Frederika (soprano Whitney Wells) – “I’m illegitimate,” she boasts – learns life’s love lessons at the feet of her soigné grandmother, Madame Armfeldt.

    Jealousy, unrequited love, male pride, feminine wiles, and raw sex – that would be earthy maid Petra (mezzo-soprano Melissa Krueger) and her fling with butler Frid (tenor Anthony Nevitt) – all get deliciously mixed up in this adult romp. It’s too sophisticated for a farce, but as a modern dissection of love and marriage, along with its fools and clowns (a Sondheim specialty), it works wonders.

    The singers are splendid, although soprano Sanders is much too old for virginal teenage Anne. She sings gorgeously, though, as do Clark, Ellsworth, Krueger, Vagis, and Schrimper. But it’s Ashkar who gets the best number, “Send in the Clowns,” her only solo. Believe it or not, this American Songbook standard didn’t make much of an impression during the show’s run until folk superstar Judy Collins recorded it in 1975 on her album “Judith.” Like a meteor in hyperdrive, the song soared to pop heaven and received the 1976 Grammy for Song of the Year. Sondheim was mystified. Why this ballad? Well, why not? It is gorgeous, and simple, and true, and the dark plummy voice of Ashkar runs with it and makes it her own. It’s tremendously effective under her sultry rendition as she realizes that her true love has passed her by. Give Ahskar the Grammy.

    A loving note on OH’s production. What’s up with those teeny surtitles projected stage right and left? You can’t read them. If you can’t decipher Sondheim’s intricately rhymed lyrics or tongue-twisting patter, what good are they? Magnify them! And the constantly changing set design – those boxwoods, those flower urns, that bed – why must we wait while the orchestra noodles snippets of Sondheim for stagehands to rearrange the set after every scene? Give us a unit set, even with that damned bed, for an effortless, cinematic switch in setting. Who needs topiary? Get this show moving!

    With definitive singing and acting, and a small orchestra that effortlessly captures the nuance of Jonathan Tunick’s famous orchestrations, Opera in the Heights’ production of this classic musical – one of the best ever – is very fine indeed. It’s as refreshing as “a weekend in the country.”

    A Little Night Music continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 22; 2 p.m. Sunday, November 23 at Opera in the Heights, 1703 Heights Boulevard. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $35-$85.    

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • Il Trittico: Puccini’s Masterful Triptych – Houston Press

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    Giacomo Puccini’s penultimate opera, Il trittico (“The triptych”) premiered at the prestigious New York City’s Metropolitan Opera after the successful opening at that company of his Girl of the Golden West (1910). In between came the Franz Lehár-light somewhat operetta, La Rondine (1917) for Monte Carlo. It wasn’t a success, except for its lilting score that was filled with waltzes and champagne fizz. Revived sporadically, this bonbon is the least performed of all his mature works. But Trittico (1918) is something different in his impressive canon – Bohème, Butterfly, Tosca, and the posthumous Turandot – three one-acts, each about an hour long, yet each so different in tone and style. But there is no mistaking who wrote all three. The master’s voice, orchestration, and sublime love duets are all over it.

    The work plays with the theme of death, as the opera was composed during the Great War and its sacrificial slaughter of so many young men. It can also be parsed as a riff on Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy with its three parts that depict Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

    Il tabarro (“The cloak”) showcases Puccini in verismo mode, that dark foreboding Italianate style of melodrama which fascinated the audiences of the day. Telling of everyday life, hardscrabble and gritty, instead of stories about ancient kings and queens. This was raw for its time and for decades was the prominent money maker at the opera houses. On its way out as opera’s reigning style, Puccini revived it in this work about Michele, a poor, hardworking boatman on the Seine (bass-baritone Ryan McKinny), Giorgetta, his young nubile wife (soprano Corinne Winters, making a spectacular HGO debut), and Luigi (tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz), a virile stevedore, her lover. The previous death of their daughter has ripped apart their marriage, leaving Michele and Giorgetta adrift in their relationship, to be replaced by a wandering eye, depression, jealousy, and ultimately murder.

    Subsidiary characters sing of their ceaseless work on the river, drinking themselves into a stupor to forget, or nostalgic dreams of what might be but never will. Mezzo Jamie Barton, as “rummage lady” Frugola, has a fragrant reminiscence of having a little cottage with her husband Talpa, the wondrous bass Andrea Silvestrelli. The short aria, an aching lullaby, looks forward to Ping, Pang, and Pong, the counselors in Turandot (1924), one of whom dreams of returning to his little house of bamboo in Honan.

    McKinny is a brooding force, stalwart and thick. He realizes he has lost his wife, but pines for her still. Remembering happier times past, he softly remembers how it used to be with Giorgetta, then grows despondent and impatient, then violent. His deep baritone conveys every conflict within him. Full of passion, Chacón-Cruz has ardent tenor down pat. His trumpet voice rings out like Richard Tucker of old. He fills the Brown Theater with Puccini’s radiant but treacherous high notes, hitting every one square on. He is a superb Puccini tenor. Winters is a revelation. What an addition to the roster. Her career has been mostly centered in Europe where she has sung Mimi, Jenufa, Nedda, Iphigénie, Káťa Kabanová, among other leading roles. She’s a glamorous presence on stage with a voice that’s clean and sure and full of drama. She’s a keeper.

    Suor Angelica is Puccini on a high plane indeed. He said it was his favorite among all his works, and you can hear his delight in writing this transcendent piece about a rich girl who is banished by her prominent family to a nunnery after the birth of her illegitimate son. For seven years she has waited to hear any word from them, tending to her medicinal plants, praying to Mary devotedly, and keeping her secret buried within. When her cold, imperious princess aunt arrives, she demands Angelica sign over her inheritance. And, by the way, your son died years ago. Devastated by this horrid news, she mourns her lost son who never saw her. She must go to him. In a final act of desperation – or maybe abiding faith – she concocts a draft of poison from her plants and, covering the statue of Mary in the room, commits suicide.

    Winters is radiant in the role, scaling all of Puccini’s spiritual passion with ease and lithe dexterity. Nothing is too much for her. She soars in anguish at never seeing her little boy and is resolute in her decision to end her life. Every passage is sung with utter conviction and beauty of phrase. Is she the next Callas?

    Barton is a magnificent harpy, cold and frozen as Lake Cocytus in the Inferno. In her black peplum outfit, with glittery pin and up-swept hairdo, she has the look of a bored Park Avenue matron. She nonchalantly smokes a cigarette as she delivers her news. She could be the evil stepmother in a gothic horror, dripping attitude and bereft of any familial feeling. She’s chilling…and delicious.

    In a neat note of irony, director James Robinson sets the opera in a post-World War II children’s hospital. The nuns are dressed in Marian blue, and a large blue curtain will be drawn across the hallway corridor. The palette is very Renaissance. The hospital’s public hall, full of bandaged children, forces Angelica to constantly remember her son and her sin. Her last vision, while dying, is a little boy who stares at her from outside the corridor as he puts his hand on the glass door. Is it an act of benediction? A hallucination of Angelica’s? Whatever it could be, it befits Puccini’s ethereal and dramatic score.

    Gianni Schicchi is Puccini’s slice of paradise; a laugh-out-loud comedy that pays fitting homage to Verdi’s final masterpiece Falstaff. The greedy Donati clan gathers around the death bed of patriarch Buoso. They are gleeful, waiting to reap his inheritance. To make sure his death throes are final, Zita smothers him.

