Chicago Opera Theater managed to raise a few local eyebrows when it announced that the stage director for its current production of Rossini`s
”Cinderella” was going to be none other than the actor Charles Nelson Reilly. Yes, Reilly is well-known as a director of such stage plays as ”The Nerd” (which last week settled into an open-ended run at the Drury Lane Theater, Oakbrook Terrace) in addition to his television appearances. But most people would not associate him with operatic stage direction. A recent rehearsal break for the Opera Theater production seemed an appropriate time to ask the irrepressible Reilly about his flirtation with the lyric muse.
”Actually, opera has always been my passion and my hobby,” said Reilly, barely recognizable without his hairpiece and sporting a growth of bristly stubble. ”For as long as I can remember, I was a diva worshiper. I remember standing in line for 12 hours at the old Metropolitan Opera to buy cheap seats. I have such respect for singers. I wanted to be an opera singer myself, but,” he sighed, ”the boat sailed.”
In a sense, Reilly means that literally: He is skipper of his own 36-foot trawler, named Boheme, which he keeps docked at Marina Del Rey, Calif. The boat`s name refers to the Puccini work, ”La Boheme,” which has marked several crucial junctures in Reilly`s lifelong love affair with opera.
”`Boheme` was the first opera I ever saw, at age 14,” the actor recalled. ”It starred Grace Moore and Eugene Conley, and they were wonderful. Later I attended the Hartford School of Music, where I studied to be an opera singer. I was a baritone, but I`m now a tenor.”
Although he says he has always dreamed about singing the tenor lead in
”La Boheme,” the closest Reilly ever came to Puccini glory was performing the minor part of the Sergeant in a Connecticut Opera production of that work in 1948. No less than Bidu Sayao and Jussi Bjoerling took the lead roles.
”My part was just a few lines, but it`s really what I wanted to do. I had the program framed, because it was my stage debut, and you don`t get to sing with Sayao and Bjoerling every day.”
When the Providence Opera asked Reilly to direct his first opera in 1976, the work was-you guessed it-”La Boheme.”
”Roberta Peters, my dear friend for 30 years, asked me to do it. It was her first Mimi, and she was wonderful.”
Reilly`s success with the Puccini work led to his being engaged to direct Verdi`s ”La Traviata” with Anna Moffo and Robert Merrill. Among the 15 productions he has staged for various American companies are Mozart`s ”The Magic Flute,” Johann Strauss` ”Die Fledermaus” and Virgil Thomson`s ”The Mother of Us All.”
”I`ve been lucky with the company I keep,” said Reilly, a veritable fount of stories, anecdotes and gossip-not all of it printable-about people in the opera world.
People who come to the Opera Theater`s charming new production of
”Cinderella” (it will have an extended run through next Sunday) expecting Hellzapoppin-style highjinks are apt to be disappointed: Reilly`s treatment is amusing but restrained, and, above all, respect ful of the score. A high respect for musical values is, in fact, typical of every opera production that Reilly has directed.
”This is the first `Cinderella` I have done,” the director said. ”The cast is wonderful. Most singers aren`t gifted in an agile way of singing,
(but) this whole cast is. I just think Rossini is so important in this;
he`s the star. The action is in the music. So I have the cast stand and sing a lot.
”Most people think of me as a funny person. Like, I get introduced at parties as `this zany` or `this silly.` So when I direct an opera, people think it`s going to be funny funny. But `Cinderella` is a love story first, a comedy second. The music has to be caressed in a certain way.
”I just got through staging `Mother of Us All` in Dallas, and everybody thought that was going to be hysterical, too. Well, I got news for them-Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca combined couldn`t make that show funny. I just hate those directors (of comic opera) who throw in a lot of shtick. It makes me nervous. I approach my opera work seriously because I have such respect for the singers.”
That sentiment is affirmed by Reilly`s longtime friend and colleague, Alan Stone, the Opera Theater`s artistic director. The two met 38 years ago, when both sang in the chorus of ”Annie Get Your Gun” in Washington, D.C.
