Pirates and desperados at Central City Opera

By Peter Alexander July 16 at 3:48 p.m.

Central City Opera’s performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance (July 13) started with a delightful, well nuanced reading of the Overture, and from there went from one entertaining moment to another. 

The cast conveyed the silly and satirical spirit of the popular G&S operetta. Even 145 years later, their soft-hearted pirates, ineffectual police, sentimental lovers and ridiculous misunderstandings—all delightful skewerings of British stereotypes in 1879—can still delight audiences, even as far removed from Albion as in a Colorado mining town that was barely 20 years old when Pirates premiered in New York City.

The attractive and practical stage settings from Papermoon Opera Productions, known for their creative use of paper in building scenery, worked well on Central City’s small stage, leaving space for pirates, police and Major General Stanley’s many daughters to move about. Direction by Kyle Lang both honored and departed appropriately from the traditions of G&S comedy. Some of the shtick preserved in traditional English productions was replaced by more up to date shtick—such as young women competing to provide CPR and mouth-to-mouth on the heatthrob hero. 

Lang handled the three groups of characters well, including enjoyable moments when the chorus burst off the stage into the audience or entered through the back of the house. There was a little too much of the daughters moving here and there in a tight clump, a consequence of the small stage at CCO, but otherwise the handling of the the different groups contributed well to the comedy.

If at times the humor was overacted, it never crossed the line into gross parody—quite. The greatest flaw was the uneven adoption of a British accent, noticeable only on certain words. Especially ripe for modification was the vowel sound “o” as “eeow” as in “Altheeow” or “You may geeow.” Even this simplified Biritishism was unevenly applied, with some actors (Jennifer DeDominici as the nursemaid Ruth) applying it thicker than others (Alex DeSocio as the Pirate King). Used consistently it might have been a useful class distinction (working class vs. nobility, as the pirates turn out to be), but English class accents are more varied than non-English casts are likely to convey. It was noticeable, but distracted little from enjoyment of the comedy.

The cast was full of strong comic-opera voices. Pirate King DeSocio has a robust voice and, like most of the cast and chorus, sang with clear diction. His stage movements were fluid, no doubt due to Lang’s choreography as well as stage direction. 

As the romantic lead Frederic, Chris Mosz sang with a strong but edgy tenor sound and a rapid vibrato that cut through orchestra and chorus. His voice was more than powerful enough for the small Central City house, but more tenderness would be welcome.

Jasmine Habersham handled Mabel’s coloratura flights with firm accuracy. Her bright, clear voice came on a little too forcefully at first, but in the second act melted nicely into the warm, lyrical passages. Her “Poor Wand’ring One,” one of the highlights of any performance, was especially lovely, first smooth then popping the top notes.

As Ruth, DeDominici is fairly young, and as presented onstage far too attractive, for the joke about her age (supposedly 47) to work. When Frederic first sees the General’s daughters, he exclaims that she misled him in saying she was attractive (“I’ve been told so,” she says coyly). Otherwise, she was effective and funny as the hard-of-hearing nursemaid whose error in apprenticing Frederic to a pirate rather than a nautical pilot launches the whole plot.

Baritone Adelmo Guidarelli was an appropriately self-important Major General. He was first-rate at everything the role requires: pomposity, patter song and comic timing. Milking it for all it was worth, he breezed through the accelerated reprise of his well known patter song (“I am the Very Model of the Modern Major General”; one cannot complain about dropped final consonants at that speed!), and weeped equally comically in the second act.

Andrew Harris’s booming bass made a powerful effect as the bombastic, if less than dauntless Sargeant of Police. The policeman’s chorus added their own touch of humor, waddling in and out and about, singing as forcefully as required. The entire chorus—pirates, daughters and police—deserve mention for their musical performance filling the house at times, or dissolving into softer moments. 

The small orchestra under Brandon Eldredge was excellent from the overture on, supporting but never drowning the singers. Tempos were brisk, but only in the Major General’s encore breakneck.

If you are a fan of light opera, you will want to see CCO’s Pirates of Penzance. You can’t do better than to see Gilbert & Sullivan in an opera house built in their lifetimes. But if you go, be warned: repairs on I-70 create massive slowdowns and outright stoppages between Denver and Idaho Springs. Choose another route into the mountains. 