    But, wait, where’s the will? They tear the place apart to find it, only to discover that he’s left his entire fortune to the local monastery. What will they do? Now they’re crying real tears. Zita’s nephew Rinuccio, in love with Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta, suggests Gianni, a country newcomer to Florence, will know how to fix the situation. Zita will have none of this, nor allow her nephew to marry beneath him. But Schicchi is called for and when he arrives, after many complications from the relatives, suggests a fool-proof plan.

    He will impersonate Buoso and dictate a new will to the notary. He realizes he’ll end up in Hades for this transgression, but what the hell if Zita agrees to the marriage so that everyone gets a piece of the rich pie. In a sly bit of chicanery, Schicchi does indeed bequeath property to the obsequious family, but reserves the richest prize for himself. The young lovers are united, greed is OKed, and Schicchi runs them all out of his opulent new house.

    Puccini races through the plot, piling comic bits about like a master silent film comedian. The music is buoyant and contains the showstopping number, Lauretta’s plea to her father to allow her to marry, “O mio babbino caro.” Winters sings this with a daughter’s guile and a lover’s heart. It’s meltingly good. McKinny makes the most of Gianni with his cigar and beat-up fedora. He’s a wise wise-ass for sure, booming his clever plot while knowing full well the dastardly intentions of the family. His Schicchi is a wonderful characterization, good hearted and suffused with devil-may-care.

    Barton has a field day as battleaxe Zita, sashaying about like a Fellini cartoon, and Chacón-Cruz rises to the sonic rafters as lover Rinuccio. Even supernumerary Alessando DiBagno gets into the act as a most convincing dead guy as he’s contorted by the family as they search the bed for that will. All do their finest in the tradition of a ‘60s Italian rom-com.

    In all, a total night at the opera, lovingly conducted by maestro Patrick Summers who has wanted to conduct this work for ages. It’s one of his favorite operas, and by his masterful leading of the orchestra through Puccini’s mighty paces he shows his utter devotion and admiration. Three glorious operas, gloriously delivered.

    Il trittico continues at 2 p.m. Sunday, November 2; 8 p.m. Saturday, November 8; 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 12; and 7 p.m. Friday November 14 at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713- 228-3737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25-$370.50.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • Il Trittico: A Trio of Puccini’s Works in One Night at the Opera – Houston Press

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    Most people with even a hint of knowledge about opera, know Giacomo Puccini wrote the music to his masterpieces La Boheme, Madame Butterfly and Tosca. As for his collection of three one-act operas called collectively Il Trittico — not so much.

    But Houston Grand Opera is about to put the three one-acts together, something it has never done before and in fact is rarely done by any opera house, and it offers audiences a special chance to see Puccini writing later in his career. It is the last full work he ever wrote.  

    Internationally acclaimed soprano Corinne Winters is finally making her HGO debut carrying a role in all three operas. While the mood differs among the three one-acts, particularly with the third piece, she says they all show a mature Puccini at work.

    The first of the three parts is Il tabarro: a sad story of what the death of a young child does to a marriage. The couple lives on a barge in Paris and while the husband wants his wife Giorgetta to go back to some of the good memories they had, she is not interested in doing so. She takes a lover leading to even more tragedy for all involved.

    Winters plays Giorgetta, the wife of an older man who’s the boss of his business. “We don’t know her exact age but my guess would be mid-30s. Who from the beginning of the opera we can tell wants to be somewhere else. She’s clearly not happy in her marriage. And we figure out pretty quickly that there’s a younger man on the scene who is catching her eye. We don’t know right away what their relationship is but we do know there’s something between them.”

    Next is Suor Angelica which focuses on a nun who has what was then a terrible secret: the baby she bore out of wedlock and had to give up.  She’s become a nun to atone for her sins and wants to know what ever happened to her son.   Director James Robinson has moved the all-female cast from a 17-century convent to a post-World War II hospital for children.

    “Angelica is a woman I would say, probably late 20s who had a child out of wedlock and was put in the convent,” Winters says. “She’s seemingly happy in the convent; she’s an herbalist. She tends to her plants. She makes little concoctions, medical treatments and holistic remedies.

    “All of a sudden her world blows up because her aunt arrives – she hasn’t seen her aunt in seven years, hasn’t heard from her — and says your sister is getting married and we need you to sign away your rights to the family because your sin has stained the family and this is the only way she can get married.

    “Suor Angelica does that and she asks about her child and this is where we find out that she’s heard nothing of her child that was taken away from her straightaway” The child has died. She makes the decision that she’s going to kill herself to be with her child.”

    Finally, some would say thankfully, the third one act offers a huge shift in tone – though it also involves a death. Gianni Schicchi is the comical story of greedy relatives aghast to discover the family patriarch Buoso has left his considerable fortune to a monastery and not, as they expected, to them. In this one also, Robinson has re-set the events, in this case  from the 1290s to the 1960s, while the location is still in Florence.  

    In this, Winters says she has a smaller part. She’sLauretta, begging her father to let her marry Rinuccio. “Gianni Schicchi  is amazingly wild fun. They will be laughing out loud in this one. It’s needed after the deep cries of the first two especially Angelica which always makes everyone cry.”

    Other standout singers who will be taking on multiple roles across Il Trittico include mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, and tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz.  Patrick Summers, entering his final season as HGO’s artistic and music director, conducts.

    As is the case for many professional opera performers, Winters began singing in a school choir, but it took years before she was interested in opera, she says. She grew up in Maryland when her father, a lawyer, was a rock musician on the side. “He has a great ear but no classical music in his upbringing or mine. My mom is not musical but she was absolutely about me following my talent. And I had a voice from very early on. “

    And just like many singers, the categorization of her voice changed over the years. First singing as an alto – she thinks it was because she had a lot of color in her voice — and later as a mezzo soprano by the time she got to college.  The longer she studied music, the more she was intrigued by opera. “I discovered I loved this art form.” By the end of her undergrad she was taking on soprano roles.

    Most of her repertoire these days involves works by Puccini and Slavik music.  “I come from a 50 percent Ukrainian-Jewish background” and although her family has been American for several generations, she says she has always been interested in that part of her heritage.  

    She says Il Trittico is tailor made for the somewhat shortened attention span of modern audiences and especially for someone who hasn’t attended an opera before.

    “Each piece is short. You get an interval afterward. It’s not that long of an evening. And you get variety. It’s like reading short stories.  And I think there’s a place for that. These stories are just as compelling as an episode of a binge-worthy TV show. Especially in these kinds of operas which are so real and so relatable I think they’re going to get lost in it.”

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    Margaret Downing

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  • Hobson’s Choice Satirizes a Father’s Control Over His Daughters – Houston Press

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    Opera premieres are very similar to that proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

    We often decry the modern works for their lack of melody. All angsty and off-putting, without key structure, the characters all sound the same whether hanging up laundry or having a breakdown. It’s not tonal, and you never leave the theater humming any tune.

    Tom Cipullo’s world premiere Hobson’s Choice, at University of Houston’s Moores Opera Center, is definitely not modern music, except for its use of xylophone, wood block, whoopie whistle, and ratchet. It could be some forgotten Lehar operetta unearthed from the Viennese archives or a Sigmund Romberg work hidden in his trunk of forgotten scores. It’s a throwback to Puccini’s comic one-acter Gianni Schicchi from Il Trittico (1918), although that one sounds much more modern and up-to-date, and is a lot more fun.

    Hobson, adapted from a once-popular play by Harold Brighouse (1915) is a boulevard farce satirizing a father’s complete control over his family of daughters and their fight for women’s emancipation. The youngest cannot marry until the eldest does, and the eldest, Maggie, is a shocking 30 years old.

