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A star is born
"Countess Maritza' by Concert Operetta Theater
Steve Cohen
It’s not often that a new talent knocks me out. Actors and singers may give admirable performances, but bombshells are rare. Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw and heard Cody Austin as the male lead in the Concert Operetta Theater’s production of Countess Maritza. Austin is a young tenor from Texas who received an Academy of Vocal Arts scholarship in 2006 but was unable to sing in any productions during his freshman year due to tonsillitis. He has a boyish grin and a shock of unruly golden brown hair.
His voice possesses a warm, rich quality and is produced with an evenness that’s rare in any singer and especially in a student. From the baritonal lower part of his role up to a high B, the voice maintains its character– especially in the middle of his range, where some singers exhibit a loss of color or of volume. This makes Austin perfect for operetta and the Broadway classics, where the middle of the voice is crucial. He easily could take over the sort of roles that made Alfred Drake and John Raitt famous.
But I don’t want to limit Austin to that repertoire. I eagerly look forward to seeing him in grand opera. So far I’ve heard Austin do less than three minutes of that, as he dashed off "La donna è mobile" in the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition this month. He sounded fine, but this is too brief a selection to judge. (The arbiters of the event felt the same and awarded their prize to the much-more-experienced Angela Meade who sang a long Verdi aria and its cabaletta.) The Academy of Vocal Arts will use Austin as the tenor lead in La Traviata later this season.
Forget the Hapsburgs
It’s a shame that only a few hundred people saw Austin’s performances Saturday and Sunday. The Operetta Theater presents a genre that many people ignore, to their great loss. It’s music that charmed two generations of Europeans and Americans and dominated stages from Vienna to Broadway from the 1880s ’til the Second World War. Leading writers in this idiom include Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg and Emmerich Kalman, the composer of Countess Maritza. Their work relied on hummable melodies and nostalgia for the glorious days of European monarchies.
Today’s theatergoers presume that all the operetta classics were written during the reign of the Hapsburgs. Not so. Romberg wrote The Student Prince of Heidelberg and Kalman wrote Countess Maritza in the mid-1920s— almost a decade after the grand empires were destroyed, and contemporaneously with the early hits of the Gershwin brothers and Rodgers & Hart. These operettas were intentionally old even when they were new.
Countess Maritza has special qualities that make it even more interesting than other operettas. Kalman ladles out large helpings of Hungarian music, mixing gypsy and Jewish flavors with some Vienna waltzes. So this work held sentimental appeal for immigrants to America in the first half of the 20th Century. Two of that generation’s tenor heroes, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker, frequently sang the big aria for Austin’s character, "Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies."
Sheldon Harnick took note of operetta’s popularity and wrote a lyric in 1958 : "Summer is Sigmund Romberg / In a music tent." But soon after that the form faded from popularity.
Pantano the preserver
Daniel Pantano, a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, dedicates himself to restoring and preserving this type of music theater. He is artistic director of the Concert Operetta Theater and he casts his productions with attractive professionals, many of them current AVA students or graduates. These shows are worth seeing and hearing for their tunefulness and wistfulness. And, on occasion, there comes a weekend like this when we get even more.
Austin was evenly matched by Rebecca Carr, who played the title character. She looked glamorous and sounded sumptuous, as she has in earlier roles. But Carr’s appearance lacked the element of surprise that Austin provided. Kimberly Henshaw, Ross Druker and A. Scott Bullitt were excellent supporting players.
What should all this mean for us? First, there’s a genre of music theater ready for our re-discovery. Second, great new voices may be hidden in under-publicized productions, awaiting us.
A major-league alumni roster
The AVA and Curtis Institute are like college sports teams. All-Americans emerge and then they graduate, forcing fans to search for new heroes every three or four years. Austin follows a highly accomplished lineup of AVA alumni tenors. James Valenti graduated in 2006 and went on to star at the New York City Opera and the Salzburg Festival. Stephen Costello followed Valenti in some roles, graduated in the spring of 2007 and on October 25 takes over the male lead in the Met’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Michael Fabiano, now in his third year at AVA, won the Met’s 2007 national auditions and will star in a La Scala production of Gianni Schicchi this season. Austin belongs in the same major league. It’s exciting to see his emergence.
