STREET SCENE

CENTRAL CITY OPERA: July 13,17,20,26,28,30: August 3

(playing in repertoire with Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance and Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene.”)

 

 

Run to get tickets to Central City Opera’s towering production of Kurt Weill’s “STREET SCENE!!!” There are only two matinees remaining. (Opening night was canceled due to illness in the cast, and this was the earliest I could reschedule.)

 

     If you saw the 1999 CCO production of Weill’s Street Scene, you may recognize the incredibly well-done scenic design by David Harwell.   Everything else is brand new for this production!

    With book by Elmer Rice, and Lyrics by Langston Hughes, Composer Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene” presents us with life on two scorching hot summer days on a New York City street.

     Weill’s opera is based upon Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play about life in the slums. Intending it to be an amalgam of traditional European opera and American musical theatre, Weill won the Tony Award for Best Composer at the First Tony Awards Ceremony in 1947.

      Having fled from Berlin in 1933, Weill came by way of Paris and London to New York City in 1935. 

      When speaking with my friend, Henry Lowenstein, many years ago, Henry talked about Kurt Weill composing works such as “The Threepenny Opera,” which had lyrics by Bertolt Brecht   - “Mack the Knife” - on the piano in the Lowenstein home in Berlin.)  But I digress…  

     Rice’s book for Weill’s opera allows for certain portions of this piece to be dialogue underscored by music to put emphasis on the various sounds of the accents in the melting pot that was then East Manhattan.

     Director/choreographer Daniel Pelzig paces the production at a bright clip.

       The actors onstage and the musicians in the pit of the Central City Opera Orchestra are kept in perfect alignment under the baton of conductor Adam Turner. 

     

     Katherine Pracht portrays Anna Maurrant, the longsuffering under-appreciated wife of the piece with a mellifluous soprano.

     Christian Sanders’ portrayal of the tender-hearted and ultimately heartbroken Sam Kaplan is delivered with a tenor that is breathtaking. 

      Christie Conover’s soaring soprano as Rose Maurrant, is ear-pleasing indeed!

       The part of Frank Maurrant is brought to life by the powerful singing and acting of basso Kevin Burdette, the artist who stunned as Claggert in CCO’s astounding production of Benjamin Britten’s BILLY BUDD a few seasons back.

     The show deals with the challenges these immigrants had as well as the complex nature of their heart-wrenching, relationships.

     Weill’s score is full of operatic arias such as Anna’s “Somehow I Never Could Believe” and Frank’s strident “Let Things Be Like They Always Was.”    

     Weill delivers jazz and blues in such numbers as “I Got a Marble and a Star” and “Lonely House.” 

     Some of the songs leaning into the Broadway style are “Wrapped in a Ribbon and Tied in a Bow”, “Wouldn’t You Like to be on Broadway” and “Moon-Faced, Starry Eyed.”

      There are so many outstanding performances - over thirty named roles in the cast- and so little time to get this review out!

      Go and experience this magnificent production for yourself!!!

 

                      GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!

 

                     NOT TO BE MISSED!!!

 

     

 

For tickets go online to boxoffice@centralcityopera.org 

or call 303-292-6700

 Othello 2024

The John Hand Theater: June 29 - July 28

Shakespeare’s Othello is adapted by Greg Sherman and Gregory Wolfe

 

     Othello was the first Shakespearean play I got to see. 

      It was 1965, and I was a sophomore in high school. If the nuns said it was important, our parents would send us as a class to see a movie for the group fee of just one dollar each. This version gave us Laurence Olivier in blackface as the Moor of Venice. Maggie Smith was Desdemona, and Frank Finlay was Iago. I was clueless about all that Elizabethan speech and was glad as hell to be at the World Theatre in Billings, instead of sweating out problems in Mr. Roberts’ algebra class.

       Subsequently I’ve seen Shakespeare’s tragedy many times.

     Timeless in its message, this adaptation is “timelier” than most in that “OTHELLO 2024” focuses not only on the deceitfulness of Shakespeare’s most heinously two-faced villain, but also upon the deception that is inflicted upon us as citizens by the media with all of its slanted political mudslinging and lying broadcasters. 

     This production is also updated in the sense that communication is done, not only by the spoken word, but also by texting, emails and even zooms.

      It may take you a minute to get into the flow of this production, but the director makes quick work of that by adding projections and ‘news videos’ that clarify.

