Read Part I of the Glimmerglass Weekend reviews here.
With its commitment to producing an American musical in rep with three traditional operas, the Glimmerglass Festival next presented Stephen Sondheim's macabre Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Premiered in 1979 with a cast headed by Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, Sweeney, the story of a formerly-exiled barber with a vendetta and thirst for blood (and hunger for meat pies), is one of the musicals most commonly produced by opera companies and justifiably famous.
The blade-wielding barber was sung with great commitment by the veteran bass-baritone Greer Grimsley. The role of Sweeney is long, demanding, and incredibly complex, possibly too complex for Grimsley who, despite a dark, resonant bass-baritone, seldom deviated from a suave-yet-intense, anguished demeanor and delivery. His real-life wife, mezzo-soprano Luretta Bybee, played his business partner-cum-paramour Mrs. Lovett more like a sassy diner waitress (especially as costumed in this production by Terese Wadden, whose other costumes were equally dowdy and unflattering) than Lansbury's iconic, twitchy-yet-focused performance. She negotiated the character with relative ease (Mrs. Lovett doesn't exactly require a pure, fresh voice or clean legato line - Bybee had neither), but fatigued as the evening progressed. Harry Greenleaf gave the evening's only truly polished performance as Anthony, the sailor in love with Sweeney's abducted daughter, Johanna. His assured, soft-grained, ringing baritone poured out a heroic reading of "Johanna" which won the night's biggest applause. His Johanna, here costumed like a Barbie cake-topper, was the dreamy-eyed Emily Pogorelc whose voice seemed a shade too rich for the warbling ingénue. Peter Volpe lent a leathery, mellow voice and the requisite pomposity and predatoriness to the part of Judge Turpin and he was complemented by the slimy Beadle of Bille Bruley who had ringing high notes to spare.
Todd's first victim is the faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli, here sung and acted to the hilt with piercing, if not effortless, high C's and ease with accents by Christopher Bozeka. His lackey, Tobias, who is eventually employed and them imprisoned by Mrs. Lovett, was given an earnest portrayal by Nicholas Nestorak, though there was some shakiness in his "Not While I'm Around."Patricia Schuman rounded out the lumpy cast as an overly-vulgar Beggar Woman.With a production that robbed this dark comedy of many laughs and the all-too-smooth sounds coming from the pit (Conductor John DeMain seemed intent on highlighting absolutely every snippet of melody in Sondheim's often jagged and murky score), this was an operatic presentation of a musical and though not wholly unenjoyable, just didn't serve the piece.
Christopher Alden is known for pushing the envelope with his often-reinvented stagings of classic and obscure pieces (If only they had given him"Magpie"!), but this seemingly-midcentury Sweeney, which unfolded within Andrew Holland's efficient sets, eschewed the story's supernatural element and left behind a sarcastic, sometimes-awkward husk that did nothing to alleviate or capitalize on some of the smugness that permeates most Sondheim shows.
A show decidedly void of snugness, though, would by Arth