Sometimes life seems to be feast or famine. So if life lately hasn’t been a feast exactly, it’s been a good meal. I’ve had an interesting couple of months ‘experiencing’ musical stage works. Four pieces of the most diverse make-up: a live performance of musical ‘flop’ that keeps getting produced, a live performance of an operatic masterpiece that continues to divide audiences, an audio recording of a Grammy-winning opera of high quality, and a television production of the most successful stage work of all time (which is hated almost as much as it is loved.)
The ‘flop’ is Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along. Though they had written the award-winning Company, Merrily's original Broadway production lasted 16 performances. Nothing seemed right about it. Everyone—writers, director, designers, actors—were excoriated. The unbelievably successful working relationship between Sondheim and the great director Hal Prince was severed. But years later, James Lapine, who worked with Sondheim on three shows, believed it could be made better. The authors believed in it enough to re-work it over a period of years until they arrived at the version I saw. Both names are important here: as fantastic as the music / lyrics side of the piece may be, the book half is flawed, somewhat generic, though it certainly accommodates Sondheim’s powerful contribution. The story shows the gradual dissolution of the friendship between Frank, a composer; Charlie, his book writer/lyrist; and Mary, a novelist, who futilely love’s Frank from afar. The novelty of the show is that the story is told backwards. It starts in 1980 and moves back to the first flight of Sputnik in 1957. This is not the confusing jumble that some people have accused it of being. The de-evolution of all the relationships in the show is so obvious, a child could follow it. And much of the humor comes from the irony ‘discovered’ when the scene goes back a few years. All the main characters have their moments of surprise, where you find they had done something in their ‘past’ that affects the ‘future’ in a way unsuspected.
No, the issue isn’t the backward movement, it’s the weak character ‘development’. The central issue involves the composer: he chooses the easy, shallow, greedy life of the Hollywood/Broadway bottom feeders—a life where true friendships have no room—instead of the tougher life of staying true to his belief in an ‘art’ that is original and meaningful. Before the first (last) scene, where he is no longer composing but just producing blockbusters of dubious worth, Frank has spent his career writing things like, say, Mame, instead of something like, say, well, Company. Eventually, Charlie can’t take it anymore and dissolves the partnership. We certainly learn how it happened. Like I said, a child could follow it. Alas, Frank makes all these awful choices, but we’re supposed to feel for him despite it. He always seems to be on the fence, conflicted, but makes the bad choice every time. As written, he is a symbol not an actual ‘person.’ The only real depth comes from the music and lyrics. And his uncertainty makes for a fuzzy, unsatisfying character. Charlie, Mary, Beth (Frank’s first wife), Joe Josephson, the producer, and his wife, Gussie, are much more interesting, with more facets to their lines and their music. And they just make Frank seem all that more one-dimensional. Sondheim tries to give him some complication. He succeeds only a little. Everyone else just comes out so much more enticing.
So why is it continually produced? (I’ve seen it three times over the years, in three different versions. It also has had three recordings.) It’s often funny. It has several great roles that showcase strong singing actors. And the score is magnificent. Not a song is weak. Not a number is rote. Everything defines character: conflicts arise between characters and within characters, hidden emotions rise to the surface, the reprise in the second half of songs we first hear in the first gives everyone a dimension the book fails to provide. Charley has a one-of-a-kind drunken rant on national TV called “Franklyn Shepard, Inc.” Believe me, nothing in any show is quite like this. Sui generis, positively. And a whole musical scene shows the development of the young trio as they attempt to learn how to become the artists they dream they will be. It covers months of time in less than 10 minutes. The one ‘hit’—Not a Day Goes By—is just another of many wonderful numbers. (And it is wonderful. Bernadette Peters is justly famous for her interpretation.) In Act One, it’s Beth’s description of the conflicted love she will always feel for Frank, but adds the reasons why she has to leave. (Frank is having an affair with Gussie.) And its ‘return’ in Act Two appears as the song Frank and Beth sing as they are getting married, and in a painful counterpoint, what Mary sings when she admits she will always love him unremarked. Brilliant. With the knowledge of Act One, we realize he will betray the love of all the women in his life. The final scene, which is where the three friends meet, is a heart-breaker, given all we know. They sing of the lives they will lead, now that the world is on the brink of greatness, and they will be a part of it. It’s beautifully portrayed optimism we know to be dead by the time they realize what life brings them. So as an audience member, how do you approach something you know is flawed? I just tried to enjoy it for what it had to offer, not for what I might think it should be. With a good enough cast, it’s worth seeing. (And the one I saw was just good enough.) It’s imperfect. But not enough to stop doing it. Or if it hasn’t come your way yet, buy a recording of the music…at least that way, you have the best of it at your fingertips until it shows up.
