Bring Back The Bassi Cantanti
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Broadway musical revivals routinely benefit from the crossover casting of popjazz-country musicians. Reba McEntire earned raves when she joined the “Annie Get Your Gun” cast a few years ago, Huey Lewis just finished a brief run in “Chicago,” and Harry Connick Jr., Cyndi Lauper, and Nellie McKay are all due onstage later this season.
Opera, however, remains largely an untapped resource. With the exception of Harolyn Blackwell in the ill-fated 1997 revival of “Candide,” you’d have to go back to Shirley Verrett’s acclaimed Nettie in “Carousel” to find a major opera star in a Broadway musical. Lincoln Center Theater presented that superlative revival, and Variety reported earlier this week that the theater will produce another Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, “South Pacific,” in the 2007-08 season, possibly reuniting “Light in the Piazza” director Bartlett Sher and star Victoria Clark. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I believe the time has come to once again explore the world of bassi cantanti.
The main problem that producers and casting directors face vis-a-vis opera stars involves the workload. Opera singers typically do two or maybe three performances a week. That’s it.
Broadway economics require an eightshow week; last season’s revival of the infamously taxing “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” dropped one show from its schedule every other week, which is practically unheard of. (It’s also worth noting that “Woolf” did not recoup its investment, which may have something to do with its forgoing one-sixteenth of its potential income.) Even if a contract allows for one or two skipped matinees a week – Audra McDonald and some of the “Movin’ Out” cast are among those to ask for this recently – that still leaves a lot of performances by opera standards.
“South Pacific” confronted this issue back in 1949, when it cast Metropolitan Opera star Ezio Pinza as the male lead. Pinza did all eight shows a week, without taxing his voice any more than he would have in a two-performance week at the Met. How? At Pinza’s request, Rodgers and Hammerstein drastically curtailed the amount of music he sang. Emile de Becque sings two solos and shares a duet, less than half of what Nellie has to handle.This disparity could potentially skew the show’s balance, but when those 2 1/2 songs include “Some Enchanted Evening” and “This Nearly Was Mine,” one tends to make an impression.
Opera singers do get booked far in advance, but this is the 2007-08 season we’re talking about. On top of this, Lincoln Center Theater presumably has as deep a connection to the opera community as any theater in the world. Lincoln Center is made up of 12 constituent groups, not all of which are always on the best of terms. Still, incoming Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb found repeated success with crossover ventures in his record executive days. If anyone could ring up, say,Thomas Hampson or Matthias Goerne or (my personal pick) Dmitri Hvorostovsky and sell them on one of the choicest male roles in musical theater, with all the press attention and Tony Award consideration that comes with it, Mr. Gelb could.
It was a big deal in 1949 when Pinza walked those five blocks north from the Met (then located on West 39th Street) to the Majestic Theatre. Perhaps the walk will be even shorter for one of today’s reigning baritones – he wouldn’t even have to cross the street.
