Bedrech Smetana
The Bronx Opera’s recent production of Bedrech Smetana’s comic opera Two Widows at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College is a rare piece in the opera world. For forty-one years this gifted company has been performing both foreign and American operas in English with full orchestra and chorus. The founder Michael Spierman says there are two things against them: “One is the Bronx, and the other is opera.” He need not worry. If Two Widows is typical of the quality of the productions, the Bronx Opera deserves to stay around for quite a while.
Best known for The Bartered Bride, Smetana (1824-1884) was a Czech nationalist who wrote eight operas and is credited with being the first person to compose specifically Czech music. He infused the rich and varied score of Two Widows with riffs from his country’s folk songs and dances while echoes of Mozart, Wagner and other classical composers are also evident. Fortunately, there is nothing provincial about the action or attitudes of the lovers in his opera. Dramatist Emmanuel Züngel adapted Pierre-Félicien Mallefille’s popular 1860 French romantic comedy Les deux veuves into Czech for Smetana. The music often transcends this humble source and deserves to be better known. The opera premiered at the Provisional Theatre in Prague in 1874 and Smetana revised it in 1877, replacing the spoken dialogue with recitatives and adding the amorous peasant couple Lidka and Tonik. The Bronx Opera production drew on both versions adroitly adapted into English by Mark Herman and Ronnie Apter.
Rarely performed outside the Czech Republic, Two Widows is a delightful piece of romantic fluff reminiscent at times of Ernst Lubitsch’s more celebrated motion pictures. Two cousins have both lost their husbands, but the merry widow Karolina is determined to bring the still mourning Anezka back among the living. Once she has convinced her to trade in widow’s weeds for a scarlet gown, Karolina goes on a noble quest to find a suitable match for the pitiful lady. Conveniently, love-besotted Ladislav shows up at Karolina’s estate disguised as the most inept of poachers. His aim is to find and win his beloved. He surrenders and Karolina sentences him to stay in the castle—exactly where he wants to be—so she can keep her eye on both Ladislav and Anezka. But when Anezka coldly rebuffs his advances, Karolina decides to make a play for him herself to arouse her cousin’s true feelings for the gentleman.
High soprano Katherine Weissinger as Karolina greatly enjoyed herself as she shamelessly flirted with Neil Harrelson’s somewhat oafish Ladislav. The tenor was in fine voice particularly at the opening of the second act, singing his heart out from the audience. Dreary Anezka may have seemed at first less sympathetic than fiery Karolina, but mezzo-soprano Leslie Swanson beautifully explored the deeper pathos of her struggle between loyalty to her dead husband and passion for her aggressive suitor. Bass-baritone Juan José Ibarra was perfect as Karolina’s blustering gamekeeper Grumlal (Mumlal in other productions); and soprano Nicole Lee Aiossa and tenor Mattew Rzomp as Lidka and Tonik were heartily welcomed whenever they led the peasant chorus back on stage. The orchestra was not always in sync with the principals who were forced to rush the lyrics in places so some words were lost in indistinct enunciation. There was also in the audience one chatty Cathy whose indignant mother, despite frequent glares and some fierce words from one particularly vexed patron during intermission, refused to quell the child’s incessant infantile stage whisper. It was like listening to the buzzing of a faulty cell phone for two acts. Why burden bored youngsters with things they can neither comprehend nor appreciate? And why must audiences humor their even more ill-mannered parents?
Kaye Playhouse, Hunter College, 68th & Lexington Ave. 212 772 4448