The masterpiece that divides listeners so strongly is Hans Werner Henze’s Elegy For Young Lovers. This biting, mercurial, painful, exquisite piece has a libretto written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, the authors of the priceless The Rake’s Progress for Igor Stravinsky. In 1910, five characters orbit a famous poet, Gregor Mittenhofer, baritone, who is trying to find inspiration for this latest poem. He’s a monster who devours anyone in his wake to achieve his ‘art.’ His ‘muse’ is Hilda Mack, coloratura soprano, a woman with ‘visions’, who has spent the last forty years (!) knitting a scarf while awaiting her husband, who was killed on the Hammerhorn on the first day of their honeymoon. His mistress is a young woman, Elisabeth Zimmer, soprano, who is mesmerized by the famous man, though he is far too old for her, and hides his true, self-interested, hateful nature. Carolina, Countess of Kirchstetten, contralto, is his patroness and much abused secretary, who devotes her life to the cause of ‘great art’ and the ‘great artist’ who produces it. The poet’s physician, Doctor Wilhelm Reischmann, bass, is a quack who feeds his ego by being on call to such an ‘eminent’ man. He has a son, Toni, tenor, who falls in love with Elisabeth, virtually at first sight. By the end, Mittenhofer has destroyed everyone except Hilda, who becomes the only person to escape his heartless clutches. He sends the young lovers to their deaths just to finish his latest poem, Elegy for Young Lovers.
The changing positions of these six— the fights, apologies (usually disingenuous), raptures, despairs, mockeries, insights, and reversals make up the intricate, well-delineated, fascinating plot. The quality of the words is, obviously, a given, knowing the talent and skill of the authors. They do not disappoint. It is highly literate, poetic, painful, and beautiful. It would probably work as a straight play, though as a lesser thing. From the beginning, most critics and audiences have praised the libretto (a rare thing in opera.)
With so much richness of character (and poetry), Henze created one of his earliest masterpieces, but one that the original critics did not always appreciate. Half a century later, it has become an accepted part of the modern repertoire in Europe, if not America. So getting to experience the work live on this side of the Atlantic was a rare treat. All the singers were students of Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia, and were excellent from top to bottom. Voice types do ‘surround’ the poet, from the highest, Hilda, to the lowest, Doctor Reischmann. And each character is assigned an instrument as an accompaniment / soloist, creating counterpoints that suggest unspoken emotions not allowed to surface. Hilda has a flute, further connecting her to Lucia, Elisabeth has a violin, Toni has a viola, Carolina has an English horn, Doctor Reischmann has a bassoon or saxophone, and Mitterhofer has percussion. Even on a first listen, the variety and uniqueness of the music for each individual character is obvious. No one sounds anything like the other, except when they meet up, such as the elegiac scene where Elisabeth convinces Hilda to come back from her lunacy because her husband’s body has been found. Their short duet, where Hilda repeats the words Elisabeth tells her, is sorrowful, lovely. And of course, when the lovers sing together, their music is matched as well.