    Father assumes she’s an old maid and is in no hurry to marry her off and compromise his shoe-making business which she runs with absolute efficiency. She’s in love with the cobbler in the basement, a definite no for the family’s social position. But she’s a feisty one, not to be outwitted. She marries her Will, arranges her sisters’ marriages to the beaus of their choice, and out foxes her father in the end. It’s a most satisfying conclusion, but it’s never in doubt, not for one bar of music.

    Maybe that’s why this opera never goes anywhere and begins to pall. Maggie is so strong from the start there’s no contest against her inebriated but ferocious father. We know she will conquer, so all the following is filler. Pleasant filler to be sure, easy on the ears, but not much drama and not much comedy. The score washes over you without much effect although its conducted by maestro Jorge Parodi with love, the singing is very good, the direction is sufficient, the set and costumes (Jefferson Ridenour and Mary Webber/Shaun Heath) are clever and colorful, the lighting (by pro Christina Gianelli) is perfect for a farce – we can see what we need to see.

    Cipullo sets this whirligig is motion with a bright score with many arias for the principals that mimic Gilbert and Sullivan’s patented patter songs or Sondheim on a bender. The main melody – I guess you could call it Maggie’s theme – is a lush romantic up-sweep that is quite pretty, and the tongue-twisting lyrics by Cipullo in the Rossini-esque numbers are most adroit.

    It’s the spaces in between that slow this opera down. For being such a bonbon opera, the work needs a sharp red pencil; it’s too long (two intermissions!) One character, Missus Hepworth, a Lady Bracknell wanna-be, has only one scene. Underused, I thought she might be widow Hobson’s prospective bride, but, no, she disappeared until curtain call. A battleship royale, she is sorely missed as the opera unfolds.

    The Moore’s student cast is most adept, at ease on the stage, and have voices to be heard again.

    Soprano Chelsea DeLorenz, as Maggie, has a natural intelligence as singer and actress. She knows what she’s doing. Her number, ironically, “I Know What I’m Doing,” is straight-forward, without flourish, and right on. And her credo song, “Chance Favors Those Who Court Her,” was angelic. She was in command of the stage throughout and fit the role of Maggie like a bespoke pair of fine leather boots.

    Baritone John Allen Nelson made a beloved rogue out of Henry Hobson, as he tongue-twisted through his patter about the trials and joys of only having daughters. He was gruff and tough but ultimately had a heart of gold. He showed that in his fine voice. Baritone Jack Cozad, as beloved of Vicki, had youth and talent on his side. He even performed a neat little vaudeville routine during his number, shuffling along with his boater hat. Tenor Grant Peck, as Will, commands a strong and nimble voice, rising above the fray and filling the house.

    Contraltos Cassi Gardner and Avery Ditta ate up the scenery whenever possible as sisters Alice and Vicki, “warbling in thirds” as Maggie introduced them at the opera’s prologue. They are admirable singers, and coloratura suits Gardner as much as comedy suits Ditta. Wesley Kelley, as Alice’s love Albert, doesn’t have much to do, but he sings it nicely. And Elena Bryan, as Missus Hepworth, is terribly underutilized. She could have her own opera.

    Hobson’s Choice, once amended and shortened, would be a worthy addition to the contemporary opera catalog. We need melody, we seek it. Maybe composer/lyricist Tom Cipullo will be the one to bring it back. We hope so.

    Hobson’s Choice continues at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 26 at Moores Opera House, 3333 Cullen. For more information, call 713-743-3388 or visit kgmcaboxoffice.universitytickets.com. $10-$25.

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • HGO’s Porgy and Bess Has Much to Love – Houston Press

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    When George Gershwin died in Hollywood in 1937 at the age of 38 from a misdiagnosed brain tumor, his friend and colleague Irvin Berlin paid him a heartfelt tribute: “We were all pretty good songwriters, but George was a composer.” What a sweet and true eulogy from one dean of the American Songbook to another.

    When all-black Porgy and Bess premiered at the Alvin Theatre in 1935 through the auspices of the Theatre Guild, Gershwin was already the talk of the town and internationally famous for his Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, An American in Paris, innumerable hit Broadway show tunes, a weekly radio program, and had been featured in countless interviews and magazine articles. Time magazine put him on its cover after the premiere of Rhapsody. Gershwin was a household name. Renown for his scintillating piano playing, he would dazzle guests for hours at dinner parties in swanky homes in Manhattan, Long Island, London, Paris. Anywhere there was a piano, there was Gershwin. Everybody knew George, from Toscanini and Ravel to the Brooklyn housewife humming “The Man I Love,”  “Strike Up the Band,” or “I Got Rhythm.”

    For all his fame and fortune though, Gershwin was on the outs with the serious music critics in New York. What did this American “jazzbo” know about opera? And what the hell is this thing he called a “folk opera”? His orchestral pieces were internationally revered by the public, but the nattering press couldn’t fathom his writing an opera. The reviews ran from scathing to dismissive to middling. The show had a somewhat decent run of 124 performances, but attendances dwindled in the midst of the Depression, and the cost overruns of the large-scale production damned Porgy to close early. All the investors, including Gershwin, his lyricist brother Ira, book writers Dubose and Dorothy Heyward, and its producer, the Theatre Guild, lost their money.

    But George was undaunted. He knew he had written a great work, one that would last. He was absolutely right. Porgy and Bess is the definitive American opera.

    HGO’s latest interpretation is hardly definitive in look or even singing (the chorus is exceptional, however), but Gershwin’s magnificent score shines brilliantly. There is much to love. The pace is unflagging; the arias contain some of Gershwin’s most pungent tunes (“Summertime,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’”, “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So”); the script is bright and colorful as it depicts the poor black denizens of Catfish Row, South Carolina; with its characters limned with humanity and deep empathy. There’s not a caricature to be found, no demeaning blackface (the scourge of ‘30s Broadway), only true-to-life portrayals of crippled Porgy, a drug-teased Bess, and a community of hard-working indigent people who subsist by fishing, selling strawberries and honey, and who drown their troubles by shooting craps or indulging in a picnic outing on nearby Kittiwah Island. Hard-scrabble but true.

    Life is unforgiving, sometimes there’s not enough money for a burial; babies are born; parents are swept out to sea in a hurricane; faith and prayer are clung to with fervor; the allure of “happy dust” easily makes one forget.

    All of this is depicted through Gershwin’s sweeping orchestrations that use clarinet glissandos, muted horns, heavy percussion, and lush strings to set the mood. Gershwin’s own gospel numbers permeate the community, prayers are declaimed – in one brilliant number, six different incantations are sung together in discordant harmony – and even Wagnerian leitmotifs are employed for each character. No wonder the critics were stymied. Gershwin was ahead of his time. His music still sounds modern with its “blues” riffs, Broadway belt, thundering choruses, and heaps of Italian verismo.

    Soprano Angel Blue sings Bess with radiant passion and commitment; bass-baritone Michael Sumuel makes a solid sympathetic Porgy, but he sounded muffled like he wasn’t sure his voice was carrying through the Wortham’s Brown Theater. He played it well, though, except there wasn’t much heat between the two principals. Fervor was supplied by baritone Blake Denson as Crown, Bess’ controlling lover who wants her back in a bad way. He’s already killed poor Robbins over a dice game gone wrong in Act I, so we know he’s a very bad dude. He rapes Bess after the picnic, leaving her devastated. His deep voice was menace incarnate.

