Good morning, all! I slept quite poorly last night, and I slept in. I must shortly head down to Toyland.
Last night I saw a concert performance of THE SONG OF NORWAY at Carnegie Hall. Ifind this operetta by two writers I liked enormously, Wright & Forrest plus an assist from Edvard Grieg, a strange mix of witty lyrics, lovely music and one of the stupidest, emptiest and more than usually idiotic librettos ever written. The concert was nicely done with two really wonderful and outrageous performances from Judy Kaye as diva Luisa Giovanni and David Garrison as her husband Pepi LeLoop that caught all of the dizziness at operetta when it's performed with style and a sense of humor over the plot's madness.
The rest of the cast was good: Santino Fontana was a wonderful Edvard Grieg; I hadn't heard hm since for some time and he's a wonderful baritone; Jason Danieley was a good Rikaard, but I think his beautiful tenor has sung too much pop, and I longed for a solid operatic tenor in the role; Alexandra Silber of THE WOMAN IN WHITE was the ingenue Nina, and Iliked her for the msot part: I kept switching back and forth from yea to nay; she was great until she forced the top. Anita Gillette replaced Marni Nixon for the performance as Mother Grieg, but neither lady had the right voice for the role, which calls for a solid, plummy contralto sound and Ted Sperling miscast it. Anita was charming but the wrong voice. Then, because there's so much dance music, we had five ballet students occasionally prancing about to be a ballet troupe or happy villagers, and that added a bit more camp to the proceedings. Overall, though, the singing wasgood, and thechorus and orchestra in fine fettle. I had a good time.
