Those looking for substantial musical entertainment will find it in both high and low culture this week, with either of two divertisements currently gracing local stages: Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” and Stuart Ross’s “Forever Plaid.”
Bouncing back from last month’s atrocious “The Conquistador,” the San Diego Opera is once again doing what it does best: performing classic opera. Over the next week, it’s presenting a spectacular treatment of “La Traviata,” Verdi’s tale of sex, glamour and obsessive love in Second Empire France.
The love affair between the tubercular courtesan Violetta and her suitor, Alfredo, is derailed by his father, Giorgio, whose concerns over how her bad reputation will ruin his daughter’s marriage chances are the crux on which the story turns.
Violetta renounces Alfredo at his father’s behest but pretends she has done it to return to her former lover, Baron Douphal. The resulting confrontations between the two men exacerbate her tubercular state, and by play’s end we discover her dying and impoverished in a Paris garret.
The sets by Richard Conklin are alone worth the price of admission. They are beautiful mock-ups of the various elegant chambers in which the story unfolds. Their off-center design and exaggerated angles give the stage a stylized look, like a frame of a period painting, which emphasizes the sense of spectacle and of larger-than-life drama that the story provides.
Opera is, essentially, symphonic music incorporating voice as another instrument, and in this case, the instruments more than meet the demands of what is perhaps Verdi’s greatest work. Richard Zeller shines in the role of Giorgio, whose machinations set the lovers on their path to separation and death. Australian prima donna Deborah Riedel brings a raw talent from Down Under to her performance as Violetta, while Jorge Lopez-Yanez is in top form as Alfredo, both as a singer and as an actor, being suitably passionate in his vocal delivery and suitably frantic in his haste to win Violetta’s love.
There is something of a deus ex machina about Alfredo’s sudden return to make a last attempt to save their love, but their final meeting makes for one of the great moments of pathos in the story, as well as a superb coda to an already gorgeous operatic work.
A comic contrast to Verdi’s melancholy can be found at the other end of the cultural scale in Old Town’s ongoing nostalgia-fest, “Forever Plaid.” Those who’ve enjoyed “Suds” will find this slice of American kitsch by Stuart Ross equally entertaining; while it’s less of a story than the other musical, it’s far more of a production.
The plot is virtually non-existent: A novice vocal group dies in a car crash on their way to their first big gig in 1964, and tonight, before the entranced Old Town audience, they will return to earth to make that long-delayed debut, the performance being their key to eternal rest. They enter as angels, but their Gregorian chant takes a left turn into four-part harmony as the show gets under way. The whole premise, after all, is just a means to have four lovable geeks serenade you for two hours.
Which is exactly what they do, in high style. The set ranges from Sinatra/Crosby gems from the ’40s to a doo-wop version of the Beatles’ “She Loves You.” That fateful night was in 1964, after all, and the Plaids are hip. The four singers Rick Meads, Bobby Smith, Leo Daignault and “Suds” star Steve Gunderson deliver the goods, their voices effortlessly ranging the scale from bass to alto. They intersperse their selection of chestnuts with dumb but funny repartee. We see them dancing with plumbers’ helpers while trying to put dance steps into action for the first term, sporting, in best Robert Mitchum style, bad Hawaiian outfits for a Calypso number (a nod to the Lounge scene, perhaps?) and, in the show’s comic highlight, reducing the entire Ed Sullivan show to three minutes and 15 seconds of utter hilarity.
There’s no story to worry about here. We know the Plaids will sing their hearts out and go to heaven for it, and we’ll pray for them once they get there. But the show is so well done, so uplifting, that we hope they stay just a little bit longer.
“La Traviata”plays April 16 in the Civic Theatre. For additional information call 232-7636.
“Forever Plaid” runs evenings through May 11 in the Theatre in Old Town. For more information call 688-2494.