    Cocaine can be a powerful influencer, and tenor Demetrious Sampson, Jr., as a charismatic Sportin’ Life, who lures the willing with his wares, brings this opera to life. He prances, shuffles, wobbles under his rot-gut whiskey, and tempts Bess with sugar-plum visions of life in New York, probably as a pimp but this is unspecified. An HGO Butler Studio artist in his third year, Sampson ate up the stage with his unique oily impersonation, his catchy vocals, and is definitely one to watch in the future.

    Soprano Latonia Moore, as young mother Serena cradling her baby, imbued the now-classic “Summertime” with sweet purity that verged on heavenly. While soprano Raven McMillon, as young wife Clara, and contralto La’Sheele Q. Allen, as Maria, matron of Catfish Row, brought pleasing harmonies and needed down-home humor to their duets and solos.

    Directed by Francesca Zambello, who’s supervised this opera many times before, Porgy moves swiftly and everybody knows what they’re doing in the crowd scenes. At times, the community will freeze in place while a song is performed; other times, inexplicably, they huddle as a mass like a living block of stone. Crowds don’t move this way. The set by Peter J. Davison, borrowed from England’s Glimmerglass Festival’s production, is particularly unappealing. Rusted corrugated metal panels with sliding barn doors as doorways don’t approximate the low country Gullah shotgun look of beadboard and porches.

    Porgy and Bess sounds great under maestro James Gaffigan, and the chorus under Richard Bado is superb – rich and lustrous like a tapestry. Since productions are rare, this Gershwin masterpiece is one to see. It won’t disappoint. And watch that Sportin’ Life, he’s one hell of a piece of work.

    And I should mention, when HGO performed Porgy in 1976 – using Gershwin’s original orchestrations and full text – Porgy was sung by baritone Donnie Ray Albert. The recording of the production won a Grammy. 50 years later at HGO, Albert sings the role of Lawyer Frazier. He’s still got the voice and received a rousing round of applause on his entrance.

    Porgy and Bess continues through November 15 at 7 p.m. Friday October 24; 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturdays; and 2 p.m. Sundays at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $30-$306.50.

    This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • Going Mad With Beautiful Singing: Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera in the Heights

    Going Mad With Beautiful Singing: Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera in the Heights

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    By the time Gaetano Donizetti had written his masterpiece Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) now blazing at Opera in the Heights, he had already composed 35 operas. Most were clunkers, not ever heard again after their Italians premieres. Up till then, three were certifiable successes: Anna Bolena (1830), The Elixir of Love (1832), and Maria Stuarda (1835), but Lucia, and instant hit, put him on the international opera map.

    Donizetti had finally reached the heights he had clamored for. The great Rossini had resigned, living the high life in Paris, and Bellini had recently died. That left Donizetti. After Lucia, more clunkers followed, but so too did his final immortal works, Roberto Devereux (1837), La fille du régiment (1840), La favorite (1840) and Don Pasquale (1843). He would write four more operas before his premature death from syphilis in 1848. He was Mr. Opera for a brief time but didn’t live to see the rise of his successor, Giuseppe Verdi.

    Donizetti’s musical legacy is deep, and Lucia’s melodrama is the epitome of “bel canto” style (“beautiful song”) – long phrases of lush melody that highlight the singer’s vocal technique. But Lucia did something different for its time. There’s subtle psychology under the tunes, intrinsic to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. It’s not just music for music’s sake, it leads us inward into motivation and mental state. Bel canto loves mad scenes and damsels in distress, and Lucia is the paragon, the highlight of them all.

    Adapted by the prolific Italian librettist Saladore Cammarano from Walter Scott’s gothic romance, The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Lucia is flush with ghosts, plaids, and wilting heroine.

    Virginal Lucia, astonishing soprano Oriana Geis Falla, loves her family’s rival Edgardo, equally astonishing tenor Arnold Livingston Geis. (The singers are married and their mutual affection shows up in spades on stage.) Seeking position and political power, her brother Enrico (baritone John Allen Nelson) deceives her into marriage with Arturo (tenor Bernard Kelly). Believing lover Edgardo has betrayed her, she loses it and kills her husband on their wedding night.

    Going mad in her famous aria, Falla soared lyrically in the preface “Il dolce suono,” (“The sweet sound”) where she fantasizes about marriage to Edgardo, echoing the haunting glass harmonica obligato – substituted by flute here, beautifully piped by Wendy Bergin – then flew skyward in the fiendishly difficulty coloratura cabaletta, “Spargi d’amaro pianto” (“Sprinkle with bitter tears“), in which each repeat of the music is pushed up to 11, with ornamentation to match. It’s a showstopper like none other, a classic of precise technique and ravishing tone; sung, of course, while the character goes bonkers.

    Falla was exquisite all evening, hypnotizing us with flawless intonation, diction, and emotional wallop. With Hollywood stage presence, she’s also quite a beauty. Even dressed in a hideous wedding costume of puffed white sleeves appended to her tartan skirt with a bejeweled cloche hat like a Roaring ‘20s flapper, she dazzled. For an opera singer, she’s the complete package, a star.

    Then, of course, there’s the internationally known finale to Act II, the “Sextet,” the opera’s hit tune. Once you hear it, you’ll know it instantly. The number signifies “opera” in all its grand glory, much like “The Triumphal March” from Verdi’s Aida or “The Ride of the Valkyries” from Wagner’s Die Walküre. The six principals react differently to Edgardo’s surprise appearance at Lucia’s wedding to Arturo. The melody builds and builds, until the chorus inevitably comes in to finish the climax. It’s one of opera’s stunners.

    But don’t overlook Edgardo’s anguished yet ravishing aria in the graveyard, “Tombe degli avi miei … Fra poco a me ricovero,” (“Tomb of my ancestors…soon will give me rest”), as he says his goodbyes to his dead love. Then, naturally, he stabs himself. End of opera.

    Except here in director Alyssa Weathersby’s version. Edgardo’s final “addio to life” is sung with Lucia helping him commit suicide and leading him on to paradise. It’s a bit supernatural and quite unexpected, but it somehow works in context. We don’t mind a little apotheosis when these two singers are just so damn good. Yes, indeed, put them in paradise.

    click to enlarge

    Edgardo (Arnold Livingston Geis) explodes in rage.

    Photo by Pin Lim

    Geis, as Edgardo, is a burly Scotsman with Braveheart hair and a plangent tenor that could swing a broadsword. He cuts through Donizetti’s lyricism with a robust virile voice that is delicate enough to croon while maneuvering through the treacherous bel canto filigree. When he plants his feet and lets loose a fortissimo passage, you’d swear Birnam Wood was on the march.

    Baritone Nelson, as villainous brother Enrico, began a bit rusty but he warmed up considerably during his passionate duet with Lucia where he must convince – browbeat – her into marriage. Bass-baritone Aiden Smerud (last heard as a superlatively wicked Sparafucile in Opera in the Heights’ 2023 production of Rigoletto) as chaplain Raimondo, possesses a sonorous deep-dish voice just right for the keeper of the peace in the ruinous Ravenswood Castle. Why he is manhandled by Enrico’s goons when he tells the brother of Lucia’s love interest is one of director Weathersby’s least distinguished choices. An inspired choice by her, though, occurs during Lucia’s mad scene when the walls of Ravenswood weep blood. Chilling and macabre.

