Jazz meets opera in Florentine Opera's appealing 'Songbird'
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In playful defiance of the old adage about what a bunch of cooks do to the broth, the many hands behind Florentine Opera’s "Songbird" have whipped up a tasty jambalaya.
And they have ladled it out with perfect timing, staging a comic opera set in New Orleans during actual Mardi Gras week.
At Florentine's invitation, I saw the dress rehearsal Wednesday evening.
Composer Jacques Offenbach (who also wrote the music we associate with the can-can dance) set "La Périchole," his dance-friendly comic tale of love and corruption, in Peru. In 2021, the Glimmerglass Festival unveiled "Songbird," a new, shorter adaptation of Offenbach's opéra bouffe by Eric Sean Fogel, James Lowe and Kelley Rourke.
The key to making this work: Lowe's new arrangement and orchestration of the music for a 1920s jazz band, the kind of group that young Louis Armstrong played in. Featuring a front line of clarinet, trumpet/cornet and trombone — Bill Helmers, Jonathan McQuade and Kyle Samuelson in the Florentine show — this music fits amazingly well with operatic singing. While the Florentine vocalists occasionally dip into jazz territory, they mostly do what they have trained their whole lives to do. The New Orleans setting and the production's easy mix of English and French (with projected supertitles) makes all this flow smoothly.
The story, vastly oversimplified: Partners Songbird (Lindsay Metzger) and Piquillo (Aaron Short) are literally starving for their art in a speakeasy. Corrupt Mayor Don Andrès (Zachary Crowle) wants to acquire Songbird as his mistress, but minion Panatellas (Tom Leighton) and club owner Don Pedro (Brandan Sanchez) convince hizzoner that a sham marriage should take place first. Hijinks, chaos and misunderstandings ensue, plus a Carnival parade, giving the lovers time to suffer before recommitting to each other.
As portrayed by the appealing Metzger and Short, Songbird and Piquillo have a touch of Stiller and Meara about their dynamic — she might be out of his league, but she loves him anyway. Crowle's mayor is just buffoonish enough for us to enjoy him. As three cousins who run the cafe, Laura McCauley, Alisa Jordheim and Tzytle Steinman serve as occasional chorus, dance team and source of snark. All 10 singers in this production are former or present members of Florentine's Baumgartner Studio Artist program.
Jill Anna Ponasik's stage direction underlines the story's playfulness. Robert Mollicone conducts the onstage band with relish. The scenic design by Lisa Schlenker and Madelyn Yee makes the Wilson Theater stage as delightfully seedy as I can ever remember it being.
This "Songbird" would be an excellent first opera for someone who wanted to sample the genre.
If you go
Florentine Opera performs "Songbird" at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16 and 2:30 p.m. Feb. 18 at Marcus Performing Arts Center's Wilson Theater at Vogel Hall, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, visit florentineopera.org or call (414) 291-5700 x224.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jazz meets opera in Florentine Opera's appealing 'Songbird'