So the problem? The music is through-composed, variations being abundant but with no literal repeats. It is atonal and often quite complex, especially for Hilda Mack, whose madness is like Lucia di Lammermoor’s times ten. (Henze said this ‘mad scene’ was his model.) This role is perhaps the strongest of all, but it requires immense skill. The range is wide, and the lines as apt to be angular as lyrical. And they have to be both, yet sung with skill and warmth for her character to come across successfully. Mittenhofer has seemingly inexhaustible traits, almost split personalities, that are made evident through his kaleidoscopic music. It is complex as well, if not so extreme. The scenes that make-up each act are rarely long, which is a curse/blessing. The musical development passes rather quickly to register with just one hearing, so the three acts can seem disjointed to a casual listener. (To be fair, it wasn’t written for ‘casual’ listeners. It assumes a level of musical knowledge.) And the score lasts just under three hours, so anyone trying to come to this with an ear listening for Puccini is in for a long haul. So it’s never going to be the opera revived over and over to pay the bills. But if you can follow it, the journey is a wondrous one. What extraordinary originality is on every page! An obvious sign of Henze’s talent is his ability to delineate each character aurally: not as static symbols, but complex beings, requiring complex music. They all have a range of styles but never sound like anyone but themselves (with the exceptions noted above.) Add to that, his skill at accommodating an English libretto with ease and inspiration, and you have a masterpiece. But a tough one. A third of the audience left during one of the intermissions at the performance I saw. In some ways, I sympathize with them. I’m sure they felt like they were watching a play in Russian without subtitles. The musicians could not be faulted, in the pit or onstage. They all brought out the many wonderful textures of the work. And every singer had an impressive, well-trained, easily-produced voice. Even the young woman singing Hilda seemed perfectly in control. (And they were students!) Their English was quite clear a majority of the time. (A higher ratio than most singers can achieve in works of the standard rep.) If they would only record it! I understand why some left. I’m just glad enough people can gauge its greatness so it lives on. Now if someone would just produce The Bassarids, another collaboration between Henze and Auden and Kallman…and another masterpiece.
The Grammy winner is composer, Robert Aldridge, and author, Herschel Garfein’s Elmer Gantry. This is the ‘un-Henze’ in every way. The chorus has a huge part of the action. Set-pieces abound, are clear, direct, musically apt. The musical language is mid-20th Century American tonal. The opening riff is an obvious nod to the beginning of Porgy and Bess, and the use of chorus singing ‘popular’ forms, including religious choruses, would seem to allude to it as well. But the actual music is nothing like Gershwin’s. It sings in lines akin to Copland and Barber, knows Carlisle Floyd, even the English Benjamin Britten. It is often sensuously beautiful, though it isn’t afraid to use dissonance and complexity when they are appropriate. The music for the main character, a baritone Elmer Gantry, is wide-ranging, driving, persuasive—the audience should fall for his overwhelming ability to sell anything to anyone, as well as forgive him his great lusts and blind selfishness. He’s an anti-hero, to be sure, but a charismatic one. He’s hard to resist: a Bible-school graduate with a sharp mind, a quick tongue, a taste for alcohol, and a healthy libido, he is an unselfconscious hypocrite—he views everyone, friend and foe alike, as a means to get what he wants. And what he wants, he discovers, is power and money. He finds them when he teams up with a ‘revivalist’ named Sister Sharon Falconer, mezzo, a true believer who has a huge following but is tired of traveling the country. She wants to build a giant tabernacle as a permanent place for her congregation, and Gantry’s salesmanship helps get it for her. She succumbs to his verbal abilities, protestations of love, and unswerving commitment. Pushed to her limits, she betrays her own integrity to achieve her dream. Like a sign from above, though, the church catches fire, killing Falconer and most of her ‘flock.’ Instead of being destroyed, however, Gantry just finds another ‘idea’ he can sell, as if nothing horrific had occurred. His amorality destroys the lives of most of the other main characters, including a mistress, Lulu, soprano and her husband, Eddie, tenor. Lulu was the college president’s daughter when she started her affair with Elmer, before eventually marrying Eddie—once Elmer’s friend, then a minister who falls for Lulu’s sexual advances and is made helpless by them. He repents by dragging his wife forward to denounce Elmer, just to die in the blaze. And Frank, tenor, Elmer’s college roommate, never fully believes, because no matter how hard he tries, he cannot give up the ‘sinful’ yearnings he has always felt. The kindred spirit he first shared with Elmer, a love of alcohol and women, turns to pain, as his ‘friend’ has an obviously hypocritical success, while he self-destructs in the choking noose of small town morality.
