In 1949, choreographer Jerome Robbins phoned Leonard Bernstein with an idea for updating \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d into a contemporary Broadway musical. Robbins didn\u2019t know what it would be, but he knew what it wouldn\u2019t be: An opera!<\/p>\n
When \u201cWest Side Story\u201d had its premiere eight years later, it had become a gripping, tragic reflection on racism. But still not opera. Bernstein insisted that opera is resolved by music and Maria\u2019s last lines in \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d an impassioned plea against gun violence, are spoken.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Opera opened its 40th season Saturday night with \u201cWest Side Story\u201d at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. No one, and especially not Bernstein, ever said \u201cWest Side Story\u201d was operatic. In fact, the show\u2019s brilliance, its indelible mark on music theater is its treatment of song and dance, in the ability of Robbins\u2019 stylized and now iconic movement and Bernstein\u2019s score to give us both the physicality and interiority of people and place. The only time Bernstein himself ever conducted \u201cWest Side Story\u201d was for a glorious, if controversial, recording with opera stars.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, lots of ink continues to be spilled, and lots of podcasts streamed, to justify or not the operatic credentials of \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d If there is anything symbolic about this show at the Chandler this moment, it is that the first major L.A. opera announced itself 40 years ago with the greatest opera based on a Shakespeare tragedy, Verdi\u2019s \u201cOtello,\u201d and has now marked its latest anniversary with the greatest musical theater based on a Shakespeare tragedy.<\/p>\n
Francesca Zambello\u2019s production has much of the look of the Broadway original. Robbins\u2019 dances have been maintained, as has Arthur Laurents\u2019 original book. But attending L.A. Opera in the Chandler doesn\u2019t feel in any way like being in a Broadway theater.<\/p>\n
In the most basic way that means that more attention is given to music. The orchestra is not more-the-merrier (28 players) and not as feisty as a Broadway band, but is able to produce a lushness and lyricism under James Conlon, who is beginning his own 20th anniversary season (and last) as the company\u2019s music director. He provides a grandeur, out of place on Broadway, that suggests an instant depth to the Jets and Sharks, the Anglo and the Puerto Rican gangs. All are from immigrant families, the Latino teens seen as intruders and outsiders.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The production maintains Jerome Robbins\u2019 original choreography while James Conlon conducts with operatic grandeur at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.<\/p>\n
(Brian Feinzimer\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
The lovers \u2014 Tony (Polish) and Maria (Puerto Rican) \u2014 are, here, opera singers. Tenor Duke Kim happened to have been Romeo in L.A. Opera\u2019s production of Gounod\u2019s \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d last season. Soprano Gabriella Reyes, in her company debut, is familiar to Metropolitan Opera audiences. Their voices are big. They don\u2019t need, though get, amplification, which is thankfully respectful.<\/p>\n
A problem of \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d from day one, was the need for singers who could manage the expressive complexities of Bernstein\u2019s songs and the physical complexities of Robbins\u2019 choreography. If it seems odd that eight chorus singers would be listed in the program for a show without a chorus, that is because L.A. Opera offers superb chorus singers to be hidden backstage to subtly reinforce out-of-breath singers. Sounds like that shouldn\u2019t work. It does.<\/p>\n
There is, though, an anachronistic unreality to all of this. Although L.A. Opera advertises Robbins\u2019 choreography as an attraction, and the dancing thrills as advertised, it is very 1957. For years the Robbins\u2019 estate didn\u2019t let anyone touch his dances or production. Putting on \u201cWest Side Story\u201d also means challenges about changing any of Laurent\u2019s text. There are further Bernstein and librettist Steven Sondheim overseers to consider. Contemporary relevance to deal with.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Contemporary casting updates classic 1957 material, creating timeless relevance to current immigration conflicts and gun violence debates.<\/p>\n
(Brian Feinzimer\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
In 1957, the Music Center was a dream, Dorothy Chandler having only begun fundraising two years earlier for an arts Olympus on a well-scrubbed Grand Avenue that would harken a new business district. Yet this is the same downtown that became the first locus of a new national crackdown on Latin immigrants that has evolved over the past seven decades to a now operatic-scale conflict between the military and the populace.<\/p>\n
There is but a hint of modernity in Zambello\u2019s production. The Jets are no longer Anglo, just not Latino. Kim is Korean although still identified in the text as Polish. The original racial slurs must remain, which produces outright operatic shock.<\/p>\n
Kim has a natural ease on stage. It takes him a while to project a sense of character. There is not yet much coming with \u201cSomething Coming,\u201d but his agile voice is a clean, clear tenor projectile expandable into operatic fortissimos and toned down into sweet, soft Broadway-esque whispers. He soon comes to life.<\/p>\n
Reyes\u2019 presence is mostly opera. She has a vibrato that is out of place. She is not particularly girlish. Love music suits her more, and Kim pairs well with her operatic-sounding \u201cTonight\u201d and \u201cOne Hand, One Heart.\u201d \u201cMaria\u201d is grand and a little weird for a young woman with a big Bad Bunny poster in her room (one of the few updates).<\/p>\n
She is, however, a compelling tragedian \u2014 a teen who matures before our eyes into a force of nature. Her greatest moment may be the spoken, but her accusatory horror at gun violence is something that takes a powerful opera singer to turn into a sermon from which it is impossible to turn away.<\/p>\n
Of the singing actors that come from musical theater, Amando Castro is a fiery Anita; P. Tucker Worley, buoyant Riff; Yurel Echezarreta, a suave Bernardo. But it is the collective cool, rage, outrage, toxic masculinity, hatefulness and terrible, terrible sorrow of the large splendid that makes the production matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Side Story\u201d is not about good and bad, but conditions. An old-school opera production may be a little light on the conditions, but the show\u2019s essence is to engender our sympathy for all the characters and their inherent value, showing violence is our fault, not theirs.<\/p>\n
L.A. Opera elevates this into a telling timelessness. We walk out onto Grand Avenue or slink into the garage and drive away, afraid to see what is before our eyes \u2014 our society in the manner of its operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1949, choreographer Jerome Robbins phoned Leonard Bernstein with an idea for updating \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d into a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":264749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,10929,138273,4222,138274,2961,108161,224,138275,5337,138272,975,6566,18904,103348,138271,4370,138270,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-264748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-dance","11":"tag-duke-kim","12":"tag-gun-violence","13":"tag-l-a-opera","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-leonard-bernstein","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-opera-treatment","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-maria","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-place","22":"tag-production","23":"tag-robbins","24":"tag-romeo","25":"tag-show","26":"tag-west-side-story","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115289599077810074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}