Concert Operetta does Victor Herbert

The June concert presented by Concert Operetta Theater has become one of the regular stops on my annual schedule. Just when I'm beginning to resign myself to the end of the music season, Daniel Pantano's troupe offers me an afternoon with the romance and melody that corrupted my impressionable teenage mind when Hollywood revived some of the canonical works of the operetta tradition in the 1950s.

For its June program this year, Concert Operetta presented 22 selections from operettas composed by Victor Herbert between 1898 and 1915. When the group presented a Sigmund Romberg program last year, the narrative describing Romberg's life stole too much time from the music, even though it was informative and interesting. This time, Pantano limited his account of the composer's life to a few paragraphs, but it was still informative.

I didn't know, for example, that Herbert was born in Dublin and retained his sense of being Irish all his life. The Austrian and German element in his work stems from a childhood and youth spent in Stuttgart, after his mother remarried.

Herbert gained an extra luster in my writerly eyes when I learned he was a founder and officer of the American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers. A composer who upheld the rights of his fellow creators will always receive an extra, heartfelt round of applause from those of us coping with the current assault on copyright.

Different types of women

The festivities opened with an appropriate bit of business. Jennifer Holbrook strolled down the left aisle singing "Babes in Toyland" in a clear, lyrical soprano, with a real baby cradled in her arms.

The rest of the program included all the expected treats: love songs, gypsy songs, comic jibes at the relations between the sexes, and a mandatory rendition of "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life and Love."

The love duets were especially appealing. In "The Game of Love," tenor Jeffrey Halili sang of the different types of women— from the simpering coquette to the martial woman demanding a properly martial mate— and the best ways to woo them, while Holbrook pantomimed each type. Halili's duet with soprano Megan Monaghan, "The Angelus," began quietly and built to a classic finish, with the lovers' voices melding in a soaring union.

Youthful weakness

The weakness in the event related directly to one of its virtues. As Pantano said in his closing comments, Concert Operetta's programs offer young vocalists a rare chance to sing this type of music. The flip side of that virtue is the performers' lack of experience with the operetta tradition.

Most contemporary classical vocalists have concentrated on opera— a medium that emphasizes power, intense emotion and big climactic high notes. By contrast, operetta style is chattier, with a lighter emotional range, and its lyrics often involve clever bits of word play that are just as important as the music.

The three rising stars in the cast should have put more effort into enunciating the words clearly and less into the kind of big, top-of-the- range finishes that wow opera audiences.

Lighthearted Don Juan

The performer who had truly mastered the style was the program's elder statesman, Pantano himself. He sang two comic pieces that derive most of their impact from their words, managing to combine clear enunciation with a vocal style that captured the spirit of both pieces.

"Every Day is Ladies Day for Me" presented a lighthearted operetta version of Don Juan. "Pretty as a Picture" launched good-natured jibes at the female's attempt to improve on nature with cosmetics.

One key question

For me, Concert Operetta's performances always raise the same question: Why did the romantic fantasy embedded in the operetta tradition go out of fashion? Why did we stop flocking to shows in which a romantic pairing is the first phase of a permanent relationship?

Yes, we've become disillusioned. But disillusionment hasn't killed other fantasies, such as the notion that the good guys always win. Is lifelong romantic love, complete with duets by Victor Herbert, any more unrealistic?

When I look around the audience at these events, I see many older couples who seem to have maintained the bonds they formed in their romantic years. Lasting romantic love may be a delusion, but it could be one of the more useful delusions our dreamers have given us.♦


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