Catching Up With: Scott Frankel’s American Songbook

The cast of War Paint.
Joanna Glushak, a sister veteran of Rags, is third from right.

Last night I braved a “wintry mix” and made my way to Lincoln Center’s off-campus Appel Room for the latest installment in the “American Songbook” series: a concert tribute to lyricist Michael Korie and composer Scott Frankel. The program featured songs from shows that have played in New York (Grey Gardens, Happiness, Far from Heaven, and the most recent, War Paint), as well as shows that haven’t. I knew Doll and Meet Mr. Future primarily from things Scott has told me about them, the former a portrait of the relationship between Alma Mahler and the painter Oskar Kokoschka (whose name Scott pronounces almost mockingly), the latter a vignette of the 1939 World’s Fair. I knew Scott’s version of Finding Neverland almost exclusively from what I read about it in the newspaper.

The “American Songbook” series is part of Jazz at Lincoln Center, and I don’t ordinarily think of Scott’s music as particularly jazzy — that’s an element of his work, an influence, but not the whole story. Still, two numbers from Meet Mr. Future vouched for Scott’s bona fides, right at the start of the concert, especially as performed by music director Andrew Resnick on piano, Mary Ann McSweeney on bass, Matt Smallcomb on percussion, Zohar Schondorf on horn, and Todd Groves on saxophone, flute, and clarinet. Tony Yazbeck’s rendition of “Just Around the Corner” and Brandon Victor Dixon’s “Progress Shuffles” offered contrasting perspectives in Depression-era New York, the former revealing an almost dogged determination to remain optimistic in hard times, the latter a reeling resignation to the reality that life in Harlem is not likely to get easier any time soon. Both numbers made me eager to hear more from this show.

Scott Frankel.

The “songbook” rubric turns out to be exceedingly apt. Scott has shown a remarkable ability to turn the styles of earlier songwriters to his own purposes. In Act I of Grey Gardens, Big Edie runs the gamut of a century or so of American theater music, including minstrel shows and operetta; War Paint does something similar, with a narrower focus on the years of the action depicted. “Behind the Red Door,” for example, contains a brief “ooh-ooh” chorus that’s perfectly matched to a prevailing style of the year in which the scene is set, 1935. (Think of the Optimistic Voices in The Wizard of Oz.)

I hesitate to use the term of art, “pastiche,” because what Scott is really doing is more like psychically channeling historical styles to his own, thoroughly contemporary purposes. Scott is a prodigious pianist who made his concert debut at age 13 (with the Cleveland Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, for mercy’s sake) and who one evening entertained me by playing one song (I forget which) in about a dozen different styles, not even pausing when I called out the next request. But his own style always comes through, at once emotional and almost clinically detached: if you think of his arias for Christine Ebersole, “Another Winter in a Summer Town” and “Pink,” or almost any of the music he wrote for Kelli O’Hara in Far from Heaven, then you know what I’m talking about.

Kelli O’Hara in Far from Heaven.

O’Hara was on hand for last night’s concert, offering welcome reminders of how perfectly Scott understands her voice and displays it to its best advantage. But we also had Leslie Kritzer and Scarlett Strallen to show that, no matter that War Paint’s music is precisely tailored to Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, it can be sung effectively by other people, too. (Kritzer and Strallen were, in fact, the first people I’d heard in this music who weren’t LuPone and Ebersole.) Last night, it became clearer than ever to me that Scott doesn’t merely write for an individual voice: it’s the other way around, and he writes music that requires an exceptional voice. He doesn’t merely showcase the singer, he challenges her to do her best work, and that in turn is why his music is so gratifying to the listener.

Exceptional voices abounded last night, and among the concert’s other highlights were two numbers from Finding Neverland from Julian Ovenden (who played James M. Barrie in the original cast) and Kelli O’Hara; “In My Father’s Garden,” Alma Mahler’s regretful résumé of her relationships with men, from Doll, sung by Leslie Kritzer; and Melissa Errico’s aching account of “Another Winter in a Summer Town.” For an encore, Scott accompanied Kelli O’Hara in “Heaven Only Knows,” and while I was grateful for the opportunity to hear him play, I really wished he had played more.

This is not to say that Andrew Resnick was ever less than excellent, but when Tony Yazbeck sang “Happiness the Second Time Around” (from Happiness), Resnick’s expert accompaniment made me realize two things: first, that the song is better than I’d remembered; and second, that the song is a reflection of the way Scott plays piano. His attaca is just that, an attack, and he uses his whole body to wrestle the instrument into submission to his will. While he achieves delicate effects when called for (and he did so in “Heaven Only Knows”), you sometimes wonder whether the piano can survive the passionate communion he creates. It’s as if the instrument is clay to be sculpted, a lover to be fucked. In “Second Time Around,” the character (originally played by Hunter Foster) makes a desperate plea for one more chance, hurling volleys of rage and regret. What Scott the pianist could do with Scott the composer’s work! Happiness turns out to be more personal and more honest than I’d realized on first hearing, and I found myself wishing for a “second time around” with that music.

“Beauty in the World”:
LuPone and Ebersole on Broadway.

I first saw War Paint in previews and vowed to return often; the vagaries of life in New York prevented me from keeping my promise until the final week of the run: I saw the two last Sunday matinées. The latter of these was the closing performance, a love fest without peer or parallel. Ebersole’s entrance stopped the show, and LuPone’s threatened to do the same until that great lady made a “knock it off” gesture that permitted her to proceed with her first number, “Back on Top.” I wouldn’t have thought that the two stars’ powerhouse performances could possibly be any more powerful, and yet they were turbocharged on that last afternoon.

The pleasures of Michael Greif’s production were so numerous that, each time I saw the show, I felt almost giddy. Ordinarily I can scarcely muster any interest at all in fashion, but Catherine Zuber’s costume designs were at once so historically accurate (over a 30-year time span) and brilliantly imaginative that I started to giggle with delight. Since the show closed, I’ve been listening to the cast album, and I’m able to concentrate more on the music. I find myself saying, “No, this is my favorite,” with each track in succession.

