The Merry Widow

The Age, 12 July 2006

John Slavin [Reviewer]

Director Gary Young creates elegant sets and production values out of simple resources.

Conductor Erich Fackert produces a lively warmth from a youthful orchestra.

There is also a large chorus that sings with great brio.

Enthusiastic sort of Widow

Opera in Review p345.18

Clive O'Connell [reviewer]

Melbourne City Opera has a lengthy association with The Merry Widow, going back to the days when the company was known as Globe Opera and the part of Anna was sung by Suzanne Steele.

This latest version might not have enjoyed the national company's sophisticated veneer in its 2004 production, or the pit-work of Orchestra Victoria but it enjoyed much more overt enthusiasm from its cast and it made every effort to mirror the original's glowing color as a stage-work.

Suzanne Donald, who sang a memorable Violetta in MCO's recent La Traviata, sang an excellent Widow Glawari, by several paces showing the production's most well-honed vocal technique and carrying off nearly all her vocal work with security and panache. Yes, we all waited with high expectations for her Act II Vilja and that carne off exceptionally well, with no signs of frailty in the reprise of the chorus. But her four duets with Kevin Kelly's Danilo, the opening Gentlemen, no more solo with chorus and the larger ensembles found her secure and not hard-pressed to make her line heard, showing few indications of strain.

Both Donald and Kelley arc solid figures and this presentation gave us two mature lovers, a couple without illusions about each other but quite obviously fated to wind up together. This seems to be just as Lehár and his librettists envisioned matters; after all, if the central pair are young athletes, what is the point of introducing Valencienne and Camille as foils for the central couple?

Both sets of lovers, however, were asked to do a fair bit of walking around while speaking their dialogue which brought to mind amateur productions of Wilde where the directors don't trust the words to make their impact unless people are on the move, underlining verbal brilliance with physical motion. In this regard, having Anna and Danilo staring at each other and inching together for an embrace during the Love unspoken duet in Act III seemed an inevitability but also a cliche where the wry affection the couple share comes unstuck and turns aside into something less typical of the characters themselves.

Marilla Holmes sang a fair Valencienne. rather under-directed in communicating the pique that besets her, even though she has set her lover on to woo the Widow. Her voice is rather small in volume but there is no apparent reason why this should be the case as she can he heard quite clearly in ensemble work. As her husband, Baron Zeta, Richard Burman made a fair fist of playing the senior diplomat on tenterhooks, even managing to get a few laughs out of the audience with his misplaced confidence in his wife's fidelity.

Thomas Bult simply tried too hard as Camille, his tenor pushed into overdrive and sometimes bearing little relationship to the supporting orchestral melody-line reinforcement. More focus on generating a sequence of notes rather than belting out the upper register might help to bring this once-resonant tenor voice back into orbit.

Philip Elphinstone enjoyed the opportunity to indulge in an impressive Zsa Zsa Gabor accent as the Pontevedrian Embassy's chamberlain Njegus, milking the role's lines for as many laughs as possible and having a better time of it than the three officials whose fairly nondescript wives spend a small part of the operetta falling into the wrong arms — or trying to.

A pair who matched up well — better here than in several recent productions — were Alexander Roose and Robert Barbaro playing the two young roués on the lookout for a well-financed female sponsor.

These roles are played above all for laughs, like the Pontevedrian officials and their wives; nobody takes the deeper meaning of love at all seriously and the two young men are at their best when spatting with each other. It was hard not to warm to these singer-actors for their involvement in the action and the style with which they portrayed the irresponsibility of handsome youth.

Erich Fackert kept a firn grip of matters musical on stage, the chorus only once or twice moving too quickly for the accompaniment. Still, Fackert did not favor tearaway speeds, least of all for the grisettes' appearances in the final act and he kept his principals in line with some slow cadences. To his credit, nearly everyone seemed to be well served by this idiosyncracy, particularly in solos where each voice had the chance to shine before the pit came in to offer competition.

The band itself worked through Lehár's pages well enough, even if the group could have done with several more violins and the high brass with a dose of more consistent accuracy. Nevertheless, the ensemble remained firm throughout, the woodwind accurate and much of the orchestra's dynamic ebb and flow coming off to general satisfaction.

As for the look of things, Viennese operetta is usually the easiest of theatrical products to dress, chiefly because the men wear white tie and tails with some local color - medals, sashes. garish upper garments - put in for easy visual distraction. This presentation looked remarkably lavish, thanks to costume designer Liz Smallridge's talent for making a good deal out of simple material. Certainly, both leading ladies wore gowns from particular fashion houses but the rest of the female cast were hardly outshone. For once, the compulsory dancers - four mixed couples lookedl content in their work, if not exactly free-and-easy about it; two of the men showed indications of tension by focusing on their partners as opposed to getting lost in the exuberance of the moment, specifically in the ersatz folk-dance part of Act II. But there was a welcome absence of selfabsorption and me focus, so that their interruptions served the point of animating the action rather than stopping it in its tracks.

Patrons would have found enough positive features about this production to justify supporting the Melbourne City Opera enterprise, although this second mid-week night of the work's run found the National Theatre sparingly populated. But the company, now in its 27th year, keeps plugging away, giving chances for exposure to local singers and adding to the Melbourne scene's variety and activity, which has not seen so much opera and operetta available since the days when state and national companies complemented and often vied with each other through substantial annual seasons.

— CLIVE O'CONNELL