12 November 2010: Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri
12 November 2010: Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri
Valley Light Opera, Amherst, Massachusetts. Amherst Regional High School auditorium. Mary Jane Disco, stage director; Michael Greenebaum, music director and conductor; Li Ciaglo, choreographer. Five performances, including two matinees, opening Saturday, November 6 and closing Sunday, November 14.
I can hardly be neutral when it comes to reviewing a Valley Light Opera production, since I have been a member of this wonderful community theater organization, on and off (mostly on), since the time of its first production, H. M. S. Pinafore, in 1975. This current year, I was responsible for putting together the program; that was my only connection with the production. But this means that I had an early glimpse of this opera in the abstract, as it were. The concrete reality that emerged on Friday night fulfilled almost every promise offered by the program — a tall, eight-panel, three-folded affair that packs an unbelievable amount of information into a beautifully designed though hard-to-carry handout.
There is inevitably some unevenness in the performances; one expects that and doesn’t mind. Yet in general terms this production was as smooth, uneventful, and, more to the point, as full of life and joyousness as any production of the VLO that I have seen or been in in the thirty-five years of its existence. Michael Greenebaum, as music director and conductor, did as close to a professional job in preparing the principals, the chorus, and the orchestra as he or any other music director and conductor has ever done for this organization. Of course, some of these singers and players have been with the VLO from the start. And this is now the third production of Iolanthe that they have done. I remember being in the first one, and singing the role of Lord Mountararat. And so the music was exceedingly familiar to me, and it came back to me moment by moment from first to last.
Notwithstanding these memories, the music sounded as fresh as could be, and the cast of principals did Gilbert’s book and lyrics as much justice as they did Sullivan’s music. The pace was almost uniformly good, with the exception of the dialogue and music of the trio, “He who shies at such a prize,” which, as in the case of trios in other G & S operas, lacked rehearsal; and particularly the dialogue after it, in which Phyllis plays a part, came to a dead stop at one point when both Lord Mountararat and Lord Tolloller forgot their lines. Fortunately, they were rescued by an alert Phyllis, and the scene limped on to its conclusion. Bart Bales, playing Lord Mountararat, singles himself out as much as possible on stage and in life, but here he did so to his own detriment by dropping a line.
The Lord Tolloller, Jonathan Evans, said something to me afterwards, as we were departing, and clearly was rather shame-faced over his lapse. I pretended not to have noticed. Jonathan played Ralph Rackstraw under my direction the l