Ultimately, my favorite is and must be “Pink,” Elizabeth Arden’s eleven o’clock number and the summit (so far!) of the astonishing teamwork of Christine Ebersole and Scott Frankel. And yet I don’t believe the recording enhances my appreciation: I already appreciated the number when I heard it in the theater, and the cast album serves primarily as a document, a souvenir of a sublime experience. The same is true of Helena Rubinstein’s counterpart number, “Forever Beautiful,” a mini-opera for Patti LuPone. Even while replicas of various portraits of Rubinstein descended from the flies, creating a lasting monument to herself, I never took my eyes off of LuPone. I was completely under her spell, and that’s true, too, when I listen to the album.

“Fire and Ice”:
Steffanie Leigh and Erik Liberman.

The recording enhances my appreciation and understanding of other songs, such as “Fire and Ice.” Greif and choreographer Christopher Gattelli staged this number spectacularly — the blazing debut of Charles Revson (Erik Liberman) as the harbinger of a future that is already leaving Rubinstein and Arden behind. Hearing the song on the album, however, it’s no less effective without its glittering wardrobe, undulating performers, and shifting mirrors. The song comes at you like a tsunami; the bold rhythms and wild percussion won’t let you go. Throughout their careers, Rubinstein has promoted science, Arden has promoted gentility, but this is something altogether different: sex, and by God, it sells. The song is supposed to be a television commercial, and while listening to the album, I can picture Rubinstein and Arden’s horror as they watch — something the staging didn’t show us. Again and again, the album offers comparable revelations and delights.

The rivalry between Rubinstein and Arden is an odd, almost defiantly un-commercial choice of subject matter for a musical — as are all of Scott’s shows, with the debatable exception of Far from Heaven. Like the writer-director of the film Far from Heaven, Todd Haynes, and like that movie’s producer, Christine Vachon, Scott is an old friend, and I often brag that Scott writes shows to please me, just as Todd and Christine make movies for my personal enjoyment. The reality is, of course, quite different. My friends create art that pleases them. I’m sure they’re happy when other people like what they’ve done, but that’s not the goal they’re striving for. The result is art of the highest integrity, and the most gratifying rewards.

The Evolution of the Musical Today:
Christine Ebersole and Scott Frankel,
during the run of Grey Gardens.

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Catching Up With: Jessica Gould

Photo by Nathan Smith.

Soprano Jessica Gould sometimes projects a mournful quality with her voice (and more on that in a moment), but it’s been with great happiness that I’ve heard her again recently, both in concert, under the aegis of her Salon/Sanctuary organization; and on recording, with the recent release, I Viaggi di Caravaggio (The Travels of Caravaggio) [Cremona MVC 017 043]. Jessica is always up to something interesting, whether I write about her or not — and she has been busy.

The surprise of the recording isn’t its thought-provoking program of largely unfamiliar, deeply researched, thematically linked material. The surprise is that Jessica didn’t program it herself. Her performing partner, Diego Cantalupi, invited her to sing on the album, and he provides sensitive accompaniment on lute and theorbo, also having devised the program. Cantalupi identifies female models (mostly prostitutes) in Caravaggio’s paintings and associates them with music by the painter’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries. Many of these composers would have been familiar with Caravaggio’s better-known paintings, Cantalupi observes, so that it’s easy to imagine a connection between — for example — the painter’s Crown of Thorns and Benedetto Ferrari’s cantata Queste dolenti spine (These painful thorns).

Cantalupi has done a remarkable job of selecting music that sounds the way Caravaggio’s signature chiaroscuro looks, so striking that I still find it hard to believe that the painter didn’t invent electricity and spotlights. Even the choice of composers is illuminating, in the sense that I’d never heard of most of these fellows, though I’m delighted to hear them now. The delicacy of Cantalupi’s playing and Jessica’s melancholy singing create alternating waves of shimmer and shadow, to haunting effect. It’s a lovely album.



At New York’s Brotherhood Synagogue on November 16, Jessica offered a reprise of a program of her own devising, “From Ghetto to Capella,” in the company of several other musicians: Charles Weaver on theorbo, Loren Ludwig on viola da gamba, Elliot Figg on harpsichord, and the vibrant Italian mezzo Elena Biscuola. The selections explore what Jessica calls the “cross-fertilization between Jewish and Christian musical cultures” in Italy, primarily in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (with a couple of numbers from earlier and later periods), and the program proved full of surprises as number after number revealed Middle Eastern influences in harmonies, modalities, and even — to the delight of the audience — the melody of the “Hatikvah” in an air from Rossi’s time, “Fuggi, fuggi,” performed here as a duet.

“From Ghetto to Capella” allows Jessica and her friends to return to the music of Salamone Rossi, whose remarkable career as a Jew in the court of Mantua inspired an earlier program, “From Ghetto to Palazzo.” Two arias by Barbara Strozzi — a rare woman composer in the seventeenth century — afforded each singer a welcome showcase, with Jessica locating a startling combination of pleading and ecstasy in the final notes of “Salve Regina,” and Biscuola making an entire opera out of the lament “Lagrime mie.”

As ever, one walks out of a Salon/Sanctuary concert feeling not only enriched by beautiful music but also a bit smarter. When Jessica sings, you learn something.

“From Ghetto to Capella,” November 16, 2017.

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Catching Up With: Adamo’s ‘Becoming Santa Claus’

Foreground: Rivera, Boehler, Blalock; background: Plitmann, a bit of Jameson, Burdette.

It’s usually the case that new operas require a second hearing from me: I can’t absorb all the music at once, and sometimes I can’t even be sure what I think of a work overall. This was especially true of David T. Little’s Dog Days, which I admired extravagantly and yet didn’t fully appreciate until I’d heard it several times. (Who knows? Maybe I still don’t fully appreciate it. I’d better keep listening to find out!)

As I’ve written here, I required a few hearings of Mark Adamo’s first opera, Little Women, before I could separate what Mark actually wrote from what I expected. Unpredictability is an asset, and who knows whether I could have enjoyed so many performances — and a recording — of this opera over the years, if it actually had been the sound I originally anticipated? Mark is smarter about these things than I could ever be.