His voice possesses a warm, rich quality and is produced with an evenness that’s rare in any singer and especially in a student. From the baritonal lower part of his role up to a high B, the voice maintains its character– especially in the middle of his range, where some singers exhibit a loss of color or of volume. This makes Austin perfect for operetta and the Broadway classics, where the middle of the voice is crucial. He easily could take over the sort of roles that made Alfred Drake and John Raitt famous.
But I don’t want to limit Austin to that repertoire. I eagerly look forward to seeing him in grand opera. So far I’ve heard Austin do less than three minutes of that, as he dashed off "La donna è mobile" in the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition this month. He sounded fine, but this is too brief a selection to judge. (The arbiters of the event felt the same and awarded their prize to the much-more-experienced Angela Meade who sang a long Verdi aria and its cabaletta.) The Academy of Vocal Arts will use Austin as the tenor lead in La Traviata later this season.
Forget the Hapsburgs
It’s a shame that only a few hundred people saw Austin’s performances Saturday and Sunday. The Operetta Theater presents a genre that many people ignore, to their great loss. It’s music that charmed two generations of Europeans and Americans and dominated stages from Vienna to Broadway from the 1880s ’til the Second World War. Leading writers in this idiom include Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg and Emmerich Kalman, the composer of Countess Maritza. Their work relied on hummable melodies and nostalgia for the glorious days of European monarchies.
Today’s theatergoers presume that all the operetta classics were written during the reign of the Hapsburgs. Not so. Romberg wrote The Student Prince of Heidelberg and Kalman wrote Countess Maritza in the mid-1920s— almost a decade after the grand empires were destroyed, and contemporaneously with the early hits of the Gershwin brothers and Rodgers & Hart. These operettas were intentionally old even when they were new.
Countess Maritza has special qualities that make it even more interesting than other operettas. Kalman ladles out large helpings of Hungarian music, mixing gypsy and Jewish flavors with some Vienna waltzes. So this work held sentimental appeal for immigrants to America in the first half of the 20th Century. Two of that generation’s tenor heroes, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker, frequently sang the big aria for Austin’s character, "Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies."
Sheldon Harnick took note of operetta’s popularity and wrote a lyric in 1958 : "Summer is Sigmund Romberg / In a music tent." But soon after that the form faded from popularity.
Pantano the preserver
Daniel Pantano, a graduate of the Academy of Vocal Arts, dedicates himself to restoring and preserving this type of music theater. He is artistic director of the Concert Operetta Theater and he casts his productions with attractive professionals, many of them current AVA students or graduates. These shows are worth seeing and hearing for their tunefulness and wistfulness. And, on occasion, there comes a weekend like this when we get even more.
Austin was evenly matched by Rebecca Carr, who played the title character. She looked glamorous and sounded sumptuous, as she has in earlier roles. But Carr’s appearance lacked the element of surprise that Austin provided. Kimberly Henshaw, Ross Druker and A. Scott Bullitt were excellent supporting players.
What should all this mean for us? First, there’s a genre of music theater ready for our re-discovery. Second, great new voices may be hidden in under-publicized productions, awaiting us.
A major-league alumni roster
The AVA and Curtis Institute are like college sports teams. All-Americans emerge and then they graduate, forcing fans to search for new heroes every three or four years. Austin follows a highly accomplished lineup of AVA alumni tenors. James Valenti graduated in 2006 and went on to star at the New York City Opera and the Salzburg Festival. Stephen Costello followed Valenti in some roles, graduated in the spring of 2007 and on October 25 takes over the male lead in the Met’s new production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
Michael Fabiano, now in his third year at AVA, won the Met’s 2007 national auditions and will star in a La Scala production of Gianni Schicchi this season. Austin belongs in the same major league. It’s exciting to see his emergence.
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