Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Barry: The Importance of Being Earnest; Weill: One Touch of Venus

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Normally I reserve the last Sunday in July for broadcast of one of the comic operas in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon. This time around I decided to go with a lyric theatrical entertainment by a contemporary composer from the British Isles with a talent for satire.

On Sunday, June 6, 2004 you heard a sendup of Handel's oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth, turned on its head in BBC TV production as The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit (1993) by Gerald Barry (b. 1952). Barry has adapted Oscar Wilde's comedy The Importance of Being Earnest into an opera that was recorded live in performance by BBC Radio Three in 2012. I aired an old Angel LP recording of Wilde's complete play, starring Sir John Gielgud and Dame Edith Evans, on Sunday, May 17, 1992.

Barry's satirical tweaking of the original play allows for some gender-variant wackiness. The allegorical figure of Beauty in his Handelian sendup was a tenor; that is to say a fey and vainglorious male vocalist in place of a pulchritudinous female. In his takeoff on Wilde's comedy the dowager Lady Bracknell is a bass, i.e., a mature male vocalist wearing a kilt. Barry's Importance craziness got its perfect treatment from seven Brit singing soloists, with one speaking role, backed by the instrumental ensemble of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. The singers and players were conducted by Thomas Adès, a composer in his own right, the creator of an operatic satire dealing with the British aristocracy, Powder Her Face (1995), the world premiere recording of which went over the air on this program on Sunday, June 16, 2002, with the composer conducting. Earnest, the opera, was released on a single compact disc through the British NMC label.

There will be time remaining this afternoon to hear some of the best of American musical theater from its golden age in the 1940's. No, not Rogers' and Hammerstein's Oklahoma, which opened on Broadway in 1943. No, something much more classy that opened at the Imperial Theater later that same year: One Touch of Venus, with music by Kurt Weill, the book and lyrics by S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash.

The story of this musical centers upon a statue of Venus, goddess of love, that comes to life. Weill wanted his fellow exile from Nazi Germany, Marlene Dietrich, to play Venus. Much to his chagrin, Dietrich turneddown the role. A new Broadway star-on-the-rise, Mary Martin, was chosen instead. For this first complete recording of One Touch of Venus it was Melissa Errico who portrayed the goddess. She was part of the Encores! Troupe who revived One Touch of Venus in our time. This show was the closest approach of the American popular musical to European operetta.

Opera North produced it for the first time ever in the UK in 2004. Jay Productions, Ltd. of the UK released One Touch of Venus on two silver discs in 2014. Taking part in the recording was the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Owen Edwards and James Holmes.