A company in Texas, Houston Grand Opera, produced the first performances of Little Women, and I first saw it not in the opera house but in a New York City hotel room, where the company had arranged a special screening of the video, for those critics and writers unable to watch the television premiere. Somewhat similarly, another company in Texas, The Dallas Opera, produced another premiere of an opera by Mark Adamo, Becoming Santa Claus, and I first saw that at a special screening of a live performance that was simulcast in New York. Now a DVD of Becoming Santa Claus has been released, and I’ll have the opportunity to hear it and see it often — and I expect that I’ll want to. (I’ll also want to see a live performance in a theater one of these days. Opera companies, take note.)

Jonathan Blalock as Claus.

From the start of the overture, Mark makes clear that, while this is a “family opera” (as marketers like to call them), he refuses to talk down to child audiences. This is sophisticated musical writing, intriguingly scored — and in that respect it’s no different from Mark’s other work. He never lets the listener grow complacent; he always has a surprise up his sleeve. Consider the Toy Sequence in Scene Two, where the Elves’ quartet “will extend as far outside traditional operatic technique as taste and [the singers’] ability will permit,” Mark advises, aiming to include “jazz improvisation, rap, and/or quasi-percussive choral utterance.” For all the score’s ambition, however, it remains accessible — something that became clearer to me the second time I heard it, at a private screening of the DVD in New York.

Becoming Santa Claus is, like Mark’s other operas, designed to permit extraordinary performances from its cast. It’s also great fun. That Toy Sequence features some of the worst, ugliest toys you’ve ever seen. (Think of the Misfit Toys in Rudolph, then imagine even more catastrophic failures.) The bridge between Scenes Two and Three is an orchestral interlude that features a hilarious computer-animated sequence — which also recalls the film sequence in Berg’s Lulu (not hilarious) in its innovation and placement. In the finale, a handbell chorus of children emerges from the audience, and as charming as the Sensurround jingling is on DVD, it must have been thrilling to experience in the house. (And it’s a great way to involve the community at large.)

Mark’s libretto isn’t entirely secular — he hasn’t scrubbed away “the reason for the season” as other origin stories, such as Rankin/Bass’ Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, do — and yet it treats religion lightly. More important are the relationships among the characters. The plot centers on Prince Claus, a spoiled brat whose parents, the King and Queen of frozen Nifland, have separated. Claus is looking forward to his thirteenth birthday — a celebration so lavish that the court servants, the Elves, haven’t had a day off in three years. But Claus’ uncles won’t be attending the party: a Donkey–Messenger announces that, instead, the three Kings are following a Star and will be giving presents to some other Child, who has just been born.

Declaring frankincense, gold, and myrrh to be unsuitable gifts for a baby, Claus decides to outdo his uncles, and instructs the Elves to make the best presents in the world, and lots of them. But then comes the question of how to deliver them. By the time Claus gets to the stable, Mother and Child have left already. Claus understands the difference between presents and presence, that it’s more important to be with someone than to give them fancy goods. He learns a lesson about himself, about family — and figures out what to do with all the presents that are piled up in his sleigh.

Who wouldn’t want a gigantic dancing Sham-Wow for Christmas?
Jameson, Plitmann, Burdette, Schauffer, and the toys.

For the world premiere, Emmanuel Villaume conducted with his customary deftness and attention to instrumental detail; I’ve admired his work many times, yet I think believe is the first time I’ve heard him in contemporary rep. And the company assembled a dream cast, with Jennifer Rivera as a delectably glamorous Queen Sophine; sonorous Matt Boehler as the Donkey–Messenger (with a secret); and an all-star assemblage of Elves: sky-high soprano Hila Plitmann (Yan), mezzo Lucy Schaufer (Ib), tenor Keith Jameson (Yab), and bass Kevin Burdette, having some fun after Dallas Opera’s previous world premiere, Jake Heggie’s Great Scott, just a few weeks before.* When you recall that some children in the audience probably never heard an opera before, you have to believe that surprise and delight ran rampant when the kids heard the range of things the human voice can do.

Jonathan Blalock stepped into the title role on short notice, yet it’s hard for a viewer to believe anyone else was ever considered. His clean, bright tenor voice displays an absolute command of the challenging score, he’s an affecting actor as always, and he looks gorgeous in Gary McGann’s costumes. You can be sure that dozens of little girls got crushes on him when they saw this opera.

McGann also designed the sets, with touches of Art Nouveau inspiration that recall (for this viewer, anyway) another Santa Claus origin story, the novel by L. Frank Baum. Sets and costumes are sumptuous, imaginative, and (like the rest of this opera) often great fun. (Those toys! Those dancing tables!) McGann’s work is one more reason to be grateful that this production was recorded on video, so that we can see not only how beautiful the designs are, but also how beautifully they functioned in the service of Paul Curran’s staging. Really, Curran couldn’t have done a better job of overseeing a production that shows off this opera to its best advantage; the physicality of the Elves and Queen Sophine, for example, is thoroughly thought out, and it shines brightly.

Need I point out that the DVD would make a great Christmas present?

Mark Adamo.

*NOTE: Mark has devised names for the Elves like the names of no elves you’ve heard before, as if they’re some extraterrestrial language.

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Joyce Castle Toasts Bernstein, Janice Hall Forgoes Opera at Urban Stages

Lenny and Joyce during the first performance of Arias and Barcarolles.
With Michael Tilson Thomas also seated at the piano, and baritone John Brandstetter.

Joyce Castle captivated me from the minute we met, more than 30 years ago. Since then, I continually discover that she’s had that effect on other people, too, many of whom I admire in their own right. When I interviewed director Harold Prince, for example, we concluded our conversation with praise of Joyce — almost as if we were trying to one-up each other, or competing for the presidency of her fan club.

Leonard Bernstein thought highly of Joyce, too: at one rehearsal, the height-challenged composer was so delighted that he pulled up a chair and stood on it to kiss her. Joyce sang the first performance of his Arias and Barcarolles, and she won the hearts of New York audiences (and a Grammy Award) playing the Old Lady in his Candide at City Opera in the 1980s. Joyce has sung Bernstein’s music all over the world, easily embracing both his show tunes and his “classical” compositions. She’s got the musicianship — and, importantly, the sense of humor — to field anything Bernstein throws her way.

