THE MERRY WIDOW
CONDUCTOR: Andrew Davis
DIRECTOR and CHOREOGRAPHER: |Susan Stroman
CAST: Renée Fleming, Nathan Gunn, Kelli O’Hara, Thomas Allen, Alek Shrader and |Carson Elrod
RUNNING TIME: 185 minutes
RATING: ****
When it premiered in 1905, Lehár’s most famous operetta, The Merry Widow, became an immediate success. Within two years it was performed all over the world.
How can it ever be meaningful 110 years later? The story still transports us right into a Parisian milieu where embassy personnel and café society mingle in innocent romantic intrigue. There is the unknown but rather exotic connection to the state, Pontevidrinia, which like all mythic principalities in operetta, is both sublime and ridiculous.
It is from there that Hanna Glawari, the jaw-dropping beautiful title character, stems. After the sudden death of her filthy rich husband, she sojourns in the French capital where she is courted by several Frenchmen.
This irks her countryman Baron Zeta, the Pontevedrinian ambassador in Paris. Should she marry a foreigner, her wealth will pass out of her homeland’s economy.
To overcome this Zeta plans to enlist the diplomat Count Danilo, who once proposed to Hanna, to woo her. Will Zeta’s plan work?
The Metropolitan Opera’s new production and Renée Fleming’s somewhat belated New York debut in this role, is a confident one, but not in all matters totally ideal.
For much of the staging the Met picked talent from their neighbouring Broadway: the director and choreographer Susan Stroman, the singer Kelli O’Hara, set and costume designers and most of the dancers.
It is visually impressive, with bubbly action reflecting just the right sort of light-hearted humour the piece needs. The dialogues do strain the necessary pace from time to time, but it seldom becomes serious. Apart from Fleming, Nathan Gunn in the role of Count Danilo and Thomas Allen as Baron Zeta, the remaining cast is mostly exhilaratingly youthful.
The star among them is the glamorous Broadway singer O’Hara’s Valenciene. Everything is vocally and visually perfect and abundantly in place.
Alek Shrader, apart from a couple of times when his voice sounds pinched, is an ardent and winning Camille.
A lifetime’s experience helps the 70-year old veteran Thomas Allen to be a sheer joy to watch as the somewhat confused and disorganised, but in all other matters still a sparkling ambassador of formidable proportions.
Gunn, who has a reputation in both musicals and operettas, has some alluring vocal qualities and is often credibly confident in an unconventional way as the heart-throb diplomat Danilo. His acting abilities reflect some subtle inflections which most of the other singers don’t totally master.
Fleming’s first act is from time to time just a tad too distanced, but her second act, Vilja’s Song, had lots of gutsy character. It was a pity that she does not hold the final high note of this passionate song as she would have wished. Hanna’s attractive and smouldering femininity is only fully and totally convincing in the final act when she found her man.
Andrew Davis often creates high levels of spontaneous excitement in his conducting of this lushly orchestrated, never-ending string of everlasting melodies.
• Screening until March 5 in all Cinema Nouveau theatres.