The blue-blooded Sloans of Lake Forest have just married off their son, a randy military-school cadet, to the bubbleheaded daughter of Snooks Brenner, the nouveau riche owner of a Louisville trucking company. The bride’s people drip vulgarity. The groom’s relatives are snooty hypocrites. It’s only a matter of time before the families’ dirty little secrets threaten the bonds of unholy matrimony.
That was the plot outline of director Robert Altman’s satiric film, “A Wedding,” which audiences found diffuse and chaotic when it was released in 1978. The prospects that a failed movie would succeed as an opera 26 years later did not appear good.
But composer William Bolcom recognized the material’s potential as the basis for a modern “Marriage of Figaro,” a grand comedy of manners that could capitalize on the resources of a major opera company.
With Altman back onboard as director, “A Wedding” has been greatly improved and exuberantly reborn as a two-act operatic entertainment. Outfitted with a smart and witty libretto by Arnold Weinstein and Altman, Bolcom’s third commissioned opera from Lyric Opera of Chicago had its world premiere Saturday night at the Civic Opera House in a lavish production that honored the company’s golden jubilee season.
The 16 principal roles were strongly filled by such stalwarts of the roster as Catherine Malfitano, Jerry Hadley, Patricia Risley, Timothy Nolen and Mark S. Doss. Conductor Dennis Russell Davies, a longtime champion of Bolcom’s music, kept the orchestra perking along buoyantly. The performers and artistic team drew a prolonged ovation from a packed house that included some 30 members of the national and international press.
But it was Bolcom, looking bemused and elated, who emerged as the evening’s conquering hero.
The opera, like the movie, piles plotlines and characters atop one another like the layers of the opera’s outsize wedding cake. The first act threatens to bog down in exposition. But whereas the original “Wedding” skewered every character with mean-spirited disdain, the opera treats them more sympathetically and with greater depth. Working with a sharply observed libretto that’s better focused than the improvised screenplay, Altman directs with a firmer hand than was evident in the film.
But it’s the music that rescues the Sloans and Brenners from their foolish vanities. At 66, Bolcom is the great magpie of contemporary American music, never more himself than when he’s borrowing from American popular song. He writes tuneful arias, duets and ensembles that show off the talents of individual singers. “A Wedding” is his best operatic score to date: accessible, singable, eclectic, consistently inventive and great fun.
The set, designed by Robin Wagner, is an elegant parody of North Shore conspicuous excess, full of garlands and tchotchkes, with a large, movable staircase and gossamer curtains allowing each scene to dissolve into the next. Dona Granata’s sumptuous costumes reflect the social chasm separating the conjoined clans. Keeping the three-hour opera gliding along smoothly are Patricia Birch’s choreography and Duane Schuler’s lighting. The music takes its inspiration from a plethora of parallel plots.
The groom’s mother, Victoria Corelli (Malfitano), has been addicted to morphine since giving birth to her son. The groom’s father, Luigi (Hadley), is an ex-waiter who married above his station and is restless to return to his native Italy. The groom’s aunt, Diana Sloan (Risley), is having an affair with the family’s Caribbean butler, Randolph (Doss). The family matriarch, Nettie (Kathryn Harries), expires in an upstairs bedroom while the reception is in progress.
The focal point
Despite all that, it’s Tulip Brenner, the bride’s mother, wonderfully portrayed by Lauren Flanigan, who eventually emerges as the opera’s focal character — a sad middle-age woman whose repressed romantic longings are stirred by the sudden attentions of Jules Mackenzie Goddard, the groom’s uncle, sung by Jake Gardner.
In a role created by Carol Burnett in the original, Flanigan stops the show with her big, bluesy aria, “I’m Just a Woman in Love.” Bolcom and Weinstein gently mine the comic pathos of a scene in which the adulterous lovers plan to rendezvous at a motel near the Dairy Queen in Tallahassee.
Too bad about the Goddard character, however. Jules is not only Tulip’s would-be lover, he’s also the family doctor turned art dealer. (The guy administers painkillers to Victoria when he’s not selling Pollocks, De Koonings and Klines to wealthy clients.) Gardner is an able performer, but there’s only so much anyone could do to make this middle-age Romeo plausible.
Another baritone, the admirable Mark Delavan, is sensational as Snooks Brenner, Tulip’s good-ol’-boy husband, the opera’s other focal role, after Tulip. Delavan shakes his hips, Elvis style, in a twangy country-rock ballad about how Snooks gave up whoring and drinking for God and family. In a bitterly funny scene, he assails the “blueblood white trash” family into which his daughter has married.
