Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✭✩
by Oscar Telgmann, directed by Guillermo Silva- Marin
Toronto Operetta Theatre, Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto, May 2-6, 2001;
Grand Theatre, Kingston, May 10-12, 2001
“Leo’s Triumphant Return”
The Toronto Operetta Theatre, Canada's only professional operetta company has done the country a service by reviving the most successful operetta ever written in Canada, "Leo, the Royal Cadet". You can be forgiven if you have never heard of it since it has remained unperformed for the past 75 years. With music by German-born composer Oscar F. Telgmann (1855-1946) and a libretto by George F. Cameron (1854-1885), "Leo" opened to great acclaim in Kingston On July 11, 1889 and went on have over 1,700 performances in Southern Ontario and upstate New York.
The only set of orchestral parts was lost during a flood at Telgmann's home in 1925, but in 1997 a piano-vocal score was found at the National Library in Ottawa. The TOT mounted a workshop production of "Leo" in August 1997 to test its viability. I was there and can attest to the excitement we felt that a piece of Canada's lost musical heritage had been recovered. But as the evening progressed the work proved to be of more than antiquarian interest with one good tune following another in a rich variety of tempi and moods.
The TOT commissioned Canadian composer John Greer to revise and orchestrate the piano score and Virginia Reh to revise the libretto. The results, as heard in a final preview, fully confirm the TOT's faith in the work. John Greer has done a masterful job in scoring "Leo" for 13-piece orchestra making the music sound fresh and colourful while remaining within the framework of 19th-century light music. He increased the difficulty of a number of songs with virtuoso ornamentation simply because he knows that singers of today can handle it.
Reh has given the libretto a major overhaul, reducing the number of principals from 17 to nine, reassigning numbers and changing the structure from four acts to two. The original work had no conventional plot and merely followed a group of young men from their first interest in the recently-established Royal Military College in Kingston, to their joining the college, being sent to fight in the Zulu Wars of 1879 and returning to their sweethearts. Reh has added intrigue to the story by having Leo and his friends sent to Africa without adequate training because the commandant, Colonel Hewett, wants Leo's girl Nellie as his own. This twist condenses the once leisurely story and makes the Zulu Wars loom right from the start. What Reh has neglected to add is any sense of remorse or comeuppance for Hewett when Leo returns triumphant to Kingston.
As always with the TOT, it is the music that takes precedence. Given the variety of Telgmann's invention--from parlour songs, hymns, marches, invocations, dances and satirical numbers--this is the surest way to make a new audience appreciate the work's value. Accordingly, director Guillermo Silva-Marin has cast primarily for singing rather than acting ability, but there are a number of exceptions.
The other principals sing so well one wants to overlook the stiffness of their acting. Luc LaLonde as Captain Bloodswigger, Bruce Kelly as the lustful Colonel Hewett and especially Richard Shaw as Andy, a "dude" and mocker of all things military, could all make much more of their parts. I assume Gisèle Fredette, playing Nellie's friend Caroline, was under the weather since her voice was uncharacteristically weak. This is a pity since she has some of the most interesting lyrics to sing, most notably a song about how much better the world would be if women were in charge. If Alexandra Lennox were as assured in her spoken as in her sung delivery her Nellie would equal Eric Shaw's success as Leo. Her singing is a constant delight and her duets with Shaw are the emotional highlights of the show. The chorus is excellent throughout.
John Greer himself is the conductor and he and the orchestra obviously revel in this music, always adopting the appropriate style whether parlour, Palm Court or military band. Wind keep working on his "faewie opewa" throughout the action but we never get a glimpse of it. Greer amends this oversight with an hilarious miniature work of his own (based on "The Faerie Song" by Roscoe and Codman) to cap the triple wedding at the conclusion.
Director Guillermo Silva-Marin has made the wise decision to perform the work "straight". To send it up or add a hint of camp would ruin the innocence of the piece that makes it so charming. The one exception to this is his staging of the battle of the cadets and Zulus in Act 2. From accounts available on a handout, this was for audiences of the day the highlight of the work. In an age where our brand of political correctness was unknown, the work portrayed the battle of Isandlwana as a victory for the Imperial army where it actually was a defeat. To cut the Zulus and the battle would be cowardly and untrue to the work and would mean losing the majestic song about reclaiming one's homeland that Telgmann gives the Zulu leader Ketcho. Silva-Marin cleverly overcomes this difficulty by staging the battle as a kind of fantasy dance sequence including such anachronistic moves as the Bump. The Zulu warriors are clearly white people, mostly women, in black leotards and the battle/dance ends when Leo is wounded and carried off by fleeing cadets.
While the librettist Cameron is no W. S. Gilbert, his innovation is to do away with all the disguised aristocrats and babies switched at birth of conventional operetta to focus on the typical character types, events and concerns of his own time and place. This makes "Leo" perhaps the first verismo operetta. Telgmann's music, especially in Greer's arrangement, continually reminds one of Sullivan, probably because both were influenced by Schubert and Mendelssohn. If there were a recording of "Leo" with this fine cast, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it. The score has so many felicities it deserves to be better known and widely enjoyed. So take this rare opportunity to get to know this delightful piece the way early Canadians did and see it in the theatre.
Photo: (top) Luc LaLonde and Eric Shaw; (middle) Eric Shaw as Leo. ©2001 Toronto Operetta Theatre.
2001-05-09
Leo, the Royal Cadet