Bernstein’s centennial (officially in August 2018) is already being celebrated by orchestras and other musical groups around the country. When Urban Stages invited me to produce a show for its annual “Winter Rhythms” series, I thought it would be nice to stage a tribute now, before audiences are overloaded with his music. Naturally, I thought of Joyce. Would she be interested in making a “special guest star” appearance in a Bernstein tribute? “Why don’t I do the whole thing?” she replied.

And that is how Joyce Castle will be making her first New York appearance in more than six years, on December 16, at 7 pm, in LENNY! A Toast to Bernstein on the Eve of His Birthday. With her longtime collaborator Ted Taylor on piano, Joyce will share songs and stories, reminiscing about the composer — and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

A long way from Rovno Gubernia: Joyce as the Old Lady in São Paulo, with conductor Marin Alsop.

This year’s “Winter Rhythms” series features 22 shows in 12 days, to benefit Urban Stages’ remarkable educational and outreach programs. The series kicks off on December 12 with a tribute to composer and music director Barry Levitt, whose sudden death this fall hit the cabaret community hard: remembering him in song is the perfect celebration of a much-loved man. People are very excited about the tribute to Broadway book-writer Michael Stewart on December 18, featuring Chita Rivera, Jim Dale, and Charles Strouse. On December 21, there’s a concert performance of Stephen Cole and Matthew Martin Ward’s After the Fair, marking that show’s twentieth anniversary; and the series wraps up with a concert of Disney songs on December 23. Over the 12-day period, more than 100 artists will perform, a who’s who of New York’s musical scenes, and every year, producer Peter Napolitano makes sure there’s something for every musical taste. Click here for a complete listing and descriptions of all the shows.

Janice Hall draws on her own experiences from her operatic career.

I’m especially looking forward to Janice Hall’s “The Opera Show with No Opera” on December 16 at 3 pm. I first saw Janice in an opera, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, opposite Joyce Castle herself, and it was Janice who ushered me into the cabaret community. For this show, Janice will tell the stories of great operas — using songs by everybody from Billy Joel to the Smashing Pumpkins. “You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Just like at the opera,” Janice promises. Peter Napolitano directs, and Matthew Martin Ward is music director.

If you want to see both Joyce’s and Janice’s shows (and you do), you can get a discount by clicking here.

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Adès’ ‘Exterminating Angel’ at the Met

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The Case for a Recording of ‘Paul’s Case’

The original cast of Paul’s Case, in Kevin Newbury’s staging, with Jonathan Blalock in foreground.

Some operas stay with you. Some performances never leave you.

I had never read Willa Cather’s short story “Paul’s Case” before I read about Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat’s operatic adaptation. The story is remarkable, poignant, chock-full of secrets and whispers. At its center is Paul, a young man who resembles the tenor Jonathan Blalock in every detail, to such a degree that you wonder what sort of time machine Cather used to visit our era and to meet Jonathan. She gets him, down to his mysterious smile. It’s as if Jonathan springs to life on her page.

I’ve had this sensation before, when reading Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir and seeing the actor Gérard Philipe in the central character of Julien Sorel. It was almost like fan fiction, as if Stendhal admired Philipe so much that he wrote a part especially for him. (Stendhal wasn’t above that sort of thing, I hasten to add.) Then one day I went to the cinéma, and there was Gérard Philipe playing Julien Sorel. The universe aligned, somehow. It was always necessary for Philipe to play this character, and then he did.

Seeing the opera at its New York premiere, part of the Prototype Festival, in 2014, I discovered that the music for Paul’s Case suits Jonathan every bit as much as the character does. His clean, incisive tenor shines as the chamber ensemble slides and scurries around him. In The New Yorker, Alex Ross has written far more eloquently about this opera than I ever can, as is his wont, but allow me impertinently to vouch for him: He’s right. This is a gorgeous, important score.

In an ideal world, we’d have a video of Kevin Newbury’s haunting, poetic production, for Urban Arias, with the original cast. We don’t live in an ideal world, however, and now Urban Arias is coming to the end of a fund-raising drive to finance an audio recording.

Imagine if Maria Callas had never recorded Tosca, if Lauren Worsham had never recorded Dog Days. That’s how you’re going to feel if Jonathan Blalock never records Paul’s Case. This is a once-in-a-lifetime portrayal. Sure, Spears’ opera is so powerful that other tenors will want to sing the role, some day. But they will never be quite like Jonathan, never quite so right and natural and expressive. They may or may not have lived out parts of Paul’s story — Jonathan has. They may never be able to give full voice to this character and his music — Jonathan does. They may never know what Jonathan has done with the role — I do.

In a fund-raising drive like this one, every little bit helps. The campaign is coming to an end. If you can part with a little money, I hope you’ll do so. The link is here.

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Handling ‘Ariodante’ at Carnegie Hall

Joyce DiDonato at Carnegie Hall,
with Harry Bicket (seated at the harpsichord)
and members of the English Concert.

“You handle Handel like nobody handles Handel,” enthuses a fan upon meeting a famous conductor (Rex Harrison) in Preston Sturges’ Unfaithfully Yours, and it’s what I kept thinking throughout Joyce DiDonato’s performance in the title role of Handel’s Ariodante on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall. Mind you, I’ve heard some extraordinarily good Handel singing in my day, but Joyce continues to surprise me, doing things that no one else does. When she sings Rossini, I can picture the composer strutting up and down the aisle at intermission, beaming and boasting, “Did you hear that? I wrote that!” When she sings Handel, I can picture the composer asking, “Hang on — did I write that?”

Even in the hands of some very fine singers, Handel’s emotional and psychological palette used to seem simple to me. Arias expressed one of a very few emotions: joy, anger (usually vengeful), sorrow, determination, love. Somehow Joyce has located psychological depths that, as I say, the composer himself may not have suspected; but she presents them so persuasively that I wind up believing Handel is on a par with Shakespeare, Wagner, and Verdi, a master of theatrical arts to give voice to the soul. Who knew the old boy had it in him?

