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by Franz Lehár, directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin

Toronto Operetta Theatre, Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto

December 28, 2012-January 6, 2013

“This Widow is Merry Indeed”

If you are looking for just a good show to help ring out the old year or ring in the new, Toronto Operetta Theatre has the perfect answer for you with its latest production of The Merry Widow.  This world-wide hit from 1905 (known as Die lustige Witwe in the original German) is with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus one of the two peaks of Viennese operetta and, like its companion, has such an overabundance of melodic invention that it has entered the repertoire of opera houses all over the world.  The story itself is so clever that it was made into a silent film by Ernst von Stroheim in 1925 and into two sound films by Ernst Lubitsch, one in English in 1934 and one in French in 1935, among many other adaptations, including a ballet by John Lanchbery in 1975 that is part of the repertoire of the National Ballet of Canada.

If you found Christopher Alden’s recent production of Die Fledermaus for the COC rather heavy-handed with its imposition of a political and psychoanalytic agenda, the TOT’s Merry Widow sung in a fine English translation will come as a breath of fresh air.  The only agenda director Guillermo Silva-Marin has for this operetta, as for all operettas at the TOT, is to make it as musically rewarding an experience as possible.  With a top-notch cast and music direction by Derek Bate, Resident Conductor at the COC, it is a musical delight from beginning to end. 

The two principals of the operetta – Count Danilo and Anna Glawari, the wealthiest woman in the mythical micro-state of Pontevedro – are operetta’s equivalent to Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.  Critics often speculate that Shakespeare’s warring couple must have had a past history to justify their present animosity.  In Lehár’s operetta that past history is clearly spelled out.  The two were deeply in love, but Anna was offended when Danilo complied with his uncle’s command not to marry a commoner.  On his side, Danilo is offended that Anna married so quickly after he refused her.  Now that she is Pontevedro’s wealthiest woman, she suspects that every man is more in love with her money than with her. 

The fear of all Pontevedrians, especially Baron Zeta, the country’s ambassador to Paris, is that Anna will marry a foreigner and render the country bankrupt.  (Strange how the plot has suddenly gained new relevance with the current crisis in the eurozone.)  Zeta’s plan is to have Danilo woo the now widowed Anna to keep her millions in the country.  Naturally, the poisonous mercenary atmosphere of his ploy is exactly what inhibits new love between Danilo and Anna from blooming.

Leslie Ann Bradley in her debut with the company is a splendid Anna.  As an actor she is pert and lively with a wry smile playing about her features as a sign of her suspicions other’s ulterior motives.  Her voice is crystal clear and soars effortlessly to the frequent high notes she floats above the choral finales.  She sings famous “Vilja-Lied” of Act 2 beautifully with especially sensitive pianissimi. 

As for Danilo, it is a pleasure to see Adam Luther, a former COC Ensemble Studio member, in such a major role.  He has a full, clarion tenor and, like Bradley, sustains his frequent high notes with power and ease.  Together Bradley but especially Luther, make the beloved “Merry Widow Waltz” (“Lippen schweigen”) the emotional high point of the evening.

The TOT has luxuriously cast the comic counterparts to Anna and Danilo with Keith Klassen as the Vicomte de Rossillon and Elizabeth Beeler, the TOT’s Anna in 2007, as Baron Zeta’s wife Valencienne.  The two have a great rapport and each of their duets, like “So kommen Sie” and “Wie eine Rosenknospe”, is a treat.  Beeler is particularly good at capturing Valencienne’s dilemma of being attracted by the handsome Rossillon and her duty to be a “respectable wife”. 

The minor roles are equally well cast.  David Ludwig is quite humorous as Baron Zeta, who keeps forcing his wife into the arms of the man who hopes to cuckold him.  Gregory Finney makes the eternally jealous Kromov into a much more prominent character than usual.  Andrew Pelrine and Fabián Arciniegas are both fine actors and singers as the warring French and Spanish rivals for Anna’s hand.  Christina Campsall has a hilarious scene with Danilo when she mistakenly thinks he is making a pass at her.  And as the secretary Njegus, Joseph Angelo provides the requisite funny facial expressions Baron Zeta keeps complaining about and Silva-Marin not only retains Njegus’s often-cut Act 3 song “Quite Parisian” but turns it into the main patter song of the show with contemporary references to everything from Toronto Mayor Ford to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi – all delivered with verve and aplomb.

As usual Silva-Marin’s well-imagined minimalist décor put the emphasis on the singers for whom Seika Groves has chosen a gorgeous array of costumes.  Silva-Marin follows the plot of the German version but changes to the altered plot of the Christopher Hassall translation which sets Act 3 not at Anna’s ballroom but at Maxim’s.  Silva-Marin even goes a step further than Hassall by having all the embassy wives disguise themselves as grisettes, not just Valencienne.  This creates a wonderful conclusion where husbands’ faults and wives’ forgiveness are spread all around.  Indeed, what makes this Merry Widow stand out from the many others I’ve seen is the real feeling of community on stage.  It is not the usual principals out front and the chorus in the back.  Rather Silva-Marin’s use of the full dialogue sets up relations between the principals and the other characters and suggests, as the plot insists, the fate of everyone there depends on what happens between Anna and Danilo. 

That warm atmosphere of communal celebration, enhanced by Bate’s ideal pacing of the music from the TOT’s salon-like orchestra, is one to buoy up any mood as we leave one year behind to face the next. 

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Leslie Ann Bradley and Andrew Pelrine (front row) with Keenan Viau, Domenico Sanfilippo, Jason Martorino and Gregory Finney (back row). ©2012 Gary Beechey.

For tickets, visit www.stlc.com.