The music is quite accomplished, often quite marvelous (if conservative to listeners expecting the avant-garde). The scenes move strongly from one to the other, each with its own ‘sound’ and musical ‘identity’. Choruses underscore many scenes, highly evocatively. Elmer seems to steal something from all the people around him, so his power and changeability is musical as well as literal. Actually, all the main characters have their chances to shine, not always in obvious ways, a sign of talent and smarts on the part of author and composer. Two notable selections: Eddie’s sermon/aria at the end of Act One is so unlike everything before or after it that it makes a lasting impression, even from a somewhat one-dimensional character. And Frank has a tipsy midnight confession to Elmer, admitting that he does not believe and does not know how to start. Sitting at a piano, he plays the hymn ‘What a Friend We Have In Jesus’ as a sad commentary on what he does not, and probably never will, possess. Many scenes are full to overflowing with truly luscious music. One of the best allows Elmer to move from puppy dog helper, to confessor of his love to Sharon, then persuader that she loves him too—it goes from comedy, to tender confession, then deeply conflicted feelings on both parts, probably the only time Elmer admits weakness. Everything builds to a passionate, soaring love duet. You can hear Sister Sharon capitulate to her human desires for the first time in her life. But throughout Gantry, the strong, supple, rewarding vocal lines are sometimes difficult, though always within the skills of non-‘specialists’. That all-important choral writing is exceptional, so rare in modern works. And nothing wears out its welcome.
But…there’s usually a ‘but’, if a small one. The words are more smartly functional than inspired. They aren’t bad, just rarely exceptional. We’ve heard music like this before, so expectations are high. Aldridge certainly fulfills our expectations…most of the time. This is emotional, moving music, and it rewards listening. Conflicts are natural in their development, musically as well as literarily. A couple of missteps here and there, but only one out-and-out- mistake. A seduction scene where Lulu and Eddie try to get evidence of Elmer’s hypocrisy has unconvincing words and music. The scene is set up well, it just doesn’t pay off. But it isn’t long or lethal. On the opposite scale, the last thirty minutes are absolutely electrifying. The recording is from live performances, but with good, full sound, and a nice round projection of the voices. Keith Phares is an Elmer of one’s dreams. Beautiful, charismatic singing, dynamic declamation, ability to evoke humor through smart inflections, always characterful, great diction, not a hint of strain. Patricia Risley as Sharon is his match (save a very few muddled phrases here or there which make her sound matronly). Tenor Vale Rideout makes so much of his few scenes as Frank, he seems like he has more music than he does. But no one is less than good, most are excellent. I’ll continue to listen to Elmer Gantry, if only every few years. I have too many to hear/see to give this time every year. Now, if someone around here will do it.
The most successful stage work ever is the beloved / loathed The Phantom of the Opera. Andrew Lloyd Webber is the composer, in case you didn’t know. After all the pros and cons, I felt it was time to come to grips with it. Nothing will beat its record, certainly not in my lifetime. The music is the thing here: the words are sophomoric, obvious, and repetitive to exasperation, as if the worst of those ridiculous operettas of the 1920’s were back from the dead. Often, the rhymes could be completely different without changing the plot or characterization one iota. (The love duet (That’s) All I Ask of You is one instance. That’s All I’ll Ever Need or Our Love Will Never Die—Love Never Dies is the name of the ‘sequel’ to the show—or My Heart Is In Your Hands…a dozen others would also work.) The repetitive part is insurance that everyone, and I mean everyone, will follow what is happening at every second. The same conversations, about Christine’s lessons with the Phantom being reality or ‘dream’, must come and go a dozen times. The ‘libretto’ of the Phantom’s opera, which should be a masterpiece (since we are told he is a musical genius) is doggerel. But it’s better than the words of the opera being performed when the Phantom first appears to the company. It tries to reference Le Nozze di Figaro but proves embarrassing to anyone who knows the real masterpiece. The attempts at humor fail every time. Really, every time! The actors are forced to overact grotesquely just to earn their (few) laughs. But you have to give it to the faceless writer(s)—people do laugh at the ‘antics’. (Some people.)