    Mezzo Samantha Taylor doesn’t have that much to sing as Alisa, Lucia’s lady-in-waiting, but she sings what Donizetti has given her with polish and superlative diction. A member of Houston Ebony Opera Guild, tenor Bernard Kelly in the abbreviated role of husband-to-be Arturo sang with clarity; as did tenor Jarrett Ward, a stalwart member of OH’s chorus, as bad boy Normanno, who forges Edgardo’s “Dear Lucia” letter, which sends her over the edge. The chorus was in tip-top shape, although, again, Weathersby directed them in haphazard fashion, giving them too much comedy relief for this opera wreathed in gloom and sadness.

    Maestro Eiki Isomura whipped his orchestra into luscious frenzies or heated romantic passions. Lucia’s mad scene evoked haunting whispers or crazed roulades, all matching Falla’s intense and florid rendition. He and his lead singers brought Donizetti’s antique warhorse into the present, exactly where it belongs.

    Lucia di Lammermoor continues at  2 p.m. Sunday, September 22; 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 27 and  7:30 p.m. Saturday September 28 at Opera in the Height’ Lambert Hall, 1703 Heights Boulevard. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $35-$85.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • The Hills Are Alive at the Wortham With HGO’s The Sound of Music

    The Hills Are Alive at the Wortham With HGO’s The Sound of Music

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    Even before the curtain went up on its stunning production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, Houston Grand Opera had a smash on its hands. General Director and CEO Kori Dastoor announced from the stage that ticket sales for Music had historically broken all previous HGO box office records. The hills are alive with the sound of money.

    I suppose that’s no surprise. The Sound of Music is perhaps America’s favorite musical. The Broadway show shared the 1960 Tony for Best Musical (with Fiorello!); while Robert Wise’s ponderous film version won the 1966 Best Picture Oscar, was a phenomenal hit, and raked in cash like Scrooge McDuck.

    The beguiling songs are universally known and loved, and who doesn’t admire a work where the evil Nazis are defeated by a former postulant and an Austrian dad who hates the regime and finds familial love while doting on his adorable singing children – and the little scene stealers at HGO are most adorable, by the way. The Sound of Music is a cash cow, no matter where it’s performed – opera house or theater – and there’s no point in arguing over its preferred venue. When a Broadway musical is done as well as it is here, who cares where it belongs?

    Although the last creation by musical theater’s titanic duo, Music is hardly their best. I must give my nod to the rousing and much more sexy South Pacific, but this musical has homespun charm, family grit, a virginal nun, the Alps as background, and plenty of those dastardly Nazis. It’s set in Austria, but wallows in the best of American values. What’s not to love?

    Surely, you know the plot, everybody knows the plot, and its infectious music has been ingrained in our consciousness since its 1959 Broadway premiere.

    In this co-production with Glimmerglass Festival, HGO plays it safe. It’s not set on the moons of Saturn or some struggling backwater town in the rust belt. This is a very traditional production with a classy look and feel. The cut-out pine trees could be better looking perhaps, but the Alpine backdrop is majestic and lighted just so to evoke evening, daylight, or dusk. And the utilitarian set is designed efficiently enough to morph into abbey, baroque manse, and simple impression of Saltzburg’s festival hall. Directed by famed Francesca Zambello, it’s all very clever and good looking, and glides into frame as if on wheels.

    The actors/singers glide by, too, anchored by a most magnificent performance from superstar mezzo, Grammy-winning Isabel Leonard. Her dark mature voice gives Maria an unforeseen depth, a subtle hint of strength, a quality not often plumbed by other interpreters. She may not be as innocent as she appears.

    Watch as she interacts with the precocious children – those little pats to the arm, a quiet hug, an outstretched hand – she connects with them with genuine affection. She doesn’t outclass them or play down to them. She’s magnanimous. She may not ever admit to it, but she’s the best part of this show. Her voice wraps around Rodgers’ most tuneful tunes as if they were written specifically for her. She trippingly skips through the yodeling “The Lonely Goatherd” as if on holiday with it; generally relishes the cloying “Do-Re-Mi,” and gives a prayerful reading to “The Sound of Music.” She is in fine voice, very fine voice, and is a consummate actor.

    click to enlarge

    The Captain and Maria get together before the end.

    Photo by Michael Bishop

    Although Captain von Trapp doesn’t have much to do in this musical except be gruff at first, then melt during the Ländler with Maria, then be gruff again with the Nazis, Alexander Birch Elliott (last heard impressively at HGO in Bizat’s The Pearl Fishers, 2019) makes a welcomed return. He is good at being gruff. His baritone is rich enough for the irony in “No Way to Stop It,” and softly pliant enough for the emotional “Edelweisse.”

    Usually cast by an opera singer, the role of Mother Abbess is fortunate to be sung by soprano Katie Van Kooten, who has appeared numerous times at HGO. Her vocal heft is undeniable in her signature piece, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” one of R&H’s most powerful power ballads. Teen Liesl was lovingly handled by soprano Tori Tedechi, making her HGO debut. She has a bright clean voice abetted by crystal diction, and, I think, is on her way to a solid career.

    I would be remiss if I didn’t name the little von Trapp tykes, who were all subtly coached to be as unannoying as possible. They were a delight: Peter Theurer (Friedrich), Annie Voorhees (Louisa), Antonio Rico (Kurt), Macie Joy Speer (Brigitta), Abigail Lee (Marta), and Lora Uvarova (Gretl). Pros all.

    Who also should be in the cast but Houston theater pros, Spencer Plachy and Pamela Vogel, in the non-singing roles as butler Fritz and housekeeper Frau Schmidt. I immediately recognized Plachy from his commanding baritone and Vogel from her command of the stage. (What an exquisite Mrs. Danvers she would make in a future staging of Rebecca.) It’s always nice to spot familiar favored stage faces at the opera house.

    Maestro Richard Bado, HGO’s chorus master, led the orchestra at a somewhat slow tempo, more suitable to church than Broadway brass. But the Nun’s chorus was most agreeable, especially in the opening “Preludium,” as they stopped in the aisles, holding votives, and harmonized in Latin; and in their final reprise of the stirring “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” as the family marches up over those cut-out, pasteboard pine trees on their way to freedom.

    The Wortham was packed, and not many operas receive such ovations as did The Sound of Music. There were two couples dressed in dirndls and lederhosen, which was fun to see, and many children in the audience, which was even more gratifying. If this musical brings them back – to the opera, to TUTS, to Broadway at the Hobby, to any of our theaters – then R&H and HGO have truly done their job.

    The Sound of Music continues through May 12 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Tuesday, April 30; 2 p.m. Sundays; and 1 p.m. Saturday May 1 at. Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in English with projected English text. For more information, call 713-2286737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25 to $210.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • Houston Grand Opera’s The Sound of Music Begins This Weekend. Yodelayheehoo!

    Houston Grand Opera’s The Sound of Music Begins This Weekend. Yodelayheehoo!

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    Grammy Award-winning opera mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard has never “officially” yodeled before but she’ll be doing a bit of that on the Wortham stage starting Friday as she plays the lead role of Maria in the Houston Grand Opera production of The Sound of Music.

    It’s the classic tale of Sister Maria, the Von Trapp children and Captain, their father, set in Austria as the Nazis begin taking over their country as a prelude to World War II. Amid this significant external  threat there’s all sorts of romantic longings going on adding to the general tension — interweaved with songs from both the musical and the movie adaptation.

    This will be the first time Leonard will be Maria and she says it’s one of those roles that singers definitely want to do with its Rodger and Hammerstein’s music (“My Favorite Things,” The Lonely Gotherd,” “Maria,” “Edelweiss”) that even when the occasional dip into sexist lyrics fully qualify as earworms,.

    “I think the music is extremely accessible. I think that in spite of the actual, very serious and harsh story that is this piece I think there is such a level of humanity that people  gravitate to this year after year,” Leonard says.

