Opera New Jersey's "The Merry Widow'

A comic opera with emotional punch

JIM RUTTER

The other night I took a friend of mine to see her first opera. Though she was initially very excited, afterwards she appeared confused and somewhat disappointed. When I asked if she had enjoyed the performance, she turned to me and said, “That wasn’t much different from any Broadway musical I’ve ever seen.”

Her comment didn’t surprise me, since the opera in question was The Merry Widow, a light comic operetta by Franz Lehar. But as luck would have it, Merry Widow unequivocally marked Opera New Jersey’s best effort of the summer, even upstaging the same company’s fresh, intense staging of Verdi’s La Traviata.

The Merry Widow certainly doesn’t differ much from the often-ridiculous plots of many another operettas. Librettists Victor Leon and Leo Stein set the story in turn-of-the-20th-Century Paris, when bankrupt backwater European countries—like the fictional Pontevedro—spared no expense to curry favor with a presumed great nation like France. As Pontevedro’s Ambassador Baron Zeta (Jason Plourde) remarks, “Poverty at home has never precluded lavish spending abroad.”

A one-woman Federal Reserve

The source of Pontevedro’s financial ruin is the widow Hanna Glawari (Jennifer Aylmer), the country’s sole remaining wealthy citizen, who has come to Paris to find a husband. If she marries anyone but a Pontevedran, the country will lose its source of credit and go bust (you know— sort of like what will happen when the Chinese stop buying U.S. Treasury notes).

The Pontevedran embassy parties swirl with an ensemble of cheating wives and philandering husbands— even Ambassador Zeta’s “respectable” wife Valencienne (Alison Trainer) has struck up an affair with Camille de Rosillon (Benjamin Bunsold). But unfortunately for the soon-to-be-bankrupt state, while all the unmarried men in Paris pursue Hanna (and her money), she’s set her heart on Pontevedro’s most eligible bachelor, Prince Danilo Danilovitch (Brian Jagde)— and the embittered Danilo wants nothing to do with romance at all. As in most musicals, it’s not hard to see where this is going.

Like a Sondheim musical

Director Verzatt and conductor Mosteller took advantage of this production’s strengths, most notably a young cast that sang and acted well but not overwhelmingly so in the 360-seat Berlind Theatre. Christopher Hassall’s English translation of the lyrics provided a text that matches the fun and cleverness of a Sondheim musical comedy.

While her first entrance lacked the intended grandeur, Aylmer’s voice did not, displaying a lush and radiant soprano on the signature “Ballad of Vilja” in a scene greatly enhanced by Mary Pat Robertson’s peasant dance choreography (which later even included a humorous all-male kick line). Jagde’s meaty baritone perfectly suited his dark and cynical character (he sings a song in favor of open marriages), and Trainer matches the gorgeous quality of her voice with a deft portrayal of a woman torn between her desire for “respectability,” the ego boost from a much younger suitor, and oddly enough, patriotism.

Cast opposite Jagde’s fist-clenching jealousy, Bunsold’s charming performance and dramatic tenor captivates, rendering him the perfect jeune premier—the handsome youth one initially suspects as the romantic lead (think a wussier Leo DeCaprio, if that’s possible). Cervantes once wrote that “Reading a translation is like looking at the back of a tapestry…you will never see the beauty,” but hearing Bunsold’s voice transformed the English back into the poetry of the original German lyrics.

Modern pop embellishments

Verzatt takes Hassall’s translation and embellishes it with pop culture references— including lines culled from Star Wars and Gone With the Wind— in effect exaggerating the comedy already created by his sharply timed direction and the farcical performances by the ensemble of male suitors.

But Verzatt strips away the sentimentality found in most musical comedies and consequently enables the audience to fully endorse—and enjoy—the romantic ending. As the evening progressed, Aylmer and Jagde developed an endearing chemistry that slowly simmered from their first waltz in Act I to their first kiss in Act III, letting love win without anyone leaving the theater feeling nauseous. Why strive for sentimentality when a production can achieve grandeur?

Mosteller’s conducting toned down the horns (he sometimes needed to), keeping the waltz- and mazurka-laden score soft and light, elevating the entire evening with a buoyant, intoxicating spirit. The design team, from Lee Mayman’s inspired sets (which included a mammoth, magnificent Matisse-like backdrop) to Patricia A. Hibbert’s elegant, detailed costumes, all elevated the emotional power of this simple love story to a height that opera usually achieves only in tragedy. I heard gasps on Hanna’s Act III entrance, and should have. In this piece of musical theater, at least, the moment was real.

On the way home from Princeton, my friend asked me how many “real” operas caused so much laughter but also emanated such gaiety, mirth and romance. I rattled off a few (like The Magic Flute), but of course the first operas that popped into my head were the tragic mainstays, like Carmen, Tosca, Bohème and Butterfly.

“Sounds depressing,” she remarked. “I’m glad I saw this one first.”