I can only begin to understand how Joyce does this. For starters, in her arias she doesn’t merely ornament the vocal line. She deploys a variety of colors, and she makes uncanny use of her dynamic range. In piano and pianissimo passages, then, she evokes the thoughtfulness of the character, sometimes suggesting that the words she is singing are ones that her character can barely bring himself (Ariodante is a trouser role) to speak. She invites us to the innermost, most private domain of character.

Joyce recorded the opera with Il Complesso Barocco a few years ago.

Repetition is the foundation of Handel’s arias, in the da capo or “A-B-A” style prevalent in his day: in the first verse, the character makes a statement, repeating phrases several times; in the second verse, the character makes a contrasting statement, also repeating phrases; in the third verse, the character resumes the first verse, ornamenting the vocal line. What Joyce manages to do is not only stylish but thoughtful: it’s as if her characters are working out a problem, considering it from different perspectives, striving to explore and to understand the world around them.

Especially in the long aria “Scherza infida,” on Sunday Joyce outdid herself — and brought me to the brink of tears. No ornament seemed gratuitous or ostentatious, and yet no note, no gesture seemed calculated or effortful. And it all seemed fresh. Indeed, returning to the recordings she’s made of the aria, I found constant affirmation of her continuing exploration of this music, the new insights she’s gleaned, her unstoppable willingness to try new approaches.

Joyce was joined by a cast of excellent singers, including ripe-voiced Sonia Prina in the trouser role of the villainous Polinesso. Prina played her role to the hilt, until I wasn’t sure that certain vocal stunts were part of her technique (which is sometimes eccentric) or part of her deliciously juicy characterization. If she’d worn a mustache, I’m sure she would have twirled it, and it’s a tribute to her work that I came across one audience member at intermission who asked who the countertenor was.

Leading the English Concert from the harpsichord, conductor Harry Bicket tended to very speedy tempos that may have reduced the playing time (the concert lasted about four hours as it was) but did few of the singers any favors, especially in Act I. Still, soprano Christiane Karg made an affecting Ginevra, and sweet-voiced soprano Mary Bevan was a revelation as the gullible Dalinda. Rivaling Bevan for mellifluous tone was tenor David Portillo as Lurcanio, Dalinda’s intended. Fondly remembered for his Tonio in Fort Worth Opera’s Daughter of the Regiment four years ago, David is in exceptionally fine voice these days, as evidenced also in his recent run as Jaquino in Fidelio at the Met; this concert was his Carnegie Hall debut, and the audience cheered him.

The role of Odoardo may be small, even thankless, but it served to make me want to hear more from tenor Tyson Miller, who turned in a nicely rounded characterization and elegant singing. Baritone Matthew Brook made his role, the King of Scotland, seem far more important than I’d remembered it to be, and he invested himself wholly in acting the part — even when (as in the conclusion of his “sorrow” aria in Act II, which found him on his knees) he overdid it. His warm tone beautifully suited his paternal character. Really, in most respects this concert performance was ready for the stage, with the trouser ladies wearing trousers and each singer providing thoughtful characterization in gesture as well as voice.

I thoroughly enjoyed the work of the English Concert, notably Alberto Grazzi’s bassoon in “Scherza infida,” and Ursula Paludan Monberg and Martin Lawrence’s discreetly exultant horns; lutenist William Carter wielded a theorbo the size of that baby giraffe everyone’s talking about lately. The strings managed to be crisp, elegant, and supportive even when Bicket spurred them on to greater haste than I’d have liked. In all, it was an afternoon of memorably glorious music-making.

Post-performance: Backstage with Joyce and a friend.

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Interview: Lauren Worsham

The limitless Lauren Worsham.
Photos from laurenworsham.com.

It’s hard to imagine two works more dissimilar than Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland and David T. Little and Royce Vavrek’s Dog Days, but on April 27, when Master Voices performs Toyland in concert at Carnegie Hall, one woman will connect the two. Soprano Lauren Worsham — whose shattering performances as Lisa in Dog Days rank among the finest I have ever seen — will take the ingénue role of Jane. She may not yet be the music-theater equivalent of Kevin Bacon, the necessary link to everything and everyone, but give her time.

Her limpid, vibrant voice commands attention, and she knows how to use it to project the kind of innocence that’s equally appropriate in Little’s Dystopia and Herbert’s Toyland. Already she’s excelled in operetta at New York City Opera and, on Broadway, in an acclaimed turn as Phoebe in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, warbling her heart out and picking up Drama Desk and Theatre World awards and a Tony nomination. She runs an opera company, the Coterie, and is the lead singer in Sky-Pony — a rock band — while also appearing in concert and in cabaret. To this observer, it seems there’s nothing that doesn’t interest her, and nothing she can’t do.

“I definitely try to do many things,” Worsham says, calling herself “a jack-of-all-trades and not necessarily a master of any of them.” (I beg to disagree.) “How did I get to the point where I can? I think it was more that I decided that I wanted to. I didn’t want to focus on one thing. As with most things in my life, my path found me.”

“Mirror, Mirror”: As Lisa in Dog Days.
One of the most astonishing performances I have ever witnessed.

Growing up in Austin, Texas, Worsham sang the music that was in the air around her, rock and blues, and her first voice teacher was a blues musician. She also sang in her high-school choir, and her interest in musical theater led her to audition for a college production of Candide. After graduation from Yale (cum laude, because of course) and a stint in the first national tour of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, she found herself playing Cunegonde again, this time in New York City Opera’s revival of Candide, in 2008.

Worsham had begun to broaden and deepen her understanding of opera, with which she’d been only somewhat familiar. But she says, “I love narrative and I love drama, and at that point opera wasn’t focusing on those things in the way that a college student would have been aware of.” In NYCO’s late, lamented VOX program for new work, Worsham met Little and Vavrek, who were about to change many people’s notions of narrative and drama in opera. “Dog Days is the greatest thing I’ve done, maybe the greatest thing I’ll ever do,” Worsham says — adding, “until the next time I work with David and Royce!”