    “It’s a great work that parents and any caregiver gravitates towards as far as showing kids. . Kids are more likely to watch things that have kids in them. I think that the joyous nature of the music  within the sort of grander not so joyous time in history, not joyous at all, it htood the test of time. Everyone I believe wants to live within moments of happiness and joy and I think this piece brings that to many people.”

    She was contacted by HGO about doing it a few years back and in addition to the normal way of scheduling productions far in advance, COVID further delayed proceedings.

    To prepare for the role, Leonard did look at what other performers had done — but not to mimic them, she says — and even listened to a few yodeling recordings.

    This is a role that requires a lot of words and action, she says. “It is a ton of words. It is a lot of dialogue with unrepeated words. “Running around on stage can be challenging mixing that in with singing.”

    And it’s long. Two hours and 48 minutes including one intermission.

    It’s also got a lot of children on stage (and waiting in the wings in case one of them gets sick.  HGO says it held the largest audition in its history last fall when it hosted local youth vying to be part of the Von Trapp set of children.

    “I’m actually more at ease when they’re around,” Leonard says. “They’re just lovely to be with.”

    The show can be viewed on two different level with the youngest children seeing it as an adventure with great songs, while older children and adults recognize the multifaceted story it is telling, she said.

    Leonard says she began singing in choir. Although she always liked musical theater, when she went to college she says she “hit a fork in the road” and decided to take the classical route at Julliard. “But I never lost my love for musical theater.” She did West Side Story with Philadelphia years ago and On the Town in San Francisco. “All those projects were part of my upbringing and make me happy as well. “

    Growing up, she took ballet, tap an jazz dance classes for many years. While she never wanted dance as a career, “I was grateful that I did it because even when I stopped doing ballet, I kept going to classes that I wanted to. It gave me a physical ability on stage.”

    Asked if she’s ever worn a nun’s costume before, Leonard starts laughing. “I’ve done Dialogue of the Carmelites a couple times and would say that’s where I’ve lived in a nun’s habit for an entire show.”

    “I hope that when people come and see the show they just simply enjoy their evening.”

    Performances are scheduled for April 26 through May 12 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Tuesday Ap4ril 30; 2 p.m. Sundays and 1 p.m. Saturday May 11 at the  Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in English with projected English text. For more information, call 713-2286737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25 to $210.

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    Margaret Downing

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  • HGO’s Don Giovanni Offers Sex, Deceit and a Final Reckoning All Wrapped Up in Mozart’s Music

    HGO’s Don Giovanni Offers Sex, Deceit and a Final Reckoning All Wrapped Up in Mozart’s Music

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    “I feel I’ve seen this set before,” one longtime Houston Grand Opera subscriber said at intermission on Opening Night of Don Giovanni. She had. HGO has retained the same whirling box of a building used in its 2019 production of Mozart’s classic anti-hero opera.

    Same set, same projections – some clever, some tedious, some befuddling – and Houston favorite bass-baritone Ryan McKinny’s there too, although this time as the servant Leporello instead of the Don himself.

    Of course, the most important returnee was Mozart’s music and from the first notes as directed by the UK’s acclaimed Dame Jane Glover it was impossible not to be swept up in it and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto filled with passion, tragedy and take-a-breath comic moments.

    The orchestra was in fine form Friday night as were all the three female leads with clear carrying tones that reached all the way to the back seats of the Wortham Center. All three were rewarded with heavy applause post-performance.

    Making her HGO debut, Erika Baikoff as Zerlina was a more than pleasant surprise in a role that sometimes takes a back seat to Dona Elvira and Donna Anna. She fully embodied the peasant girl on her wedding day allowing herself to be lured away by Don Giovanni, who promises her a better future than what she could have with her new husband Masetto. She, in turn, accuses Masetto (baritone Norman Garrett) of being jealous without cause (not true), while she continues to flirt with this exciting noble, but finally comes to see the Don for what he is.

    Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, a two-time Grammy winner, was utterly convincing as Donna Elvira the noble woman who’d given herself to Don Giovanni and was almost immediately abandoned by him as he continued his incessant pursuit of other women. Both dignified and sad, she somehow against all her better judgment finds herself drawn to him, allowing herself to hope for a reconciliation. By the end, though, the pity she has for him is perhaps the most damning aspect of their relationship.

    There he is, the grand seducer and one of the women he’s wronged has nothing but pity (and a remnant of love) for him.

    And then there was soprano Andriana Chuchman as Donna Anna. As the opera starts, he has seduced her in her father’s — the Commendatore’s — home. In this version, enraptured, she wants Don Giovanni to stay but he’s having none of that. As he struggles to leave (faithful servant Leporello waiting below), she starts screaming which brings out her father.

    The Commendatore and Don Giovanni fight and the Don fatally stabs her father. Donna Anna knows only that her father is dead — she doesn’t know who did it —  and makes her longtime fiancé Don Octtavio (tenor Kang Wang) to aid in the search for her father’s killer.

    Of the three female characters, Chuchman was the one with the most chemistry with bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni’s Don Giovanni. The scene where she allows him to lead her into his bedroom with the Don while suspecting/knowing what kind of man he is, captures in a few moments both his appeal and the underlying evil in it. This is a man who leaves destruction in his wake, with no aim in sight except his own gratification.

    Even Donna Elvira’s maid, who above all should know the damage Don Giovanni has done with the way he treated her mistress, appears flattered by his attentions.

    McKinny as Leporello has the crowd pleaser role , the servant who despises the actions of his master, but documents his seductions in a little book and enables him to continue his deceits, at one point switching clothes with him.

    A highpoint, of course, is when McKinny as Leporello sings “Madamina, il catalogo è questo” – “My dear lady, this is the catalogue”) to Donna Elvira tallying up the number of conquests Don Giovanni has made in several European countries.

    As Houston audiences have seen in other productions (Parsifal, Salome, Rigoletto), McKinney is a good actor on stage, and coupled with the ability to project his voice well, earned some of the biggest applause at curtain time.

    In the Don Ottavio role, Wang’s voice seemed a little underpowered in the first act, but he hit his stride in the second. Throughout he found himself in an impossible situation wanting to move on to marriage with Donna Anna while she puts him off saying she has to first find her father’s killer. And who remains still caught up in the attractions of the Don.

    As Don Ottavio, Wang frequently cuts a pathetic figure, almost overdone in the Act II when he walks around the stage cradling  Donna Anna’s dress in his arms and buries his face in it.

    Pisaroni who previously appeared in The Phoenix, Faust and The Marriage of Figaro at HGO, took on a role he has played many times as Don Giovanni. He certainly struck a romantic figure when called for, and an occasionally threatening one to his adversaries and servant.

    Thanks to the lighting and set design, when the set was dark (which was often) Pisaroni stood out as the only singer costumed in blue in contrast to other characters who tended to be in black or beige. Still, even he could not overcome the graphics that whirled about him in nausea-inducing fashion as he sang one aria.  What started out as clever projections of the names of all the women Don Giovanni had slept with, devolved into sometimes meaningless distractions exuding false energies — as if the story being told wasn’t enough.

    Bass Patrick Guetti had an impressive outing in his HGO debut as the Commendatore. At the end in spectral form, his voice rang out through the theatre in commanding fashion.

    At that end the anguished look of desperation on Don Giovanni’s face was far more telling than him being consigned to the flames as many productions historically have done. Even the Commendatore retreats from view. The man who loved parties and surrounded by women was suddenly left alone to pay for his sins.

