Lyric Opera’s ‘Show Boat’ emerges out of the past
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic/hweiss@suntimes.com February 13, 2012 12:07PM
Nathan Gunn (as Gaylord Ravenal) and Alyson Cambridge (as Julie LaVerne) take their bows with the rest of the cast of Lyric Opera's new production of "Show Boat." The musical opens Feb. 12 at the Civic Opera House. | Tom Cruze~Sun-Times
‘SHOW BOAT’
When: Sunday-March 17
Where: Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker
Tickets: $34-$254
Info: (312) 332-2244;
lyricopera.org
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Updated: March 13, 2012 8:05AM
There is something indescribably exciting about works of art created at crucial transitional moments in history — works that magically bridge the spirit of the traditional with the contemporary to form something bold and new.
First produced on Broadway in 1927, with a book based on Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel and a groundbreaking Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II score, “Show Boat” stands as a prime example of such a work. That it still eludes classification as either an opera or musical theater, and is produced under both labels (sometimes generating opera house controversy), is an enduring testament to its status as a crucially important “crossover” piece.
Spanning the Gay ’90s to the Roaring ’20s and set in the Deep South and Chicago, “Show Boat” spins a story about race, romance, the lure of the great Mississippi River and the equally magnetic pull of show business itself. The show’s initial producer, the legendary Florenz Ziegfeld, dubbed it “the best musical comedy I have ever been fortunate to get a hold of.” Hal Prince’s elaborate revival of the work, which played at the Auditorium Theatre here in 1996, flirted with operatic scale, but was designed for Broadway.
For Lyric Opera of Chicago, director Francesca Zambello is giving us her vision of “Show Boat,” with a grand-scale orchestra and a cast that includes internationally acclaimed opera singers and a slew of Chicago actors with major musical theater and dramatic credits. “Show Boat,” which also launches Lyric’s musical-theater initiative, opens Sunday and runs through March 17 at the Civic Opera House.
“This is definitely a hybrid work,” said Zambello, who has staged “Show Boat” in various formats at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall in recent years. The general and artistic director of the Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York, Zambello is a longtime opera director whose credits include San Francisco Opera’s 2011 “Ring” cycle and Lyric’s 2008 production of the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess” (another “crossover” work, first heard in a concert version at Carnegie Hall in 1935 and then mounted on Broadway later the same year). She made her Broadway directorial debut in 2008 with the musical “The Little Mermaid.”
“I see this as the beginning of America’s own version of opera,” said the director. “‘Show Boat’ is to this country’s audiences what 19th century opera was to Italian and German audiences, both in its level of accessibility and popularity. Because it is a crossover work, there are both the vestigial influences of Europe [Kern knew his Puccini, Verdi, Mussorgsky and operetta], but also a real sense of American music, from jazz to gospel to vaudeville, with all the mix of languages of an immigrant country. It was just an incredibly forward-thinking show.”
Along with its rapturous score (“Make Believe,” “Ol’ Man River,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” “You Are Love” and “Bill”), it was the Ferber story itself, a far cry from the era’s light opera and Follies revues, that made “Show Boat” such a momentous work. With a first act set in 1890 as the Cotton Blossom, the colorful vessel of the title, is moored on the levee at Natchez, Miss., and a second act set in Chicago during the World’s Fair of 1893 and later in 1904 and then 1927, it captures rural and urban society.
And it homes in on several troubled love affairs. One is between Gaylord Ravenal (Nathan Gunn), the dashing gambler, and Magnolia Hawks (Ashley Brown), the starry-eyed romantic and daughter of the show boat’s owners, Captain Andy (Ross Lehman) and his show-biz-hating wife, Parthy (Cindy Gold). The other, warped by the miscegenation laws of the time, is between the singer Julie LaVerne (Alyson Cambridge), a mulatto who “passes” for white, and a white actor named Steve Baker (James Farruggio).
“I’m still amazed at Ferber’s bravery in taking on a subject like this,” Zambello said. “If you read accounts of the show’s opening-night performance, you realize how revolutionary it was. Remember, this was 1927, and here was a musical dealing with racism that also marked the first time African-Americans and whites performed on the same stage. It also was a story about real people in real circumstances, including the plight of a single mother.”
Because “Show Boat” arrived before the advent of amplification, it remains particularly fitting for the operatic stage. At the Lyric, its extensive sections of dialogue will be miked for purposes of clarity (a practice generally verboten at opera houses), though the singing will be entirely acoustic.