For City Opera’s Candide, “They double-cast me with a more trained singer,” Worsham remembers. “They set me up with a voice teacher, and I credit her with helping me open up my classical voice.” This training strikes me as crucial to her multifaceted career: the desire to do many things and the talent to persuade people to allow you to do many things will take you only so far if you don’t have the technique to pull it off. (My hat is off to Worsham’s teacher, Virginia Grasso.)

In Gentleman’s Guide, with Jane O’Hare and Bryce Pinkham.

Worsham also respects “good vocal hygiene.” The main thing for me is not yelling in bars. [Presumably when she’s performing with Sky-Pony.] There’s a difference between doing something one night, or every night of the week. Everything requires a different kind of maintenance and paying attention to your body. I definitely learned that the hard way with Gentleman’s Guide.

“When I first started, I had a high, nasal speaking voice for Phoebe,” she continues. “For the first eight months, it was fine, but then it started to catch up with me. In the same way that if you woke up every morning and bend your knees, you’ll get more flexible, but if you sit at a desk all day, you’ll lose flexibility. Using that voice gave my larynx bad habits. I’d never done a show that many days a week for that long. There’s a difference between a long game and a short game.”

While Worsham’s rock voice doesn’t sound precisely like her operetta voice, it’s recognizably the same instrument, and just as irresistible. Her approach to any piece of music, she says, is rooted in character: “Different characters have different ways they carry their body and different ways they use their voice. Different songs have different characters and different textures. Sometimes it’s a choice: ‘This would sound good.’ When it comes to opera, that’s a matter of technique, but when it comes to something like pop music, a lot of the time for me it’s a matter of letting go, of trying to be ‘on the voice,’ just trying to tell the story.”

Rocking out with Sky-Pony.
Worsham’s husband, Kyle Jarrow, is also in the band.

Story-telling is always her principal concern, though “in opera I’m also focused on continuation of the voice and on technique.” Recalling her harrowing aria from Dog Days, she says, “In the same way that I think I wouldn’t be telling the story we’re trying to tell if I belted ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ singing pop songs with perfect technique and vowels wouldn’t tell the story that song wants to tell, in that sense.”

Master Voices likewise believes in “The Art of Musical Storytelling,” and Babes in Toyland has told many over the years. At the time of its premiere, in 1904, it was customary to change the materials in American operetta, to drop one number and add another, or to re-work a scene to suit a particular performer. As the two movie adaptations show, the material is highly flexible: there’s no Laurel and Hardy in Disney’s Toyland. But there’s not really an Ur-text, and Toyland hasn’t seen a major New York revival in generations. Master Voices artistic director Ted Sperling has prepared a score and, with Joe Keenan, cobbled together a script. “It’s hilarious,” Worsham says, comparing it to classic movie scripts. “Everyone seems to have some zingers … there’s no straight man.”

Sperling has assembled a spectacular cast for Toyland, led by another soprano who straddles both Broadway and opera, Kelli O’Hara. Jonathan Freeman adds another villain to his résumé (he’s played Aladdin’s Jafar in every medium you can name) with the role of Barnaby; and Jay Armstrong Johnson, a Broadway favorite who sang the title role in NYCO’s most recent revival of Candide, is Tom Tom, Jane’s love interest. And with the master clown Bill Irwin as the Toymaker and the irrepressible Christopher Fitzgerald as Alan, Jane’s brother, “I’ll be focusing on trying not to pee my pants with laughing,” Worsham says. “I’ve really got to be at the top of my game with those two.”

Is this the face that launched a thousand quips?
It will be on April 27.

The audience can expect “a lot of fun, more than anything. I’m looking forward to that,” Worsham says. “I think we need it. Gosh, reading the news every day, it seems as if a little escape is harder to get to these days.”

Master Voices presents Victor Herber’s Babes in Toyland in concert at Carnegie Hall, April 27 at 7:00 pm. For tickets and more information, click here.

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Lyric Opera’s ‘Les Troyens’

Nuit d’ivresse: Susan Graham and Brandon Jovanovich.
This and all photos ©Todd Rosenberg courtesy of Lyric Opera of Chicago.

When Lyric Opera of Chicago announced that Susan Graham would be stepping into the role of Didon in Berlioz’s Les Troyens this fall, I welcomed the news. I’ve heard her each time she’s sung this opera, and I had supposed that her performances in San Francisco last year would be her last — no matter that she had never sung Didon better. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I said to myself, and made plans to fly to Chicago.

Little did I realize how, days after the announcement, the plot of Les Troyens would come to seem so timely: the opera depicts the collapse of not one but two governments, the demise of one civilization and a prediction of the demise of a second. Yet it wasn’t until the performance began that I fully understood the necessity of what was, in effect, a pilgrimage.

Outside the walls of Troy.

Lyric’s production, the company’s first, featured a vast cast, most of whom but Susan were new to their roles; and a vaster chorus of 94 singers, with Sir Andrew Davis in the pit and Tim Albery providing stage direction. Sir Andrew and the orchestra got off to a blurry start on November 17, when the sheer strangeness of the music simply didn’t come across. Berlioz is creating a sonic environment that’s meant to be like nothing we’ve ever heard, automatically transporting us to another time and place. But within a few measures Sir Andrew corrected course and steered us ably onward. Part of the satisfaction of the performance was the vivid sense that the Chicago musicians had been yearning to play this score.

Albery’s best decision may have been to keep so much of the principals’ action downstage, where we could better appreciate the relationships. For example, virtually every principal in Act II is a member of one family, and the stage groupings and the singers’ interactions made this clear. We weren’t merely watching heroes of legend, we were watching a family, people like us. When my biggest complaint is that the curved wall of Troy should be convex when the Trojans are outside it, and concave when they’re inside (instead of vice-versa), you know Albery succeeded overall.

Goerke as Cassandre (foreground, with Meachem at center).

Singing this opera for the first time in her career, Christine Goerke was the production’s great revelation, so right is she for the role of Cassandre. She sang magnificently, coloring her immense instrument with a wide range of emotions, knowing precisely when tenderness is required and when to let it all hang out. Her acting brought me to tears at the end of Act II, something no other Cassandre has accomplished. Now I may have to become a camp follower for Goerke’s Cassandre, the way I’ve been for Susan’s Didon.