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Gilbert and Sullivan’s hapless pirates are tenderhearted, and as it turns out so are the gritty goldminers in Puccini’s Fanciulla del West (Girl of the Golden West).

The romanticized story, based on wild west myths and set in a location Puccini never saw, has the miners singing sentimental songs about home and wanting to see “mama” again, and in the end forgiving the outlaw Ramerrez, removing the noose from his neck and allowing him to walk away with Minnie, the love of his life—and theirs.

With a strong cast and thoughtful production, CCO’s Fanciulla is well worth the trip into the mountains. Transferred from the California gold fields to Central City in the 1860s, the revised setting makes perfect sense with only the slightest of changes in the text (Ramerrez and Minnie are “returning to California” instead of “leaving California” at the end). Occasional projections suggest the Central City location.

The sets by Papermoon Opera Production are refreshingly downscale and simple, much closer to the reality of a mining camp than the large-scale sets major opera companies often choose to provide. Made largely with paper and cardboard, the sets are evocative of a time and place the people in Central City know well, having models right outside the theater. Minnie’s Polka saloon is appropriately ramshackle, as is her cabin, and the final scene is placed, as written, in a forest. The simplified sets, based in goldfield reality, helped bring the drama to the fore.

In the title role of Minnie, the “Fanciulla” who commands the Polka saloon, Kara Shay Thomson offered a large, powerful voice. Hers is the critical role, controlling the plot throughout; she is the one Puccini heroine who is never a victim but survives by being the strongest character in town. She was superb throughout.

At her best Thomson produced a bright, shining soprano, only occasionally sliding into the top notes. Her Bible-reading scene with the miners was well modulated, gentle or soaring as needed. In Act II she was girlish with her lover Ramerrez and defiant before the Sheriff Jack Rance, always in control musically and dramatically. Her brief scene in the final act, when she faces down Rance again and persuades the miners to release the outlaw Ramerrez for her, she continued to dominate the action.

As Rance, baritone Grant Youngblood filled the stock role—spurned lover, blustering villain—effectively. In the standard black hat and suit he was every inch the bullying lawman, showing his obsession with Minnie any time he was onstage. He made the second act showdown a dramatic highpoint, and sang solidly throughout. 

As lead tenor Dick Johnson/Ramerrez—the last of the three corners of the love triangle to enter the stage—Jonathan Burton expressed more with this singing than his acting. He was able to belt out the soaring climaxes of his individual numbers with a ringing tone, and conveyed musically his growing love for Minnie. His one aria, “Che’lla mi creda libero e lontano,” the keystone of the final act, was warmly received. His stage presence was not always assured, however, and he relied too often on an artless grin to make himself look guiltless.

Supporting roles were all filled ably. At the performance I saw (July 14), apprentice artist Nicholas Lin filled in capably as Nick, the bartender-of-all-trades. Christopher Job used his deep bass and a gritty sound to create the menacing character of Ashby, the Wells Fargo agent who only wants to catch the bandit.  Matthew Cossack sang expressively as Sonora, the most sympathetic of the miners.

A special word should go to Steele Fitzwater and apprentice artist Xochitl Hernandez as the couple Billy Jackrabbit and Wowkle. Too often portrayed as racist, native American stereotypes, here they were characters with dignity. In this production directed by Fenlon Lamb, Billy is a white man who has had a child by an Indian woman, an historically viable and interesting choice that puts a more subtle spin on characters traditionally based on narrow, hidebound notions of the American Indian. Both sang well.

Lamb’s direction made good use of the space available, like Pirates expanding briefly into the house. The action was clear, and the second act conveyed the rising tension powerfully. The card game—one of Puccini’s greatest moments of suspense, created with the simplest of musical means—was exquisitely melodramatic. The chorus—all men, naturally—generated excitement in the final act, filling the hall with sound. Conductor Andrew Bisantz led the outstanding CCO orchestra with a fine feeling for the ebb and flow of Puccini’s flexible musical fabric.

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Both Pirates of Penzance and Fanciulla del West continue in repertory through the remainder of the Central City Opera summer season, which ends August 4. The calendar is listed HERE, and tickets may be purchased through the CCO Web page.

The production of Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, originally scheduled to open July 13, will open Wednesday, July 17. A review will appear next week.