      Insidious and ubiquitous, the villainous, Iago, is played with gleeful malevolence by Denver favorite, Kelly Uhlenhopp. Marlowe Award Winner for her performance as Maggie, the cat, in Vintage Theatre’s magnificent production of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” it’s hard not to have the words, “Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity,” ringing in his ears as she works her venomous plans.

     Director Andrew Uhlenhopp has cast the show well and paced it in such a way that the energy of his very fine cast never flags. (Fresh off his brilliant performance as Mark Rothko in Town Hall Arts’ excellent production of “RED,” one hopes to see Uhlenhopp onstage again soon as well as in the director’s chair again soon.)

     TJ Jackson is well cast as the honorable and credulous Othello. Handsome and charismatic, this actor speaks Shakespeare’s words eloquently, and gives a damned good stab at the madness required for the final scenes. 

    Emily Ebertz is an enchanting Desdemona. Her reading of the part is excellent, and her acting in the final scenes of this tragedy enhances our catharsis.

     Kate Poling’s Emilia is also a stand-out!

      Greg Sherman’s and Gregory Wolfe’s adaptation is a cautionary tale regarding the importance of source-checking   what we hear on the news and see on the internet.

     Not every adaptation of the canon works. This one will grab you by the throat and leave you breathless.

     Run to get a ticket. 

 

Photo credit: RDG PHOTOGRAPHY

 

The Firehouse Theatre Company is currently presenting Othello 2024, a contemporizing of Shakespeare’s play about The Moor of Venice.

For tickets call 303-562-3232 or go online at firehousetheatercompany.com

 LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST

(THE GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST)

CENTRAL CITY OPERA: July 7,10,12,14,19,21,23,27,31; August 3.

(playing in repertoire with Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” and Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene.)

 

CENTRAL CITY OPERA’S PRODUCTION OF PUCCINI’S “GIRL OF THE GOLDEN WEST” ENTHRALLS!

 

     Composed by Giacomo Puccini with libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, this opera is based upon a 1905 play by David Belasco. Puccini had based “Madama Butterfly” on another of Belasco’s plays. 

     Influenced by the work of Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss, Puccini infused this opera with folk music and a cinematic pulse to give it the flavor of the American West.

     Admired for its melodic orchestral score, Puccini believed his “American opera” to be “the greatest composition of his career.”

     “La Fanciulla del West” was the first world premier staged at the Met. It was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. 

     Puccini’s only “American” opera, it was a departure from the composer’s usual fare in that it had no stand-alone arias, and (spoiler alert) has a happy ending. 

     Director Fenlon Lamb’s casting is superb. This artist’s pacing of Puccini’s opera keeps the audience enthralled throughout!

     Kara Shay Thomson plays Minnie, the owner of the Polka Saloon. This character is a strong woman, who is a conniver and survivor. Shay has a soaring soprano that expresses the power of a pistol-packing frontier woman, who knows what she wants and how to get it. Minnie’s fierce fortitude differs from the women in Verdi’s previous operas, who were mostly victims.    

     Minnie is pursued throughout by sheriff Jack Rance (Grant Youngblood) and later becomes enamored of newcomer Dick Johnson, who is sung with great passion by tenor Jonathan Burton. 

    Grant Youngblood has given flawless performances at Central City Opera as John Proctor in “The Crucible,” “Germont in “La Traviata, Sharpless in “Madama Butterfly” and Horace Tabor in “The Ballad of Baby Doe.” 

     Here his acting as Jack Rance is darkly menacing, and his baritone commanding!

     In Act Two we learn that Johnson is the bandit Ramerrez, in disguise. A posse shoots him, and Minnie hides him upstairs at the saloon. When Rance discovers where he’s at, Minnie challenges him (Rance) to a game of poker. If she wins, he must let Johnson go free. If she loses, she must marry Rance. Minnie wins by cheating. In Act three, Rance tries to hang Johnson with the help of a posse, and Minnie convinces the miners to let him go.   

      Under the baton of conductor Andrew Bisantz, the Central City Opera orchestra gives a rousing performance of Verdi’s score.

      Choral Director, Brandon Eldredge makes the sound of Verdi’s male chorus ring through the opera house with ear-pleasing gusto.

     The set design by Papermoon Opera Productions is mostly excellent…except for the two blossoms? of one knows not what on either side of the lip of the stage.

     Originally set in an 1849 California mining camp during a gold rush, this production is set in Central City during the gold rush in an opera theatre built during the gold rush.   

      Not to be missed! Rush to get tickets!

 

303-292-6700 or boxoffice@centralcityopera.org