    Performances continue through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturday and Wednesday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in Italian with projected English translation. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit hgo.org. $25-$210.

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    Margaret Downing

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  • Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Houston Grand Opera: The Story of a Serial Seducer on an Epic Scale

    Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Houston Grand Opera: The Story of a Serial Seducer on an Epic Scale

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    There are so many ways to play the title character in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni knows this firsthand because he’s been in 120 performances spread over 13 different productions.

    Now the international opera star is about to do it again as he heads up the Houston Grand Opera cast to take on the role of the classic philanderer, an amoral man who believes none of his actions have lasting consequences, until right at the end when he learns they do.

    Why would Pisaroni want to continue to perform this role of at best an anti-hero but at worst someone audiences love to hate?

    “This role is too important to ignore,” Pisaroni says. “It’s a great role. Don Giovanni has an aura of mystery and there is an historical relevance, a vocal and acting challenge that as an artist and a singer you cannot ignore.”

    In just the first scene, servant Leporello, assigned to keep watch while his master is up to no good, complains to himself about Don Giovanni while he stands watch during the libertine’s latest attempt at a romantic conquest. Don Giovanni is inside the Commendatore’s house trying to seduce Donna Anna, the Commendatore’s daughter. Suddenly a masked Don Giovanni flies out of the house with Donna Anna in pursuit trying to make his escape but the Commendatore shows up and demands a duel. Don Giovanni kills him and Donna Anna forces her fiancé Don Ottavio to swear vengeance.

    In quick and sure fashion, libbretist Lorenzo Da Ponte  aided mightily by Mozart’s evocative score, establishes three critical elements: Don Giovanni is a cad. His behavior is so bad that his own servant wishes to be rid of him. And there will be a price to pay.

    Other cast members include bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Leporello; soprano Andriana Chuchman as Donna Anna; tenor Kang Wang in his HGO debut as Don Ottavio; mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as Donna Elvira; and soprano Erika Baikoff in her company debut as Zerlina. Greg Eldridge serves as revival director for Kasper Holten’s production, with Dame Jane Glover conducting.

    “Giovanni for me is a challenging role because everybody has a different opinion of what is seductive and what is charming. When you play seductive somebody says it’s not dangerous enough. If you play dangerous, it’s not seductive enough, it’s not charming enough. So it’s really hard to find let’s say a balance,”  says Pisaroni.

    “At the beginning you can think oh, he’s a womanizer; he’s having fun. And then throughout the years you realize there are certain questions that are much deeper. Especially in this production. At the beginning there is no rape. This changes a lot in my opinion.”

    In almost comic fashion, after Don Giovanni and his former lover Donna Elvira recognize each other, Don Giovanni orders Leporello to tell her the truth about his master and his conquests (the famous aria “Madamina il catalogo e questo”). Leporello recounts Don Giovanni’s seduction exploits which involve 640 women and girls in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, but in Spain, 1,003. Donna Elvira is not amused; she too vows vengeance.

    Without any apparent crisis of conscience,  Don Giovanni is next seen attending a peasant wedding where he tries to seduce the bride Zerlina on her wedding day. As the opera builds, an increasing number of people vow to have their revenge on him. Donna Elvira unsuccessfully pleads with him to change his ways. The Commendatore now in statue form, returns and extracts his vengeance.

    “Don Giovanni is obsessed with seduction. He needs to be,” Pisaroni says. “The challenge for him is to seduce women in this endless search for a soulmate. somebody who would complete him and make him feel whole. And that’s what I like about him.

    “There’s also a component that in this production that is really nice. For example in the duet with Zerlina there is almost no physical contact. Why? Because, I think the challenge for him is ‘Can I make somebody else fall in love with me again?’ He really tries to do it in a way that he can be really proud of what he has achieved. I really think it is very clever this production.”

    Another component important to  Pisaroni is that “Don Giovanni challenges the rules of the society. He’s somebody who stands up for himself. ‘I won’t allow  society to impose a set of rules.’ In the final scene when he meets the Commendatore, the supernatural, you can look at it as a religious part of the piece but if you don’t look at it as a religious  you can look at it more as him being confronted with a higher power, society, rules and says ‘I will not repent and ‘I will do what I feel is my right to do.’”

    This production ends with the death of Don Giovanni; it does not include the moral of the story coda. “The journey of Don Giovanni is a personal journey. At the end it is him confronted with himself, ” says Pisaroni who thinks this is the right approach.

    When it was composed Don Giovanni had to shock audiences, the concluding ensemble would reassure audiences in 1787 that bad people get their just desserts. Besides the story line, the music was considered revolutionary at the time, Pisaroni says.

    “That’s the amazing thing about this repertoire. Every time you get close to it you realize how profound the music is  and how modern it is compared to what we were hearing at hat time.”

    Other cast members include bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Leporello; soprano Andriana Chuchman as Donna Anna; tenor Kang Wang in his HGO debut as Don Ottavio; mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as Donna Elvira; and soprano Erika Baikoff in her company debut as Zerlina. Greg Eldridge serves as revival director for Kasper Holten’s production, with Dame Jane Glover conducting.

    As for the music, “It’s vocally challenging. It’s challenging to remember everything that Mozart wrote and to do all the colors and the dynamics that Mozart requires. It’s challenging because I believe Don Giovanni is a chameleon. He has different colors for different women, for different situations. The way he speaks to Donna Elvira and the way he speaks to Zerlina that is a lower level in the social structure that is different. So it is a challenge to portray all these different facets of the character,” Pisaroni says.

    “The challenge for me is to really listen and when I move it has to have power and energy and meaning and edge and force.”

    The women in the opera are archetypes, he says, You have Donna Anna which is the innocent young girl that he tries to to seduce. and represents like the dream of a woman that Don Giovanni has. Don Giovanni thinks how my life could have been if I were not the narcissist, egocentric that I am. We would have had a chance. But unfortunately I am not the person that you are looking for.

    “Dona Elvira is an incredible modern woman. She leaves her hometown to go after him to say ‘You made me fall in love’ and might even be pregnant. So she’s really modern for the times and travels to look for the man. She’s the really strong woman that Don Giovanni is faced with. Donna Elvira has such an inner strength. She tries to rescue him until the end and then gives up because she realizes that she cannot save him because he doesn’t want to be saved.

    “And Zerlina is the idea of this naive girl from another social class. He loves that he can impress her with his castle, the money that he has, the richness that he has.”

    Asked how he got into opera, Pisaroni responds: “On a really hot summer when I was a boy my grandfather had a collection of opera. I heard bass from Bulgaria called Boris Christoff singing the aria from Don Carlo.  And from that moment I thought how is it possible that a human voice can produce these kinds of sounds. I started having singing lessons. I was lucky enough to have a voice.”

    This is the fourth time Pisaroni has been to Houston, debuting in 2911 as the Count in Figaro, as Mephostophiles in Faust and in 2019 the Phoenix world premiere where he played the young Lorenzo Da Ponte..

    Asked for his favorite music he likes to sing, Pisaroni surprises.

    “If I could go back in time. I would pay anything to be one member of the Rat Pack. The meaning for me that crooner Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., that had such a charming period. It was such an honest way of singing. And it was so for me. I am in love with Frank Sinatra. He was such a musician. If I could go back in time I’d be in a club where people are drinking on tables listening to this kind of music. “

    “The most challenging thing in opera to be not just a machine that produces sounds. The challenge for myself and the young singers is we have a voice to tell a story and to express emotions. It’s not just about how loud it is, how long you can keep a note, it’s about can you move the audience.”

