2024/2025 Program Notes

An American Night at the Opera

Program Notes

Pianist and producer Ronny Michael Greenberg and the brilliant young singers Olivia Smith and César Delgado open the 2024-2025 season with a kaleidoscopic view of American opera. Ronny explains,

"An American Night at the Opera is an exploration of how different influences - ranging from jazz and musical theatre to classical and modern operatic forms - come together to create a uniquely American musical experience. Jazz, with its roots deeply embedded in American history, brings a rhythmic and improvisational vitality that has influenced countless composers and continues to shape the sound of American opera. Musical theatre, another quintessentially American form, infuses operatic storytelling with accessible melodies and dramatic flair, creating a bridge between the classical and the contemporary.

The program reflects these diverse influences by including pieces that showcase the grand, operatic qualities of American music in various forms. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is a prime example, merging the improvisational spirit of jazz with the sweeping orchestral elements that evoke the grandeur of opera. Similarly, West Side Story blurs the lines between musical theatre and opera, with its powerful narrative and complex score. Sondheim’s works, like ‘Losing My Mind’ and ‘No One Is Alone,’ bring a psychological depth and lyrical intensity that are operatic in their emotional reach. And with Tobias Picker’s ‘I Am a Quiet Flower’ from Awakenings, we see how modern American opera continues to evolve, integrating these rich influences into new, compelling forms.

This program is a testament to the vast and varied landscape of American music, where jazz, musical theatre, and opera converge to create something truly unique.”
–Ronny Michael Greenberg

The concert is bookended by two composers with enormous influence on American opera, George Gershwin (1898-1937) and Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). Gershwin of course composed the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, with lyrics by his big brother Ira, but their genius overflowed into more than 500 songs, mostly written together; there would have been even more if George had not died suddenly of a brain tumor at only 37. Bernstein’s 1957 musical West Side Story is another hugely influential masterpiece; its lyrics also mark the Broadway debut of another vital figure in American music, Stephen Sondheim. Between the towering poles of Gershwin and Bernstein, we will touch down for music from two distinctly American operas: Susannah, by Carlisle Floyd, and Awakenings, by Tobias Picker, and two songs, “Be My Love,” by Nicholas Brodszky, and “Stranger in Paradise,” by Robert Wright and George Forrest, with fascinating operatic connections. A vast and varied landscape indeed.

The journey begins with Gershwin. He was born in Brooklyn, the child of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. A piano came into the home when George was ten (intended, it seems, for Ira, not George) and by the age of 15 George had left school and was working as a “song plugger”–a gig where a pianist played in department stores to promote the sale of sheet music. He soon moved on to recording, arranging, and writing songs, and in 1919, at age 21, had his first hit with the song “Swanee,” recorded by the jazz singer Al Jolson.

The three songs that open the program are Gershwin classics. You certainly know them, and they have been recorded by famous artists over the years. But–and here is the opera connection–they are not random songs to listen to over drinks. They were all written for shows. They are, in their way, arias. “Someone to Watch Over Me” is from the 1926 musical Oh, Kay, and “Embraceable You” and “I Got Rhythm” are from a 1930 show called Girl Crazy. It’s possible to watch Girl Crazy on YouTube and get a feel for the context, though you need to overlook some dated political incorrectness. And if you find the plot too flimsy for comparison to an opera, take a look at the plot of Il Mondo della Luna, an opera by Haydn, no less, whose overture the Eureka Symphony will play next April. This is a line impossible to draw.

The next set of songs begins with “Be My Love,” by Nicholas Brodszky (1905-1958). Brodszky was (like the Gershwins) the offspring of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. A tunesmith who always needed help from arrangers, and who has been described as “near-illiterate,” he nevertheless had an enviable career writing for many musical films. “Be My Love,” with lyrics by Sammy Cahn, was for the movie The Toast of New Orleans, starring the actor and operatic tenor Mario Lanza. The plot is apropos to our operatic evening; Lanza plays a Louisiana bayou fisherman with a nice singing voice. He is lured to New Orleans and groomed for a career as an opera singer, but loses his country charm in the process, along with the love of his leading lady, Kathryn Grayson. You’ll be glad to hear he throws off the influence of opera and regains his lost love.

Next are two songs by Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021). “Losing My Mind” is from the 1971 musical Follies, and “No One Is Alone” is from the 1987 Into the Woods. Sondheim breaks the mold by having grandparents who were German Jews on his father’s side and Lithuanian Jews on his mother’s. As a child in New York, he became friends with James Hammerstein, the 10-year-old son of the famous composer Oscar Hammerstein, and the great lyricist became his mentor. Though Sondheim got his Broadway start writing lyrics for West Side Story, he vowed going forward to write both words and music for his shows, which he did for 16 of his 19 musicals. Follies is his 9th. It tells of a group of aging actors who meet at the crumbling, about-to-be-destroyed theater where they performed and had youthful love affairs. “Losing My Mind” follows a kind of group nervous breakdown, making you wonder if you should ever look back over your life. “No One Is Alone” is from Sondheim’s retelling of four Grimm Brothers fairy tales: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel. Many of us saw the production of Into the Woods when the Cal Poly Humboldt Theater Department produced it in March, so we know that Sondheim’s work is as psychological as any opera.