Everyone gets something to sing. The callous groom Dino (Patrick Miller) swaggers through a Platters-style rhythm and blues number about how irresistible he is to women. Anna Christy, as the bride Muffin, gets to display her agile coloratura and a dazzling high F. Aunt Bea (Harries again), the self-styled “socialistic blight on the family crest,” and the hired guest, William Williamson (Nolen), get cozy in a soft-shoe duet laden with sexual innuendo.
Malfitano makes the most of a non-showy role. Hadley’s tenor is clear and ringing. Risley is as lithe a dancer as she is a singer. Other standouts are Kanyova as the officious wedding directrix, Rita Billingsley; Beth Clayton as Toni Goddard, the “take charge” sister; and David Cangelosi as Luigi’s brother, Donato.
Combining sex farce and social satire, “A Wedding” will confound those listeners who would find it too light to be a contemporary opera, but too wed to traditional operatic manners to qualify as a Broadway musical. But that’s their problem. “A Wedding” is what it is: a nifty musical entertainment that does the job and justifies the time and work Lyric invested in it.
The Lyric’s blessing
Clearly the company believes in Bolcom: Lyric Opera already has commissioned him to write a fourth opera, which is scheduled to be performed before 2010.
Meanwhile, there is one vexing little problem, and that is the seemingly insuperable demands “A Wedding” will make on the casting departments of those opera companies that might want to produce the work later on. How many of them, at a time when budgets are tight, will be able to afford 16 principal singers? Ah well. Like Scarlett O’Hara, Bolcom can worry about that tomorrow.
“A Wedding” runs through Jan. 21; phone 312-332-2244.
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The `Wedding’ party
Regular opera-goers have no trouble sorting out the characters in operas they know, even in works as crammed with humanity as “The Marriage of Figaro.”
But how are they to sort out the dramatis personae in a brand-new opera nobody has seen before? That’s a key issue with “A Wedding,” which is packed with performers, including 16 principal singers and 18 non-singing actors and child supernumeraries.
This is an opera where you really can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Here is a rundown of the leading characters, with the singers’ names included in parentheses:
Groom’s family
Dino Corelli (Patrick Miller), the groom, only child of Victoria Corelli nee Sloan (Catherine Malfitano) and Luigi Corelli (Jerry Hadley), who reside in a stately Lake Forest mansion with Victoria’s mother, Nettie Sloan (Kathryn Harries), the family matriarch; Diana Sloan (Patricia Risley), Nettie’s youngest daughter; Antonia “Toni” Goddard (Beth Clayton), Nettie’s other daughter, married to Dr. Jules Mackenzie Goddard (Jake Gardner), infatuated with Tulip Brenner; Donato Corelli (David Cangelosi), Luigi’s brother from Italy; “Aunt Bea” (Harries), Nettie’s eccentric younger sister.
Bride’s family
Margaret “Muffin” Brenner Corelli (Anna Christy), the bride; Katherine “Tulip” Brenner (Lauren Flanigan), mother of the bride; Liam “Snooks” Brenner (Mark Delavan/Wayne Tigges), father of the bride; Elizabeth “Buffy” Brenner (mute role), Muffin’s older sister and bridesmaid, suspiciously pregnant; Candace Ruteledge (Cynthia Lawrence), Tulip’s gossipy sister, overseeing the Ruteledge children who serve as ring bearer, flower girl and ushers.
Wedding staff and guests
Rita Billingsley (Maria Kanyova), the hyperactive wedding planner; William Williamson (Timothy Nolen), the hired guest; Randolph (Mark S. Doss/Kevin Short), the Sloan family butler, having an affair with Diana Sloan; and Breedley (Brian Leerhuber), a Marine-lieutenant friend of Dino who’s also the best man.
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Who was who in ’78 film
The 1978 Robert Altman film “A Wedding” featured an all-star cast including:
Desi Arnaz Jr. — Dino Sloan Corelli
Carol Burnett — Katherine “Tulip” Brenner
Geraldine Chaplin — Rita Billingsley
Howard Duff — Dr. Jules Meecham
Mia Farrow — Elizabeth “Buffy” Brenner
Vittorio Gassman — Luigi Corelli
Lillian Gish — Nettie Sloan
Nina Van Pallandt — Regina Sloan Corelli
John Cromwell — Bishop Martin
Paul Dooley — Liam “Snooks” Brenner
Peggy Ann Garner — Candice Ruteledge
Lauren Hutton — Florence Farmer
Viveca Lindfors — Ingrid Hellstrom
Pat McCormick — Mackenzie “Mac” Goddard
Dina Merrill — Antoinette “Toni” Sloan Goddard
Virginia Vestoff — Clarice Sloan
Dennis Christopher — Hughie Brenner
John Considine — Jeff Kuykendall, head of security
Pam Dawber — Tracy Farrell
Dennis Franz — Koons
