When the curtains came down at the end of Act I of Lyric Opera’s production of Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, we were not pleased. The entire first act is a setup for its closing moments. Danilo should sweep Hanna into his arms as the strains of the swooningly voluptuous waltz that’s the operetta’s most enduringly popular music, generally known as “The Merry Widow Waltz”, rise and they dance, an overwhelmingly romantic moment. Or, that is, it should be. It wasn’t.
The first act’s problems were numerous. The Lyric Opera orchestra drowned out the singers, as is all too frequently the case at Lyric. Are Lyric Opera’s conductors paid by the decibel? Part of the problem may have been the set design. The large sweeping staircase that formed the primary set piece was problematic. When singers stood at the top of the staircase or faced upwards, they were inaudible. And I recognize that companies everywhere are economizing but the little painted flats that they flew in to suggest smaller rooms looked cheap.
Danilo and Hanna are romantic characters. They are witty, not comical. Danilo should be dashing and less campy, Hanna more sophisticated. Isn’t Danilo usually played by a baritone? Elizabeth Futral is quite lovely and has a glorious voice; she could have made a better Hanna than she was. I’m afraid that tenor Roger Honeywell was just miscast as Danilo. He’s an amusing performer and has a solid tenor voice; he just isn’t Danilo. Stephen Costello as Camille was wonderful. His was the most consistently excellent vocal performance of the evening. Actor Jeff Dumas as Njegus was consistently funny.
Spoken dialogue was a problem, too. They’d decided to mike the spoken dialogue while not amplifying the singing. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the amplified dialogue sounded tinny and was heir to the many problems that mikes present in a live environment: feedback, pops, etc. And then there were the dialects.
To use or not to use dialects should be a production decision. Everybody could use them. Or nobody could use them. Or comic characters could have dialects and romantic characters not. But it should be designed, not left up to the performers. And in a world-class company like Lyric, if dialects are used hire a dialect coach, for goodness sake. Dale Travis’s dialect was more Sergeant Schultz than it was Baron Zeta. It is caddish and small of me to point it out but Elizabeth Futral’s natural North Carolina/Louisiana dialect is distracting and out of place in Hanna, the merry widow of the title.
I could go on. My seat mates were even more critical than I. Two of them walked out. The third, the producer of a local professional light opera company, reacted understandingly but dismissively: she had seen worse productions and it was about what you’d expect of an opera house production of an operetta.
I am happy to say that we were somewhat relieved at Act II. Act II contains nearly all of the work’s best music—the achingly lovely Vilja Song, Red as the rose of Maytime, Girls, Girls, Girls—much of which is reprised in Act III. Acts II and III didn’t present the acoustical problems of Act I and the singers were significantly more audible. My only very minor quibble has to do with flying in the pavilion two thirds of the way through the act. Why? It could have been there from the beginning.
When all is said and done, I’m glad I went to Lyric’s production of The Merry Widow but it could have been so much better except for serious miscasting and problems with sound levels which I attribute to an overwhelming orchestra and set design issues.
Handicapping the season so far: Tosca, Hernani, Merry Widow.
The Critics
John von Rhein saw a different opera than I did:
“The Merry Widow” has more cause to be merry than usual at Lyric Opera of Chicago. The curtain went up as scheduled on Franz Lehar’s ever-popular operetta Saturday night at the Civic Opera House, barely more than 24 hours after the orchestra members ratified a new multiyear contract, calling off a threatened strike.
The high spirits in the orchestra pit also seemed to infuse the handsome and lively new production by Gary Griffin, the associate artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Working with an ensemble of some 70 singers, chorus, actors and dancers, he brings out the period charm and sentiment of this great romantic comedy while keeping the mirth as fizzy as fine champagne.
Conductor Emmanuel Villaume invests the parade of oh-so-hummable Lehar tunes with authentic lilt and flow, securing fine playing from the orchestra. The only serious miscalculation is Lyric’s unfathomable decision to insert a ruinous second intermission.
Heading a solid cast are Elizabeth Futral as rich, young widow Hanna Glawari and Roger Honeywell as the dashing Count Danilo, the off-again, on-again sweethearts who become pawns in a scheme to rescue their fatherland, the fictional nation of Petrovenia, from bankruptcy. They sing beautifully, dance gracefully and bicker as delightfully as any Kate and Petruchio.
The Sun-Times review is no longer available online but I gather from the snippets that remain that the reviewer saw things a little more the way I did.
I think that Lawrence Johson saw the same operetta I did, too:
The crucial element that gets lost in most stateside productions is the melancholy beneath the operetta’s surface frivolity. When Die lustige Witwe premiered in Vienna in 1905, the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s decline had already begun, and there is a sadness and bittersweet nostalgia in The Merry Widow for a glorious past, which is largely foreign to most American stagings.
The Lyric’s new production could have used more of that darker undertow. Also the company elected to perform The Merry Widow in English, the current trend in opera houses, but that’s a double-edged sword. For all its sophistication, the original libretto hasn’t held up well, a problem that is mitigated somewhat by distance when performed in German. Sheldon Harnick’s translation fits words to music deftly but feels tired and dated with three clinkers (the endlessly repeated “That’s the long and short of itâ€) for every genuinely funny line.
Yet it is Lehar’s glorious score with its Hungarian dances, boisterous ensembles and famously indelible waltz that brings the crowds into the theater, and, on the vocal front, the Lyric’s new production is a resounding success.
He’s either being kind or there were problems in the performance last night that weren’t there a month ago.