”When Charles gets immersed in a show,” Stone said, ”the singers will tell you he doesn`t know when to quit. He wants to keep at it even if it means going well over the rehearsal time. His energy keeps us all hopping.”
”The problem,” Reilly confesses, ”is that I`m 57, but I think I`m 25.”
Even Reilly must concede, however, that he is not as mobile as he once was. He must walk with the aid of crutches, a result of a broken hip sustained three years ago while taping a TV circus show. He knows he badly needs a hip operation, he says, but because he also suffers from chronic asthma, he is fearful of undergoing any operation that would require an anesthetic.
”Other than that,” Reilly quips, ”I`m fine.”
Although the actor has made very few appearances on Broadway in recent years, many people still recall his Bud Frump in the musical ”How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (which won him a Tony Award) and Cornelius Hackl in ”Hello, Dolly” as if he were still doing those shows. Reilly does enough television (he appears regularly on ”The Tonight Show” and
”Hollywood Squares”) to pay the bills, thus freeing himself to direct opera and plays.
At present, he is director of the Burt Reynolds Theater near his home on Jupiter Island, Fla. Along with ”The Nerd,” his current stage projects are
”At Wit`s End,” a one-man play based on the autobiography of pianist Oscar Levant; and a play about Zelda Fitzgerald, ”The Last Flapper,” which recently opened at Houston`s Alley Theater with Piper Laurie in the lead.
”But I always enjoy returning to opera after working in the theater, because it`s such a healing experience,” explains Reilly, who admits that he regrets never having pursued a serious operatic career all the way.
”I have a good tenor voice, even now,” he says, trumpeting a phrase from ”La Traviata” just to prove it. ”I can sing an occasional note breathtakingly; I just can`t sing a whole aria straight through. Three of my friends are also frustrated singers. Among the four of us, we can get through an entire aria. In my fantasy, I would have liked to be the poet Rodolfo in
`La Boheme.”`
Reilly sighed. ”I would have been wonderful.”
Who, then, does Reilly prefer to direct, singers or actors?
”Oh, singers, definitely. Singers are always well prepared; they never worry about their lines. Actors are always panicky till the moment they go on. When you tell singers to do something, they`ll do it. Most actors say, `I won`t do that.` Opera singers` minds are better, and they are less out for themselves. Actors tend to be very lazy.”
A CONVERSATION WITH A VERBAL DERVISH
Speaking to Charles Nelson Reilly is like having a conversation with a verbal dervish. Here is a sample of his pronouncements:
On soprano Beverly Sills. ”I once went backstage when she was still singing at the New York City Opera. She was in her dressing room and for no reason I just sang a phrase from Verdi`s `La Traviata` for her. I sang it perfect, better than most tenors at City Opera. Sills looked up from her dressing table and scoffed, `Aah, everybody wants to sing.` ”
On soprano Eileen Farrell. ”Hers was the most beautiful soprano voice I ever heard. A funny lady. Once, while she was staying with me, she happened to be in the kitchen, wearing a $2 house dress. She was singing `Ritorna vincitor,` from `Aida`-I mean, really singing. A delivery man came to the back door and said, `Excuse me, but your wife has a wonderful voice.` Farrell said, `Thank you, but I`d be too nervous to sing in public.”`
On his favorite tenor, Bruno Landi. ”He had the most beautiful voice I ever heard from a tenor, but practically nobody knows of him. Years ago, I was doing the Dinah Shore show and shared a dressing room with Luciano Pavarotti. I said he was my second-favorite tenor. He asked who was the first. When I told him it was Bruno Landi, Pavarotti almost fainted. `That`s my father`s favorite!` he said. No one could sing the leggiero stuff better. Landi did a lot of singing at the Metropolitan Opera in the `40s, but he never recorded. He didn`t have the career he deserved. A real pity.”
On today`s generic opera voices. ”Today we don`t have any voices with color-voices that are instantly recognizable. When Leonard Warren sang Amonasro or Rigoletto, it was like lava pouring down the sides of the theater- the sound came from everywhere. All you needed was to hear one note and you knew it was him. That`s all gone. The young singers do everything right, they sing all the notes. But where is the exciting, individual sound?
