Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✭✩
by Jacques Offenbach, directed by Guillermo Silva-Marin
Toronto Operetta Theatre, Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto
April 27, 28 & 29, 2018
Paris: “Pour enjôler les garçons,
Évohé! Que ces déesses.
Ont de drôles de façons!”
Toronto Operetta Theatre has mounted its first-ever production of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène. The 1864 operetta is one of Offenbach’s very best, but Toronto has not seen a professional production of it since the COC staged it in 1983. The TOT production is lively and very funny with a superb performance by Beste Kalender in the title role.
Offenbach’s subject is no less than the incident that sparks the Trojan War. As one might expect, Offenbach deflates the grandeur of the topic but beneath all the fun there is a sly satire of religion, politics and politicians and the flimsy excuses that politicians use for going to war.
When the action begins Paris (Adam Fisher), son of Priam, King of Troy, has already judged a beauty contest involving Venus, Juno and Minerva and has awarded Venus the prize. As a reward Venus has promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. This just happens to be Helen of Sparta (Beste Kalender), who, inconveniently, is already married to Menelaus (Gregory Finney), King of Sparta. Paris comes to see Calchas (Matthew Zadow), the high priest of Jupiter, to get him to help fulfil Venus’s request.
This places Calchas in an awkward position, but with Paris’s help he receives a “prophesy” from Jupiter that Menelaus must depart immediately for Crete. This leaves the earnest Paris and the very willing Helen quite happily together until Menelaus cuts his trip short, arrives home unexpectedly and finds his wife in Paris’s arms. With the help of the other Grecian kings, Menelaus drives the foreigner Paris away, but as a result Venus is displeased and causes a wave of mass lust and the breaking of marriage vows to descend upon Greece. The only solution is for Calchas and Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon (Stuart Graham) to try to convince Menelaus that he must be cuckolded for the good of his country.
La Belle Hélène, Offenbach’s most popular operetta after La Vie parisienne (1866) and Orphée aux enfers (1858), provides an excellent showcase for the talents of Beste Kalender in the title role. Kalender possesses a large, lustrous and rich mezzo-soprano. But she also has a delightful agility of technique and a sense for comedy that she shows off in a series of extended interpolated runs in Act 2. She has the full measure of the role playing Hélène as an faux-innocent victim of destiny as well as a young woman instantly attracted to the strapping young Paris who clearly outshines her aged husband. Kalender is wonderfully coy and flirtatious in “On me nomme Hélène” and brings out the beauty of the operetta’s most famous melody, “Va t’en, va t’en, mon amour te suivra”, a melody you will instantly recognize without knowing that this operetta is its source.
Adam Fisher would make an ideal Paris. He has the good looks, fine acting and an heroic ring to his voice. In his best known aria about judging among the three goddesses, “Au Mont Ida, trois déesses”, Fisher has no trouble with the high-lying cry of “Évohé!” (an exclamation of Bacchic frenzy) that punctuates the aria, but he does have difficulty holding the aria’s final high note. Since Offenbach has a habit of concluding all of Paris’s arias on a high note, it’s a pity to see, at least on opening night, that Fisher, quite uncharacteristically, was never able to take advantage of these moments to shine. Otherwise, he and Kalender made an engaging couple and brought off the duet “C’est le ciel qui m’envoie”, where Paris and Hélène try to pretend their wooing is a dream, with just the right suavity wed to a comic sense of willing self-deceit.
In other roles, baritone Gregory Finney is hilarious as Ménélas, a blustering pompous ruler, who can’t understand why everyone wants him to vacation in Crete and leave Hélène alone with Paris and later why being cuckolded is supposed to be his patriotic duty. Finney well plays the comedy of Ménélas’s self-importance blinding him to the schemes of others.
Matthew Zadow with his glowing baritone is a fine Calchas, who is more interested in the monetary aspect of religion than its spiritual side, while baritone Stuart Graham is a stern but practical Agamemnon. The three have great fun with the Spanish-influenced trio “Allons! Immolez-vous!” in which Calchas and Agamemnon try to convince Ménélas that cuckoldry is a type of sacrifice.
The eleven-member chorus is excellent and well-blended making the many choral passages highlights of the operetta. Peter Tiefenbach conducts a chamber ensemble of nine instruments in an uncredited but well conceived reduction of the score. The TOT employs the clever, very funny 1963 translation that Geoffrey Dunn did for the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company. Dunn’s use of trisyllabic rhymes often makes one think of W.S. Gilbert’s lyrics. Indeed, several situations in La Belle Hélène find parallels later on in G&S, though, of course, the good Victorians would never put adultery and cuckoldry into one of their light operas.
We have to thank the TOT for ending the drought of professional productions of this thoroughly delightful operetta. As TOT productions always show, operetta works best with unamplified, operatic voices. Beste Kalender, a noted Carmen, clearly enjoyed the chance be a mezzo who was the comic rather than tragic centre of the show. Her pleasure, like that of the whole cast and orchestra, is infectious and will leave you with a smile as you mentally replay Offenbach’s endlessly inventive melodies.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Adam Fisher as Paris and Beste Kalender as Hélène; David Boan as Achille, Beste Kalender as Hélène, Stuart Graham as Agamemnon, Gregory Finney as Ménélas, Matthew Zadow as Calchas and Adam Fisher as Paris. ©2018 Gilberto Prioste..
For tickets, visit www.torontooperetta.com.
2018-04-29
La Belle Hélène