Through June 28, “The Light in the Piazza” Shines Warmly at Opera Theatre
In love, as in life, “risk is everything”
The Light in the Piazza, the 2005 musical adaptation of Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 novella of the same name, is something of a miracle.
The fact that it appeared at all in the high-stakes gambling den that is contemporary Broadway was astonishing enough, but what’s truly incredible is that it survived over 500 performances in that pressure cooker and garnered a raft of awards in the process.
That’s what I wrote when I first saw the show at the Fox in 2007. Now, after watching the nation sink ever more deeply a mire of loud, empty vulgarity in which gladiatorial combat on the White House lawn is suddenly normal, it feels even more miraculous—especially in a flawless production like the one that Opera Theatre is presenting through June 28.
The Light in the Piazza is the story of Margaret Johnson (soprano Kate Baldwin), an upper crust Southern matron traveling in Italy in 1953 with her daughter Clara (soprano Katrina Galka). As they’re admiring the naked statues in Firenze (Florence to us Anglophones), Clara’s straw hat is blown off by a fateful gust of wind and retrieved by Fabrizio Naccarelli (tenor Roy Hage), a young apprentice in the tie shop of his father (baritone Paulo Szot).
Fabrizio and Clara are instantly smitten with each other, but there are obstacles. Clara may be 26, but a riding accident as a child has left her with the emotional maturity of someone half her age. Trying to protect her daughter, Margaret does her best to keep the lovers apart. When that inevitably fails, Margaret has to come to terms with the flowering of her daughter’s identity, the withering of her own marriage, and the future they all must face.
And, make no mistake, that future is ambiguous. It’s by no means clear that Fabrizio and Clara are prepared for a life together. As she and Fabrizio approach the altar in the final scene Clara, now fully aware of her limitations, tells Margaret “I can’t leave you,” to which Margaret replies “yes, you can.” And she does.
“Risk,” as Signora Naccarelli reminds us in “Aiutami,” “is everything.”
Perhaps that undercurrent of ambiguity is one of the reasons why, despite its Broadway origins, The Light in the Piazza has been embraced by many opera companies, including Leeds-based Opera North, Piedmont Opera in Winston-Salem NC, Lyric Opera of Chicago. It felt somewhat dwarfed in the 5000-seat Fox and somewhat diminished by the R-S Theatrics black box version in 2018. Opera Theatre’s space is, like baby bear’s bed, “just right.”
.The cast is just right as well, with strong voices and unimpeachable acting to match. This is a cast that sounds, acts, and looks completely convincing in their roles—a consummation devoutly to be wished but all too rarely delivered by most opera companies.
Much of the show rests on Baldwin’s well-tailored shoulders (thank you, costume designer Ulises Alcala), and she carries it brilliantly. The action takes place largely through Margaret’s eyes, and it is her character whose inner life is most thoroughly explored and who has the larger developmental arc. Her performance of “Dividing Day,” in which she confronts the way she and husband Roy (St. Louis stage veteran Michael James Reed, in powerful cameo) have lost their connection, is deeply moving.
Galka gives persuasive voice to Clara’s impetuous vulnerability, allowing us to see the child trying to come to grips with the adult body she inhabits. The scenes in which Clara’s emotional immaturity and naïveté get the better of her feel painfully real. Equally touching is Hage’s evocation of Fabrizio’s sincere passion and sad awkwardness at being unable to express his feelings adequately in a foreign tongue. Fabrizio and Clara are both babes in the woods of adulthood and their struggle to find their way is, by turns, both comic and tragic.
Szot, a veteran of both opera and musical theatre (his Emile DeBecque earned him Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle awards in 2008), easily captures the elder Naccarelli’s bluster without neglecting his genuine concern for Fabrizio’s romantic angst. Mezzo Debby Lennon, a familiar figure on local stages, is the perfect mix of warmth and worldly wisdom as Signora Naccarelli in the “Aiutimi” quintet that opens the second act. It was a neat little star turn.
Baritone Joel Clemens and mezzo Kelly Guerra are, to paraphrase Mr. Sondheim, a “practically imperfect pair” as the feuding couple Giuseppe and Franca Naccarelli. Guerra has a particularly fine moment in “The Joy You Feel,” in which her advice to Clara on marriage turns, both amusingly and painfully, into a reflection on her own volatile marriage.
There are many more striking performances in this ensemble—almost a dozen of them, in fact. There’s not a weak link anywhere, and I find that I must tender a sincere “mi scusi” for not listing them all here.
The book, by noted playwright Craig Lucas, handles this tale of “love among the ruins” with great warmth and, when appropriate, good humor. The characters are beautifully drawn and their relationships crystal clear, even when a scene or an entire song is in Italian. With the exception of Signora Naccarelli’s asides in “Aiutimi” (“Help me”), the Italian lyrics are not translated. It’s an elegant way to remind us that both we and Margaret are the outsiders here.
The score, by third-generation theatre composer Adam Guettel, is lavish and romantic without being saccharine, with long melodic lines and Sondheim-esque rhythms. The sophisticated songs are so well integrated with the book that that the show feels, in retrospect, like one continuous aria, some of which just happens to be spoken rather than sung. The illusion is enhanced by the score’s heavy reliance on the strings (violins, cellos, and basses but no violas) and harp. There are no brasses or horns, only two percussionists, and the woodwinds are limited to one oboe, one clarinet, and two bassoons. Piano and celesta are prominently featured and the overall effect is, if you’ll pardon the overused word, luminous.
The score got an appropriately resplendent performance by members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Rob Berman, who conducted a concert version of it as part of the New York City Center Encores! Series. “The music looks complex on the page,” says Berman in his program note, “but when performed, sounds inevitable.”
Crystal Manich—whose diverse credits include opera (both traditional and contemporary), theatre, and film—directs with clarity and a keen understanding of the characters. In collaboration with choreographer Seán Curran, she creates stage pictures that shift with an almost dreamlike fluidity.
Light is, as the title suggests, the underlying theme of this piece. Specifically, it’s the warm, golden light of what Margaret calls “a city in the sun”. It’s manifested in Cameron Anderson’s airy and flexible set of arches and columns, as well as in Eric Southern’s lighting, which evokes mellow, autumnal or (in the one brief Roman scene) harsh moods as required. Ulises Alcala’s costumes complete the 1950s Italian ambience.
Neatly straddling the worlds of musical theatre, operetta, and opera, The Light in the Piazza is a work of distinctive charm, passion, and tenderness. It’s a piece that is rare, if not unique, in its remarkable combination of musical theatrical genres that is as demanding for the performers as it is rewarding for the audience. Opportunities to see it are rare; don’t miss this one.
The Opera Theatre of St. Louis production of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s The Light in the Piazza runs through June 28 at the Loretto-Hilton center on the Webster University campus, in rotating repertory with three other operas. Ticket information, pre-show boxed dinner menus, and other vital details are available at the OTSL web site.
First, the obligatory picking of nits: there's an extra 'z' in a "Fabrizzio" at one point, & "Rog Hage" needs to be corrected in one photo caption.
Interesting to read that the Italian lyrics for the Naccarellis are not translated. I saw Steve Callahan's review at 'Broadway World', and he mentioned the lack of translations as well. So this "non-translation" is both for the Naccarellis' dialogue and the song lyrics? That makes it kind of a throwback to OTSL pre-2005, before which there were no surtitles.
(Disclaimer: I wrote the commentary on sale at the OTSL boutique for 'The Light in the Piazza', as a member of the OTSL Guild. This is totally separate from big glossy program book for the season. So in a way, I know much, too much, about this story, in all 3 versions.)