Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 29, 1993 TAG: 9309300133
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Don't go asking Victoria Bond why Opera Roanoke is doing a Broadway show instead of a "real opera."
'Cause any grand opera purist who disses Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd" is liable to get an earful from Bond, who'll be in the pit when the show premieres tonight at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke.
"I think this is one of the most important 20th-century operas out there. Period. I don't consider it a `Broadway show.' It's on the very highest level, right up there with `Porgy & Bess.' I think that people who are not familiar with this show are missing the boat," said Bond.
But wait. There's more.
"The music is absolutely extraordinary - it's on a Mozart level. The more I study it, the more I see in it."
Stephen Sondheim the equal of Mozart?
Suffice it to say that Bond, who is Opera Roanoke's artistic director as well as music director and conductor of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, is not lightly given to comparing contemporary composers with Mozart. So maybe this tale of a deranged barber who murders his customers and has them baked into meat pies is worth a look from opera mandarins after all.
Bond says she has little use for the opera/Broadway show dichotomy in the first place. " `Sweeney' just happened to have its premiere on Broadway, but so did `Porgy & Bess,' `West Side Story' and several operas by Gian Carlo Menotti.
"The point it is requires the same musicianship from the singers, the orchestra, from the conductor and from the director. Broadway directors are usually dramatically more sophisticated than opera directors anyway. I have no apologies for this work - this is a great work, period. It's one of the most significant pieces of dramatic music in our time."
And as a matter of fact, several other American opera companies have done productions of "Sweeney," most notably City Opera of New York. Baritone Craig Fields, who has temporarily relinquished his job as Opera Roanoke's production director to sing the title role, has previously played the revenge-minded barber on the West Coast and in Europe.
"Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" opened in March 1979 and garnered eight Tony awards later that year. Based on an 1847 play by George Dibdin-Pitt, the original "Sweeney Todd" had a long life as a kind of early Victorian slasher melodrama and was plagiarized into many versions.
Sondheim, who wrote both music and lyrics for the Opera Roanoke version, first encountered the story in Christopher Bond's 1973 play in London.
At first glance the story seemed an unlikely candidate for either a hit show or an opera. The barber Sweeney Todd is transported to Australia on a trumped-up charge by the wicked Judge Turpin, who lusts after Sweeney's wife. The wife takes arsenic in a suicide attempt, and Sweeney's daughter Joanna becomes the lecherous magistrate's ward.
Sweeney manages to return to London after 15 years, only to discover his wife apparently dead and his daughter in the power of the corrupt judge. Taking up with the grisly Mrs. Lovett, who ekes out a living selling meat pies made of cats, the pessimist Sweeney - who is already the embodiment of cynicism about human nature - becomes obsessed with revenge.
When Sweeney again sets up as a barber over the pie shop, many customers who come in for tonsorial attention wind up as the main ingredient in Mrs. Lovett's products, which quickly become the toast of the neighborhood. Sweeney's days are spent in obsessive scheming about how to lure the judge and his foppish beadle Bamford into his chair, where their necks will be exposed to his razor.
"Sweeney Todd" is not the first opera that asks us to sympathize with an apparently misanthropic and unlikable protagonist. Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" similarly succeeds in making such a character, if not lovable, at least understandable.
It's also hard to see the almost incredibly complex and demanding tavern scene that opens Act II of "Sweeney" without thinking of the similarly virtuosic tavern-in-the-storm scene in Britten's opera.
However, where there is little humor in "Grimes," that quality overflows in "Sweeney."
The macabre variety, of course. A showstopper in every production is Mrs. Lovett's and Sweeney's gruesome duet "A Little Priest," which contains some of the most morbidly witty wordplay ever devised by Sondheim.
"I wouldn't bring a 7-year-old to this production, but I would bring a 10-year-old," said guest stage director Jonathan Arak. The 28-year-old protege of Hal Prince (who directed the first version of the show) admits that "It's not your happy, peppy, bursting-with-love `Bye-Bye Birdie' kind of show. But we actually did several of the numbers for a group of children from Roanoke, and they loved it."
"It's not as upfrontly horrific as you might think," said Arak. "It's really nothing more than is done in opera. You don't see anybody's head get bludgeoned; there are lots more horrific things in `The Fugitive' or `Jurassic Park.' "
The only voice familiar to Opera Roanoke fans from previous years is tenor Jeffrey Reynolds, who will play the young sailor Anthony. Sweeney's daughter Joanna will be sung by Amy Cochrane.
Annie Hughes, who will sing Mrs. Lovett, has what Bond claims is "the comedic brilliance of a young Carol Burnett or Fanny Brice." Sal Midolo will sing the role of beadle Bamford, Christianne Tisdale will be the weirdly prophetic mad beggar-woman, and Frederick Reeder will portray the wicked judge Turpin.
\ "Sweeney Todd" runs Wednesday-Saturday, 8 p.m., at Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke. As of Tuesday morning seats were still available for all nights, although opening night was almost sold out. 982-2742.
by CNB