Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Perera: The Yellow Wallpaper; Herbert: The Only Girl

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

An American opera is always called for on the Sunday of the Fourth of July weekend. I'm pleased to present a lyric theater work that is not merely generically American, but a specifically Yankee opera arising from our own New England region: The Yellow Wallpaper (1989) by Ronald Perera (b. Boston, 1941). He was not the only composer to be drawn to the novella by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story is set in a New England summer home in 1899, where a woman named Charlotte has been sent to rest and recuperate from "neurasthenia", as the condition of postpartum depression was called in those days. The yellow wallpaper in the house only makes her feel worse. The Yellow Wallpaper, with libretto by Constance Congdon, premiered in Northampton, Massachusetts, then went on in 1992 to the Manhattan School of Music. It had originally been produced at Smith College, where it was recorded live in performance with a chamber orchestra conducted by Dennis Burkh. In 2011 this recording was made available to the opera-loving public on two compact discs courtesy of HDP, Harrison Digital Productions of Belchertown, Mass.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a domestic tragedy. We continue to celebrate American lyric theater on the airwaves with a recording of an historic Broadway musical comedy: The Only Girl (1914) by Victor Herbert. The cutthroat, competitive world of old Broadway was no place for a female composer. Or so one would think! Ruth Williams is "The Only Girl" to succeed in that world, as Herbert and his lyricists Blossom and Mandel conceived it. (There actually was a woman something like Ruth in real life named Dorothy Fields.) The Only Girl was Herbert's 34th musical comedy production. It has all the classic Broadway book and melody elements of Victor Herbert's prolific output, complete with a hit song, "When You're Away," all of this characteristic of his period, and brought to life again after fully a century by Light Opera of New York, whose cast, ensemble and orchestra are under the direction of Gerald Steichen. LOONY's staged revival of The Only Girl took place in May of 2015. Albany Records released a recording of it later that year on a single silver disc. Spoken dialog in this recording has been greatly abridged. Writing for Fanfare magazine (Mar/Apr, 2016 issue), reviewer Bill White says this historically informed performance is "a significant achievement, one to be applauded and relished by all Broadway fans."