    Performances are scheduled for April 19 through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturday and Wednesday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wortham Center, 501 Texas. Sung in Italian with projected English translation. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit hgo.org. $25-$210.

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    Margaret Downing

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  • A Night at the (Chinese) Opera; For Kids, No Less

    A Night at the (Chinese) Opera; For Kids, No Less

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    For its 76th world premiere – a feat that rivals if not betters Milan’s legendary La Scala for world premiere operas – Houston Grand Opera unveils for Lunar New Year a kiddie opera, The Big Swim.

    In association with Asia Society Texas, HGO brings on the animals to tell the fable of how each one became the signs in the Chinese zodiac. To be fair, the youngsters in front of me were having none of this, fidgeting or napping through the sixty-minute piece. I commiserated with them as best I could. I, too, fidgeted and briefly lost consciousness. But it wasn’t my fault. It was the telling of the tale that did me in.

    Let’s see, we have a dragon, dog, tiger, rooster, monkey, rat, snake, sheep, ox, pig, rabbit, and horse, all involved in a royal race across a river to see who will become the first year in the zodiac. There are six singers, and each represents two of the beasts, wearing a beanie hat that rotates two colorful masks to delineate them.

    It’s clever and colorful in a Lion King-sort-of-way, and makes a quick change even quicker. Bass Zaikuan Song (dragon/dog), baritone Joseph Lim (tiger/rooster), tenor Seiyoung Kim (monkey/rat), mezzo Sun-Ly Pierce (snake/sheep), mezzo Alice Chung (ox/pig), and soprano Meigui Zhang (rabbit/horse) animate their characters with aplomb and fine vocal pipes as they navigate through composer Meilina Tsui’s dense score and librettist Melisa Tien’s rather thin script. The book’s repeats are enough to send any kid to sleep. Move on, already.

    Orchestrated beautifully for a sextet of musicians playing violin (Natalie Gaynor), cello (Barrett Sills), double bass (Eric Gronfor), flute and piccolo (Henry Williford), percussion (Craig Hauschildt), and piano (William Woodard), Tsui’s music plumbs the pentatonic scale with stylish abandon but relies on jagged melodies that don’t fall lightly on the ears. Phrases abruptly end or butt up against other jagged phrases, which sounds like a lot of unease going on in the animal kingdom. It’s propulsive and sometimes poly-rhythmic, as if too adult for the intended audience. Maestro Eiki Isomura keeps all of this in constant sweeping motion, as if Stravinsky had visited Mao.

    But the repeating libretto bogs this down, as does director Mo Zhou’s sit-com staging which was tiresome even in the Ming dynasty. When the short scenes are finished, the singers walk or run off stage, to be replaced by the next ones entering from the opposite wing. It’s all very rote. Nap, anyone?

    The singers, troopers all, made the best of this, as they mugged like silent film clowns and ingratiated themselves to a willing audience eager to be entertained. Kim’s monkey and rat made an impression with his high vocal line like a howler monkey’s; Pierce’s sheep drew laughs with her “baa”-like
    inflections; Lim’s tiger was commanding; Chung’s pig snorted in fashion; Song’s dragon was bass-deep; while Zhang’s rabbit was all hip-hoppity in music and performance.

    We applaud HGO in its unwavering stance to produce new work for, we hope, a new audience. Getting young ones into the theater is commendable in the extreme. Whether The Big Swim will keep them awake in their seats is debatable.

    By the way, my Chinese zodiac sign is the Rat. Go figure.

    The Big Swim continues at. 2 p.m. Sunday, February 18 at Asia Society Texas, 1370 Southmore Boulevard. For more information, call 713-496-9901 or visit asiasociety.org/texas or houstongrandopeera.org. $40.

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    D. L. Groover

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  • The Light in the Piazza at Opera in the Heights: That’s Amore

    The Light in the Piazza at Opera in the Heights: That’s Amore

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    In its most sumptuous production in seasons, Opera in the Heights presents the Tony-winning musical The Light in the Piazza (2005).

    Composed by Adam Guettel (grandson of iconic Richard Rodgers), who also penned the lyrics, and with a literate book by notable playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, An American in Paris), the musical floods the theater in all manner of theater magic.

    There’s magic in director Seamus Ricci’s cinematic staging, in the prodigious singing of its talented cast, in the autumnal lighting and minimal sets from Edgar Guajardo, in the dazzling atmospheric projections from Brittany Merenda, in the ’50s-inspired Balenciaga costumes from Shaun Heath and Mary Webber, and in the lush orchestral playing from a quintet of piano (Sarah Spencer), violin (Dominika Dancewicz), cello (Benjamin Stoehr), double bass (Stephen Martin), and harp (Emily Klein) – it’s the harp that seems to be the sonic heart of this show. But the rock at the center of this production must be musical director Stephen W. Jones, who elicits all the emotion and truth out of Guettel’s rather spiky score and adds an operatic sweep to the work.

    Guettel’s music isn’t easy. It’s certainly influenced by Stephen Sondheim in its jagged rhythms and ultra-sophisticated lyricism, but there’s a more-modern chromatic overlay that distinguishes this score from your average Broadway sound. That doesn’t, however, make it sound any better. When the entire cast cries out in “Aiutami” (Help Me), the roof of Lambert Hall rises a foot. But it’s young Fabrizio’s last song, “Love to Me,” that truly hits us in the heart. It’s the most old-fashioned of any of Guettel’s tunes, full of swelling melody and pleasing chord progressions that cry out, Love Song. It’s a beauty of a song, perhaps a classic, and since it comes at the very close of the show, it lifts us like none other does.

    The entire musical is literary and adult, adapted from the 1960 book from Elizabeth Spencer, which would soon be adapted for the screen in 1962 starring Olivia de Havilland, Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton and Rossano Brazzi.

    Unhappily married Margaret Johnson (plummy mezzo Christina Pezzarossi) from Winston Salem, North Carolina, accompanied with young daughter Clara (heavenly soprano Catherine Goode), visits Florence, Italy, to relive her honeymoon reveries in hopes to revive her failing marriage. When Clara’s hat blows off – in a delightfully surprising meld of projection and live action – she meets Fabrizio (ardent tenor Benjamin Lurye), and the couple are instantly smitten.

    Margaret will have none of this and unsuccessfully attempts to keep her away from this ingratiating Italian and his family: Papa (sweet tenor Alejandro Magallón), Mama (passionate mezzo Megan Berti), brother Giuseppe (robust baritone Scott Clark), and his jealous wife Franca (fiery soprano Lisa Borik Vickers). Clara rebels as best she can against her formidable mother, who harbors a family secret about her daughter, who seems much younger then she is. Over-protective tiger mom grates against Clara’s growing personal awareness, need for love, and her bursting to be free.

    Within Guettel’s sprawling arias, both families are neatly delineated. The Italian Naccarellis sing untranslated – a lovely effect that sets the Americans (and us) apart from them – but we know exactly what they’re saying – we’ve seen Fellini movies before. And he gives Margaret and Clara spiraling melodies that break apart and coalesce as their inner turmoil overtakes them, or the beauty of the Italian art overwhelms them.

    The problem with this show is that OH has only programmed three performances. Two remain.

    For Broadway babies, The Light in the Piazza is a cult hit, a one-off. Houston last saw it during Main Street Theater’s regional premiere in 2009. It deserves to be seen, and attention must be paid. Love conquers all.

    The Light in the Piazza continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, February 17 and 2  p.m. Sunday, February 18 at Lambert Hall, 1703 Heights Boulevard. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $29-$85.

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    D. L. Groover

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