Okka von der Damerau was the wittiest Anna I’ve seen, a gleeful schemer in the scenes where she plays matchmaker for her sister, Didon, which makes for a nice contrast with her sorrow when that match goes awry at the end of the opera. Hers is a plush voice — she’s sung Erda with Lyric — so that vocally this was the definition of luxury casting. Lucas Meachem sang Chorèbe with great feeling, and he and Goerke made a plausible couple, giving the sense of a real history to the characters’ relationship. Annie Rosen was lively and appropriately gamine as Ascagne.

Jovanovich as Enée.

The afternoon began with the announcement that tenor Brandon Jovanovich had a cold. At first my heart leapt — did this mean that my friend Corey Bix would step in to sing Enée, as he did when I heard Troyens in San Francisco? No, it did not; though he did step in for one performance after I left Chicago, Corey sang the role of Helenus this afternoon. Apart from a couple of notes (to which honestly I might not otherwise have paid attention), I’d never have known that Jovanovich was indisposed. His voice has matured so handsomely since I first heard him, and I’m hoping he’ll continue to sing Enée and to grow in the role.

And then there was Susan. Albery’s production sets the opera in a non-specific near-present, and Tobias Hoheisel’s first costume for Didon made her look distinctly more like a prime minister or president than like a queen. Was it compensation — or the cumulative effect of having sung the role so many times — that made Susan’s Didon more regal than ever? The character’s awakening to love (a transition made more gradual by another nice directorial touch, making the “Royal Hunt and Storm” ballet the embodiment of the sleeping Didon’s dream*) became clearer: as she fell in love, she really did let her hair down.

Reine par la faveur des dieux.

For financial reasons — namely, the need to avoid paying overtime — Sir Andrew and the team cut some music, pretty judiciously. Yes, I noticed the absences, but the plot didn’t suffer, and one passage (the long sequence of tributes in Act III) can be theatrically boring, no matter that the music is nice and it’s fun to hear people going on endlessly about how terrific Susan — I mean Didon — is.

But some music in Troyens you wish could go on forever, particularly the duet “Nuit d’ivresse” that closes Act IV. As the music spun out in its dreamy, voluptuous whirls and eddies, Albery made use of Lyric’s new revolving stage, and Didon and Enée’s love carried them beyond all earthly concerns, beyond the earth itself, with stars and planets (projections by Illuminos) looking on. I hesitate to say “perfect,” but this was close to perfect, an entirely apt visual representation of what we heard and the characters felt.

Didon’s dream: The Royal Hunt and Storm ballet.

French repertoire has provided Susan with so many opportunities to revel in the sheer sensuality of her voice, and perhaps none better than “Nuit d’ivresse.” But she doesn’t stop there: then come the blind fury of Didon’s fight with Enée and the anguish of “Adieu, fière cité,” leaving me an emotional wreck. At a talkback after the performance, Susan said she thought she’d sung the aria better that afternoon than she’d ever sung it before — and I was in a position to confirm that she was right.

It’s been a helluva ride, as I’ve followed Susan to Paris, New York, San Francisco, and now Chicago with Les Troyens. A friend estimates that I’ve spent two full days of my life sitting in theaters and listening to her Didon. She has made this music so meaningful to me, and never more so than this fall, when much of the world has seemed to be collapsing around us all. Didon is more, then, than a signal achievement in the career of an artist for whom I feel both admiration and affection. It’s a gift of art that Susan has shared, when we need it most.

So if it should happen that she decides to sing it again — in Brussels or Barcelona or Bug Tussle — I’ll find a way to be there, too.

A gift, an offering: Rosen as Ascagne with Graham.

*NOTE: To a degree, the start of the ballet reminded me of Laurie’s Dream in Oklahoma! — and I mean that in a good way. I’d love to see this staging concept developed further.

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The Florence Foster Jenkins Moment

Queen of Delight? Streep as Foster Jenkins.

At movie theaters, we’re in the middle of a Florence Foster Jenkins moment. Stephen Frears’ film, starring Meryl Streep, has opened in the United States — following Xavier Giannoli’s French film, Marguerite, released just a year ago and based on Foster Jenkins’ life, starring my beloved Catherine Frot in a César-winning performance. In the works is a documentary, The Florence Foster Jenkins Story, in which none other than Joyce DiDonato plays the demented diva.

Why now? Is it merely that, at this historical moment, we happen to have three talented actresses who are willing and able to play the woman widely regarded as the worst singer who ever lived? Is there some vast audience that’s been demanding — for decades, presumably — multiple interpretations of this story? Does Foster Jenkins’ story speak to something current in our society? Is this just a fluke?

Having seen the Frears and Giannoli films, I’m inclined to opt for Answer 1. Streep, who as a child studied with Estelle Liebling, is the right age, more or less, and quite open to the challenge of impersonating well-known women (Margaret Thatcher, Julia Child). Frot has made a career-long specialty of loopy bourgeoises, finding in their stories a measure of comedy and tragedy, and Marguerite offers audiences a taste of both. And Joyce, widely esteemed as one of the greatest singers alive, is also a good sport with remarkable sympathy for those less gifted: I once attended a dinner party at which we played some of Foster Jenkins’ recordings, and while the rest of us writhed in a mixture of agony and delight, dear Joyce refused to say a word against the woman.

The next question, then, is what’s the point? What lessons are we to draw from Foster Jenkins? While I can’t yet address the documentary, I’m prepared to answer for the Giannoli and Frears films. Ultimately, Marguerite is the tragedy of a woman who doesn’t know herself; her delusions are at once her reason for being and her undoing. And Florence Foster Jenkins is a garden-variety biopic, leaving its message to the marketing team (“You don’t have to be good to be great,” runs the slogan).

On wings of song: DiDonato as Foster Jenkins.

Both films present a Foster Jenkins who is entirely unaware of how badly she sings; Frears’ film implies that neurological damage from syphilis accounts for her inability to hear herself as others hear her. Both films disregard the theory that Foster Jenkins was in on the joke, that her over-the-top performances were a sort of performance art avant la lettre — which may or may not be true, but which would make for an interesting movie.