Lloyd Webber is no dummy, though. He has a great story to tell and he knows how to tell it. Every word has a purpose, if just a way of getting from one big number over here to the next big number over there. The story is visual as much a verbal, and L.W. makes the most of those opportunities, too. The boat ride, through the sewers of Paris, is accompanied by the most bombastic, loud, repetitive music of the entire work. Most listeners who love the piece would call the music ‘spooky’, ‘powerful’, even ‘mesmerising.’ After all, The Phantom has been hypnotizing Christine, to train her voice so she will be a great opera star. We see it as well as hear it. So all those conversations about ‘dream’ versus ‘reality’ are already explained before they happen. See? No confusion. And the chandelier makes a physical as well as musical crash. Even critics of the piece have to admit it’s a great moment. Sudden appearances, discovered murder victims, echoing effects from the rafters show up just when attention might lull. Some of these are actually surprising. Most of them can be seen on their way long before they arrive. But no one is supposed to be listening for anything but what is on the surface.
And it’s a polished surface. I think of Phantom as the greatest McMusical ever written. It is made entirely of things that are familiar. All the pieces are uniform, easily digestible, tasty, and satisfying to millions. This isn’t a seasoned porterhouse steak. Or a chocolate soufflé. Too many people might not like them. Lloyd Webber has a menu of choices—but not too many, lest he write something that can’t be repeated multiple times within the two hour limit—and he mixes a bit of this with a bit of that, and recombines them in simple variation. So a nugget with fries for this scene and a salad with a cheeseburger for another. And then switch them. But a very sweet soda goes with everything. You can be sure before you sit down that all the melodies will show up with a huge orchestra bellowing them out, lots of strings, usually playing the melody in octaves, all the better to notice and remember. Unlike most composers of musicals, L.W. does much of his own orchestrations. And he approves of all the rest…you better believe he does. To the chord.
So every note will be repeated, often literally—same melody, same harmony, same accompaniment figures, same orchestrations. But wait! Not always. Just to confound his detractors, some repeats are ‘disguised’ by the music surrounding them, or by a different accompaniment or a few fleeting seconds of a ‘strange’ orchestration. Every small moment only gives a chance for the audience to catch its breath before the next giant one. And these ‘big’ numbers are repeated the most—of course they are—with the most overwhelming orchestrations, all the better to force you into submission. L.W. plans for this. The major numbers are always comprised of several shorter sections, allowing him to drop a chunk in here and there when he needs them at other times. The smaller moments often show up in truncated form. And the repeats are not just between numbers but within them. Most numbers start with a few notes that are immediately repeated, no change or variation even in the harmony. Variety will come on the ‘back side’ of the sections, rarely on the ‘front’, so the repeated music will survive in the mind through any differences by the time the first notes come back around. And though I do not need to repeat it, they always come back around. By Act Two, two thirds of what is heard will have come from somewhere else first. This leaves the story to move swiftly toward the final showdown of opera singer and deadly muse…which, coincidently, is the one honestly moving section of the piece. No musical bombardment necessary (though Lloyd Webber can’t help but add some.)
Lloyd Webber is a good magpie. He only steals things he knows he can manipulate. Phantom is his Puccini opera. Musical ‘ideas’ may come directly from the Italian’s works, but they are usually smashed into a nice, round musical patty, just right for easy consumption. An opera lover is often shocked to hear a chunk of Madama Butterfly one minute or (infamously) La Fanciulla del West another. (It makes up a very important phrase of The Music of the Night.) And to prove he knows more than Puccini, our proud composer tries to show his ‘love’ for earlier Italian opera, like those by Mozart, by composing an ‘homage’ here and there for the scenes ‘onstage’ at the opera. Fortunately, these are short. I suspect he knows he’s not very good at it and too many people might not ‘like’ true opera anyway. Besides, he’s saving all his good stuff for the times that are not supposed to be by someone else. And the final ‘joke’? None of this music is sophisticated enough to show up in any self-respecting opera. No, this is a musical, for better or worse; with a wider range to some of the parts, true, but still not too far from what might show up on a concert of Broadway tunes. Who am I to complain? He didn’t write this for opera lovers. He wrote it for people who think they know what opera is. It’s ‘Nessun dorma!’. He’s telling them they’re right. Confirmation may be the one truly genius ingredient in Sir Andrew’s impossibly popular recipe.
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