“Amplification changed the nature of singing, and I think the future will be how the technology blends with each musical form,” she said. “But really, was [Broadway star] Robert Preston’s voice all that different from Nathan Gunn’s, and was [operatic baritone-turned-Broadway star] Ezio Pinza’s voice all that different from [operatic baritone/Tony winner] Paulo Szot’s in ‘South Pacific’? There are many shows that can work on either type of stage. This summer [at Glimmerglass], we’re producing ‘The Music Man’ and ‘Lost in the Stars’ as well as ‘Aida.’
“I find it thrilling to hear the composite of operatic, musical theater and comedic voices in parallel in ‘Show Boat’ and. along with the big Lyric orchestra, audiences here will get a sense of the 1927 original with its large African-American and white choruses. It’s a unique opportunity, and of course our fabulous conductor, John DeMain [who spent 18 years with the Houston Grand Opera], has had long experience with this show, as well as ‘Porgy and Bess.’ ”
For Nathan Gunn, the Indiana-born baritone who has not only sung major roles in works from Mozart to Bizet and originated many roles in new operas, but also teamed up with pal Mandy Patinkin in concert, one of the thrills of “Show Boat” is the way “acting, and the focus on words, helps sculpt the delivery of the music,” he said. “In the classical world, you try to do exactly what is on the musical page. Working on a hybrid like this is ideal because words have always come first for me.”
Opera singers arrive “off book,” he noted, while musical theater actors tend to use the rehearsal process as a way of shaping their performances and learning their lines. (Opera also forgoes the grinding eight-shows-a-week schedule common to musical theater, where amplification is the rule.)
As for playing Ravenal, Gunn is most intrigued that he is a character “who is not who he appears to be.”
“He gets all the beautiful music, and says all the right things, and then he falls into his addiction for gambling and leaves his wife and child,” said Gunn, who noted that for Ravenal’s Southern accent, he turned to his wife’s family in Texas, particularly her “steel magnolia” grandmother.
As for the music, “The role of Ravenal is written more for a low tenor than a high baritone, so it can be tricky and challenging. You have to negotiate a lot of different rhythmically and tonally complicated styles, too.”
For soprano Alyson Cambridge, as Julie, art is in many ways imitating real life in “Show Boat.” She’s the biracial daughter of a Guyanese father and a mother of Danish and Norwegian extraction from Minnesota.
“Francesca [Zambello] has a theory that something inevitably happens to a performer that relates to the character he or she is playing, and it has happened to me on this production,” Cambridge recounted. “I recently took a taxi to rehearsal, and there was a big altercation with another driver along the way that involved much cursing. Afterward, my driver, who had some sort of foreign accent, turned to me and said, ‘Ugh, he’s black,’ not noticing who I was. Or maybe I just ‘passed’ to him. In any case, I held my tongue.”
As for the artistic process involved with “Show Boat,” Cambridge said it was the same as she would follow for “La Boheme.” “But instead of spending our first day of rehearsal in a sing-through of the score, we all sat in a circle and read through our lines,” she said. “There was notably less pressure and less perfection required. There’s more freedom in a show like this, and I love having the chance to exercise my acting chops.”
Veteran Chicago actors Ross Lehman and Cindy Gold, whose resumes are filled with musical theater credits, freely admit to being in “opera heaven,” as do their castmates, Chicago theater veterans Ericka Mac, Bernie Yvon, Brian McCaskill, John Lister, Renee Matthews and Caroline Heffernan.
“My character, Andy Hawks, is, like all Oscar Hammerstein characters, a good man at heart, but he’s also a businessman who needs to make money and has that show-must-go-on at all costs mentality,” Lehman said. “He adores his daughter and also his wife, even though she is the crankiest woman alive. And he is in love with the river, and in love with show business.”
“Show Boat” marks Gold’s first time on an opera stage, and she is ecstatic about it. “It’s the sheer size of everything,” said Gold, and that includes the set, with its three-story, Victorian-style show boat, its grandly mirrored Trocadero bar, and more.
“I think Francesca, who is a genius at these things, and who layers in all the show’s components, is relying on us to fill the space. I have three lines to sing in the opening sequence, and when it’s over, Robbie [Ross Lehman] and I wipe the sweat off our brows. But finally I’m getting a chance to use my huge vocal instrument, and that is so freeing. Robbie and I just continually look at each other, amazed that we are actually getting to do this.”
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