Lyric’s general director Anthony Freud has consistently made the artistic argument that the some musicals belong in the opera house as part of the art form’s natural evolution, as long as the fit is right. Lisa Middleton, Lyric’s director of marketing, says the musical’s ticket sales are not part of the opera subscription, and that a strong early box office led to two quick extensions of the run. The Lyric is mounting 29 performances of The Sound of Music, mostly in May, compared with 67 performances of eight operas over the course of the regular six-month season. The defense of the classic American musical’s legitimacy on the opera playbill has run along two closely related and very practical lines: that musicals help to recruit new audiences to opera and that musicals shore up the bottom line that makes Wagner possible. Yet “everything in its place” has been the argument against bringing musicals to the opera house. Given the specs of the typical Broadway musical today, with its advanced amplification techniques, its lean, keyboard-heavy pit bands and its rock-influenced palette, the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition seems to move ever closer to opera as it recedes historically. The Sound of Music? At the Lyric? One could say it’s a stretch, but perhaps one should not.
Jenn Gambatese has played Glinda, Tarzan’s Jane, and now Maria. Theirs was a golden age when the pit orchestra was generous in size, the sound was largely acoustic, the singers were classically trained and the tradition of the European operetta still lingered in every turn of phrase.
(Photos by Todd Rosenberg) By Nancy MalitzĬHICAGO - For the past several weeks, the sound of music at the Lyric Opera of Chicago has been that of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the second in a series of five spring musicals devoted to the legendary composer-librettist team of the 1940s and ’50s. Rights to ‘Oklahoma!,’ ‘Carousel,’ ‘The King and I’ and ‘South Pacific were also secured. Lyric Opera of Chicago finds Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Sound of Music,’ in this design by Michael Yeargan, a good fit.
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