Marc Blitzstein’s glorious and problematic opera Regina, originally produced on Broadway in 1949, took the stage at Murchison Performing Arts Center in Denton Friday night in a largely successful and unfailingly fascinating production by the UNT Opera.
Blitzstein based the opera on Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, a drama of greed and dysfunction in an upwardly mobile family in Alabama in the early twentieth century. Two years after its premiere on Broadway in 1939, with Tallulah Bankhead in the principal role of Regina Giddens, Hellman’s play became a cinematic star vehicle for Bette Davis, who obliterated everyone else on the screen with an elegantly cruel rendition of the role that had belonged to Bankhead on Broadway.
Blitzstein, famously left-wing in his politics and not afraid to present his political views into his works for the musical stage, managed to maintain Hellman’s vividly defined characters and, at the same time, introduce new layers of political and sociological exploration. The result is a masterpiece that, while keeping any audience’s attention, constantly disturbs and, at times, confuses with a grand hodgepodge of styles ranging from traditional spiritual to blues to lyrical neo-romanticism to dissonant mid-twentieth-century modernism. At times, Regina is daringly experimental and defiant of operatic tradition—as when, for instance, in the first act, the cast sings its stage directions. And at times it’s assertively show-bizzy—there are scenes that would do credit to Bollywood at its most bizarre. And, at times, styles and concepts seem to collide: a moment that seems almost severely realistic can turn, suddenly, into pure opera.
The Lyric Theater of the Murchison Center proved, once again, to be an ideal setting for innovative, intimate opera production, with a realistic cutaway set dominated by a grand staircase. (With, however, one minor drawback, in that a very few of the scenes were performed on a runway that was partially obscured for much of the audience.) Conductor Stephen Dubberly successfully marshaled the constantly shifting musical forces and styles, and stage director Paula Homer wisely chose to play with and even emphasize the swings of mood and style inherent in Blitzstein’s score. Homer, incidentally, handled the racial subtext sensitively and with admirable style; although, as with any work dealing with race written in the United States in the middle twentieth century, there is inherent stereotyping, Homer enhanced Blitzstein’s deliberate mixture of musical styles by introducing some convincing visual interaction between the character of Alexandra, the white heiress, and the African-American servants, in a subtle defiance of the historical norms.
Among the cast for Friday night’s performance, Maria Bellanca sang beautifully in the title role while acting the part in an appropriately garish, emotionally insecure, and almost trashy sub-nouveau riche manner. We could hate her a little more than we hate the Bette Davis version of Regina, but we could also more readily understand her origins and sympathize with her considerably as a product of the culture around her. Ponder Randy Price Gilliland delivered a resonant and commanding performance as Ben Hubbard, and Kylie Toomer was continually captivating, sensitive, and vocally magnificent as the alcoholic aristocrat Birdie. Avis Stroud as Addie and Kathryn Supina as Alexandra Giddens both delivered beautifully acted and sung performances, as did Darry Hearon in a show-stealing performance as the musical field hand named Jazz.
Although Regina has yet to enter the operatic canon—performances are sporadic and rare, even in an era that appreciates eclecticism—the UNT production proves that it’s a piece very much worth the effort. The third act, indeed, pays off hugely, both in a lyrical moment in which four of the more likeable characters join in at least realizing simple human values, and, moments later, when Regina triumphs over her sibling adversaries and, at the same instant, realizes the tragedy of her own situation. Here, Blitzstein, through the constantly risky brewing of disparate musical styles, achieves a moment in which the political and the personal come together profoundly.
Image: Marc Blitzstein via tsutpen.
