Te amo, Tony!

I was thirteen years old and was, for the very first time, seeing musical theater that didn't involve cowhands or sailors or such groups thigh-slapping their way through two hours of good musical fun.  I sat perched on the very edge of my seat in a darkened theater in London's West End and watched the unfolding of West Side Story - the story of Romeo and Juliet set in modern day New York.  As I sit here now I can still feel the sense of wonder that gripped me then.  Really, I can.  I had never seen a West End musical live before and here I was listening to a live band in the pit playing Bernstein's amazing score, watching dancers bring a passion to choreography that I had not realised possible.  And the women.  Oh yes, gentle reader, the women.  These women made my adolescent hormones positively bubble through my bloodstream bringing messages to my brain that it barely knew how to process.  Until that very moment I don't think I had quite fully understood the song "There is nothing like a dame!"  But, oh, there was nothing like these dames! They were wild, exotic and hot.  Well, except for the sweet and virginal Maria and when she and Tony expressed their (relatively) innocent love for one another - "Te amo, Maria"  "Te amo, Tony" - I suspect that I felt ashamed of the somewhat baser feelings I had had for Anita while watching the dance at the gym just a few minutes earlier *.  You will have gathered by now that West Side Story holds a special place in my memories.  It's actually more than that.  It remains - and I do not expect it to be supplanted any time soon, my all-time favourite musical. It is a point of pride to me that I got to play clarinet in the pit in the first ever amateur production of West Side Story.  It took place in an unlikely venue, the Civic Theater in the small town of Ipswich in Suffolk where my mama still lives.

So, why am I beebling about all this?  Well, partly 'cos this is my blog and therefore I can.  But beyond that lies a much more relevant reason.  An article in the New York Times last week spoke of a new production of West Side Story which is to open in December for a four week run.  What's so special about that as to rate a NYT article? The fact that it is  the brainchild of Arthur Laurents who wrote the book for the original production is no small part of the reason but what has really got attention is that in its new iteration much of the dialogue and singing in this production will be in Spanish.  Now those of you who have been reading here for even a short time will know that I deplore regie and am not much given to other methods of messing around with traditional productions.  But this has me excited!  I can see it lending a whole new layer of authenticity to the show and bringing an edge to it that never existed before.  I called Elizabeth, my musical theater guru, and told her about it.  Her reaction was much like my own.  "Oh" she said.  Pause.  "Oh......I want to see that!!"  I can't wait to see how it is received.  Is it too much to hope that it will move to Broadway and that in a couple of years we might see it here in Portland as a part of the Fred Meyer Broadway series?

I am presuming that such of the audience who do not speak Spanish and who for some unfathomable reason do not as I do have the entire script memorised will have the assistance of surtitles for this production.  Surtitles are the English words which appear on a screen above the stage during the performance of many opera performances and which people find to be either enormously helpful and a boon to understanding what the hell is going on...or marginally annoying and distracting.  I am in no doubt whatever that their advantages far outweigh any annoyance factor.  They were first used in the Canadian Opera Company's production of Elektra in 1983.  Beverly 'Bubbles' Sills took the idea and ran with it when she took the reins at New York City Opera.  The Met have now tried to obviate the annoyance factor by putting the translation on a small screen in front of each audience member who can turn it off if he or she so wishes.

In one of the most awkward segues in the history of blogging let me pass on to Wagner. Remember how I told you a couple of weeks ago about how Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was going to be streamed live over the Internet from Bayreuth and that you could watch it for the not-inconsequential sum of $77?  Apparently this was the beginning of their Opera-For-Everyone-Who-Can-Stay-Awake-Through-Umpteen-Hours-of-This-Stuff Series.  I gather that 10,000 people watched online (or at least paid to watch on line).  Further reports as events warrant.

Well, for this week as Looney Tunes said "That's all folks!"  Bob, I promise to get to Ralph Vaughan-Williams next week.  And for those of you who are saying to yourselves "When is he going to get back to talking about opera, which is why we are here in  the first place?", cut me some slack, okay?  It's Summer and I'm having fun.  The opera season is just around the corner and, at the risk of being called a tease, I can tell you that I have some pretty good stuff lined up for you in connection with our opening production La Traviata.  So relax and trust, okay?

*  The part of Anita was played in the production that I saw by Chita Rivera.  I met her a few years later when a girlfriend of mine appeared with her in the first London production of Bye Bye Birdie, also starring Peter Marshall and Marty Wilde.  Is it any wonder that to this day there  still remains a part of me that is and ever will be the star-struck kid?