Marguerite comes closer to Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, the story of a man who doesn’t understand that his true talent is friendship — not moviemaking. If Burton’s film doesn’t attain the level of tragedy, it’s because the movie doesn’t permit the title character any recognition of his fatal flaw. He remains blithely oblivious to what he’s been doing wrong, and yet the message is clear and (for this audience) meaningful. At those many, many times when my writing career hasn’t gone as planned, I’ve wondered whether I hadn’t been kidding myself all along. Wood’s friendship with Bela Lugosi resembles in some ways my friendship with Dan Rather — and so on.

Marguerite gives its heroine her Aristotelian moment, and so, to a degree, does Frears’ FFJ. But in general Frears is up to something different, and his film may be interpreted as a 110-minute expression of the popular maxim, “Dance as if no one is watching.” Florence does indeed sing as if no one is listening, much less judging. But should she? Music is her passion, and she follows her bliss. Okay. That’s fine for her. But what about the rest of us? Are we really supposed to follow her example? If so, I’ll book Carnegie Hall myself.

Thus, despite all of Streep’s dazzle, the focus shifts to her common-law husband, St. Clair Bayfield, a ham actor who at least sometimes has the self-awareness not to subject other people to his “talent.” Effectively a kept man, he coddles Florence, pays off her critics, papers the house, indulges her fancies, and defends her dream world. Even in private conversation, he can’t bring himself to admit that Florence sings badly — as we see in a nice scene with her accompanist, Cosmé McMoon (his real name). And only when he lets down his guard — taking a vacation with his mistress — does Florence set in motion the Carnegie Hall concert that will at once fulfill her dream and bring it crashing down on her.

Ah! Je ris! Frot as Marguerite.

We get more insight into Florence’s character in a single scene than in the entire rest of the movie. On a surprise visit to Cosmé’s apartment, Florence talks about her youthful ambition of becoming a concert pianist, and reveals that damage to her hand cut short her career. Thereupon she and Cosmé sit at the piano and, one hand each, they play a Chopin étude. Suddenly, Streep’s performance isn’t about ticks and twirls, and least of all about her voice: it’s about a real woman who does not happen to be Meryl Streep. The Chopin doesn’t merely show us that music is important to Florence; it shows us why music is important to her, and what music does to her.

Does Bayfield understand this? We never see any evidence, one way or another, and yet that explanation could elevate his behavior from self-interest (so long as he humors her, he enjoys a prosperous lifestyle) or benevolent affection (as depicted here, he really does love her). As the film is constructed, however, we get only hints of Bayfield’s attempt to define the point at which he does his lover no favors by telling her lies.

Those hints come not so much in the dialogue but in the weary blue eyes of Hugh Grant, who plays Bayfield. It’s a remarkable performance, particularly coming from someone whose acting is known more for charm than for depth. He’s coasted on piffle in almost every movie he’s made — and he almost always seems to know it. But here he’s working with Meryl Streep, and he rises to the challenge.

Happy, darling? That’s all that matters.
Streep and Grant.

For those who say Grant isn’t a true actor because he doesn’t (or can’t) play Shakespeare, he offers up a self-aware, truly terrible soliloquy. “No, I’m not Ken Bloody Branagh,” he seems to say, “and isn’t that perfectly marvelous?” In what’s almost a throwaway line, Florence tells Cosmé that she hides bad reviews from Bayfield — just as we know he hides them from her. That’s a theme that should have been explored at greater length. The deceptions are mutual, co-dependent, symbiotic.

Yet even as he’s playing what amounts to a drawing-room comedy, Grant suggests, again and again, how much it costs Bayfield to sustain Florence’s fantasies. The script calls for him to retreat to his bachelor pad — and his mistress, and her bohemian friends — to recharge his batteries. But that’s not enough to save either Bayfield or Florence. Perhaps, then, the lesson of Florence Foster Jenkins is that friends don’t let friends dance like there’s no one watching when people actually are watching.

On The Big Bang Theory, Simon Helberg plays Howard, who (at least in episodes I’ve seen) is often presumed to be gay. Here, he plays Cosmé, who really is gay — though the script doesn’t make much of that, and nothing at all of the immortal paradigm of Diva and Gay Disciple. To this day, Florence’s most ardent followers often are gay men, as they were in her lifetime. Perhaps in a nod to political correctness, the script makes only oblique references to Cosmé’s sexuality — too subtle, I think, since a gay man with whom I saw the movie didn’t understand what Cosmé meant when, arriving late and disheveled (but not bloodied or bruised) to an engagement, he explains that he’s been “waylaid by sailors.”

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Helberg as McMoon.

Seated at the piano, Helberg has to react more than speak, and some of his mugging seems better attuned to TBBT than to FFJ. But he knows how to bring Cosmé’s gayness just to the point of caricature and no further, and he plays piano quite well. He and Streep didn’t dub-and-mime their music, performing directly on camera instead, and their teamwork is inspired — one of many ways in which Frears pays gratifying attention to details that other filmmakers might neglect. But the character is barely sketched, and ultimately his motivation — like Bayfield’s — is summed up with the too-simple explanation that he, too, in his way has fallen in love with Florence.

But why do these men love her? Is it her money, her joy, her vulnerability, all of the above? Ultimately, Florence Foster Jenkins skims along its frilly surfaces, and doesn’t dig terribly deep. That’s not a sin, and yet it’s a shame. The talent is on hand to make a truly superlative picture, one that we’re still talking about seven decades from now — the way we talk about Foster Jenkins herself.

Florence Foster Jenkins is a charming entertainment, perfectly pitched to Streep’s fans and the diehard PBS viewer — which makes it all the more puzzling that the trailers “approved for this audience” all featured phenomenal amounts of violence. Well, I suppose it’s possible that the people who come to see FFJ will also want to see Ben-Hur and Jack Reacher and that other picture with explosions and noise, whatever it was. But really, the tone-deafness (and I use the word advisedly in this context) of the marketers makes it seem almost miraculous that there’s even one Foster Jenkins movie, to say nothing of three.

In this deleted scene, St. Clair Bayfield confronts Foster Jenkins’ critics.
(No, actually, it’s Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, a film I’m unlikely to see, and less likely to enjoy.

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