Our two singers now join to sing “Stranger in Paradise,” a song with perhaps the most complicated relationship to opera of any on tonight’s program. It was written by Robert Wright (1914-2005) and George Forrest (1915-1999), a pair of professional and romantic partners who are best known for adapting and adding lyrics to music by the Russian composer Alexander Borodin for the 1953 musical Kismet. See what I mean? The music for “Stranger in Paradise” comes from an exotic scene near the end of Borodin’s opera Prince Igor known as the Polovetsian Dances. The song that ended up in Kismet is a long way from Polovtsy, but you can get a sense of the story by watching Vic Damone and Ann Blythe in the 1955 movie, again courtesy of the miracle that is YouTube. The movie is in saturated 1950s Technicolor and is borderline cheesy, but in a good way, while the song shows us another path for opera to wiggle into our lives.

Ronny Michael Greenberg next takes a solo turn with Gershwin’s Three Preludes, a collection of short piano pieces confirming his genius for combining classical music with jazz. They were written in 1926, two years after Rhapsody in Blue, for a collection called Melting Pot that was originally to include 24 preludes, later whittled down to three. They are tiny gems, each one about two minutes long; only Gershwin could have given them such sparkle.

The first half winds up with music by Leonard Bernstein. The great conductor, composer, pianist, writer and educator was born in Massachusetts to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. (Is this the right time to ask what it is about having Ukrainian grandparents that produces musical genius?) Like many classical composers, Bernstein counted Gershwin as an influence. He was working as a music camp counselor in1937 when the word came of Gershwin’s death; he memorialized him by playing the second of the Three Preludes.

Bernstein was already at the height of his fame in 1949 when he began his collaboration with choreographer and director Jerome Robbins, book writer Arthur Laurents, and the young lyricist Stephen Sondheim, on West Side Story, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Originally planned to be called East Side Story, and for the warring gangs to be Catholics and Jews, it evolved to become the story of a Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, and an “American” gang, the Jets, whose clash ends in tragedy. Maria, a “Shark girl,” stands in for Juliet; she falls in love with her Romeo, the Jet leader Tony. The story is deftly translated from Verona to the streets of New York; the balcony scene takes place on a fire escape, the ball becomes a dance at the gym, Prince Esculus becomes Officer Krupke, while music, lyrics and dance transport us to a timeless world of young love.

Bernstein had already written an opera, Trouble in Tahiti, five years earlier, but wrote that with West Side Story his aim was different. He was treading a fine line between Broadway and opera. He wanted a score that would be manageable for his singers and not tempt them into overtly “operatic” singing, but he also did not want a typical “musical comedy.” A musical tragedy was something that had never been envisioned. Even now West Side Story resists classification, but we do not have to give it a label. It is simply its incomparable self. The three songs that conclude the first half are “Maria,” sung by César as Tony; “I Feel Pretty,” sung by Olivia as Maria; and “Tonight,” a duet for the star-crossed lovers.

Following intermission Ronny will play the solo piano version of Gershwin’s most famous piece, Rhapsody in Blue. Written in 1924, Rhapsody was a commission from the bandleader Paul Whiteman for an all-jazz concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Whiteman requested a concerto which would combine classical and jazz elements. After Gershwin completed the piece it was orchestrated by Whiteman’s arranger, Ferde Grofé, writing to the strengths of his Palais Royal Orchestra, which included Ross Gorman, a virtuoso clarinetist. Gorman reportedly improvised the famous opening glissando in rehearsal, and Gershwin begged him to leave it in. The lengthy concert included 26 separate numbers, with Rhapsody scheduled as the 25th, by which time the audience was looking for the door. But Rhapsody electrified the crowd, the reception was ecstatic, and Gershwin was established as a major composer.

Our opera survey resumes with “I am a Quiet Flower,” from Awakenings, the 6th opera by the distinguished composer Tobias Picker (b. 1954). Picker was a close friend of the British neurologist Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), who wrote about Picker’s musicality, and his Tourette’s Syndrome, in his 2007 book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. The opera, with lyrics by Picker’s husband Aryeh Lev Stollman, is based on Sacks’s 1973 book, also called Awakenings, about a group of patients who had been left for four decades in a frozen state, like living statues, after an epidemic of sleeping sickness in the 1920s. Dr. Sacks administered the drug L-DOPA to the comaatose patients and brought about their explosive awakening. The aria is sung by their nurse, Mr. Rodriguez, who, in a startlingly operatic but actual turn of events, finds himself the object of consuming desire by one of the reawakened patients.

Olivia has an aria for us also: Ain’t It a Pretty Night,” from Susannah, by Carlisle Floyd (1926-2021). Floyd was an opera composer through and through; he wrote eleven of them, many set in the post-Civil-War American South (although he also portrayed 17th Century New England witch hunts, Wuthering Heights, and more). He was born in South Carolina and spent much of his life at Florida State University and the University of Houston; his knowledge of the south was direct and personal. Susannah is his best-known work and one of the most popular American operas, second only to Porgy and Bess. It transposes the Biblical story of Susannah and the Elders to rural Tennessee, making it more violent and more feminist in the process. Tennessee Susannah, like Biblical Susannah, will suffer for innocently bathing in a stream and stirring lust in the hearts of the church elders. Her beautiful song, in Southern dialect, celebrates her innocence.

Olivia, César and Ronny, joined by Tom Stone on violin, conclude the concert with two more songs from West Side Story: “Somewhere,” a duet between Tony and Maria, and the up-tempo number from Act I, “America.” The last song is a hilarious debate on the virtues of life in America versus Puerto Rico, but now Olivia and César are no longer Tony and Maria. They have been transformed into two new characters: pro-USA Anita and pro-PR Bernardo. I’ll leave you to choose, but after this splendid American Night at the Opera, I know where I want to be!