The Florentine’s Elmer Gantry

Act 1 of Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry, which the Florentine Opera opened Friday night, worried me.

A too-busy orchestra distracted from the vocal lines and made the voices sound smaller than they really are. At a seminar with the composer last Sunday, I heard a recording of Sharon Falconer’s folk-like introductory aria with piano alone; its disarming beauty lay in its simplicity. Friday, with woodwinds darting about, that was lost. Throughout the first act, I had to keep my eyes glued to the supertitles to get the words, too.

Conductor William Boggs’ frenetic tempos led to several disconcerting scrums in the Milwaukee Symphony. The overall impression of desperate velocity was not  pleasant. The piece didn’t stop to breathe, except in a blessed moment when a vocal quartet sang a cappella in the context of a revival meeting.

I prayed this opera, based loosely on the Sinclair Lewis novel about the mingling of faith, profit and charlatanism in the religion business, would improve in Act 2.

It did, vastly. Spacious, expansive phrasing, more varied pacing and more patience with intimate musical moments made it easier to take in Herschel Garfein’s rich, convincing libretto. Aldridge seemed less compelled to rattle around in the percussion or make sure that, say, the second trumpet has plenty to play. Suddenly, the voices sounded bigger.

Elmer Gantry breaks no ground, musically. Some combination of Leonard Bernstein, Howard Hanson, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber or Gian Carlo Menotti could have written anything in it in the 1940s or ’50s. But in the second act, especially, the music abounds with beautiful, unpredictable melodies that express mood and character. Better still, they occur in substantial set pieces with sound structures that support dramatic development. The love duet at the outset of Act 2, for example, ever so gradually extends terse exchanges of business information into ever more ardent love lines as Gantry, the flim-flam man, woos Falconer, charismatic evangelist and his latest meal ticket.

That duet sounds like Puccini, which is perfect for the moment. Aldridge more often leans toward a Gospel sound, some of it quoted, some of it invented. (This was a big night for Scott Stewart’s Florentine Opera Chorus, which sang and acted with great verve.)

Tenor Vale Rideout, as Gantry’s pal Frank Shallard, got the best number of the night, and he made it count. Rideout plays a mainstream preacher who is losing faith. His big aria expresses the anguish attached to his doubt. I loved the way Rideout phrased and the way Aldridge composed the piece to make the melody advance as through a maze. The composer quotes What a Friend We Have in Jesus in ways both ironic and poignant. In a stroke of musical and dramatic genius, Aldridge silences the orchestra at a critical moment to make it appear that Rideout accompanies himself on a spinet piano as he sings the hymn plainly. In Uihlein Hall, it was the sound of faith lost in the stars.

That moment alone was worth a trip to the opera.

Rideout, baritone Keith Phares (Gantry) and mezzo Patricia Risley (Falconer) are excellent singers and actors, well-directed here by John Hoomes. Rideout’s Shallard observes life calmly and feels no need to exaggerate anything. Gantry and Falconer are theatrical, moreso on stage in the tabernacle, but  a bit bigger than life even when it’s just the two of them. Getting that right points out the way fraud has seeped into the lives of these two people. That is no trivial acting task, especially in opera, where you have to sing lots of hard music, too. Phares and Risley hit all the right notes on both counts.

The Florentine’s new production, by Kris Stone (decór), Camille Assaf (costumes) and Noele Stollmack (lights), is cinematically fluid, visually pleasing and theatrically ingenious. I admire their decision to make the immolation scene — Falconer’s tabernacle burns, in the end — about something other than flashy stagecraft. The emphasis is on the hapless believers trapped amid the flames with Falconer, because they believe faith will protect them.

Elmer Gantry has plenty of comic irony and laughter along the way, but in the end it is a tragedy of faith.

More TCD coverage of Elmer Gantry here and here.

The Florentine Opera Company will repeat Elmer Gantry at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 21. Tickets are $28-$140 at the Florentine’s website, phone order line (291-5700 ext. 224) and at the Marcus box office, 414-273-7206.

Cast, Credits
Elmer Gantry, Keith Phares; Sharon Falconer, Patricia Risley; Eddie Fislinger, Frank Kelley; Lulu Baines, Heather Buck; Frank Shallard, Vale Rideout; T.J. Rigg, Jamie Offenbach; Rev. Baines, Matthew Lau.Conductor, William Boggs; Director, John Hoomes; the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.