THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE
Music by Arthur Sullivan
Libretto by W. S. Gilbert
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle Center
Opening weekend (October 18 and 19)
The opening weekend audiences at McCaw Hall were delighted by a gang of very polite pirates who brought a new wave of classical shenanigans to Seattle Opera. With first-class singers and brilliant staging, this English-language comedy about a pirate’s apprentice is the perfect blend of humor and song. Gilbert and Sullivan called their works “comic operas” for a good reason: you laugh all the way through, even as the orchestra and singers produce music as beautiful as the operettas of Offenbach or the waltzes of Strauss.
The first sight that greeted the audience was a fabulously theatrical festoon curtain of red velvet and bulb lights that promised something jolly. The Seattle Opera Orchestra, led by David Charles Abell, played the elegant overture (with oboist Mary Lynch VanderKolk’s gorgeous solos) before the curtain lifted on a gang of hollering pirates pushing their ship onto the stage and wrestling themselves into the boat. Their rapid switch between spoken dialogue and sung arias takes a moment to register with regular operagoers, but it soon becomes perfectly natural when pirates who go “arrrgh!” burst into boisterous song. It’s not unlike going to a Broadway musical, but with a full orchestra and voices of such high quality that amplification is unnecessary. Only in such a setting do audiences get to experience fully staged productions with natural, unmediated music.
Pirates parodies familiar grand operatic conventions about identity confusion, love, and despair — a special pleasure for audiences familiar with the genre, and a great introduction for those visiting the opera for the first time. Like many Gilbert and Sullivan shows, Pirates also mocks the excesses of Victorian Britain — a society so proper that even pirates are required to go through an apprenticeship. And when these orderly pirates lay hands on a band of young ladies, their intention is to find a “doctor of divinity who resides in this vicinity” so they can all get married.
The wonderful singing in both opening weekend performances began with the imposing Pirate King (Reginald Smith Jr.), whose burly baritone and comic presence made it clear that these men aren’t the scary types. After all, they’re from Penzance, a pleasant little seaside town off the tip of Cornwall. (It’s a British joke — as if we said “The Pirates of Orcas Island.”)
When soprano Vanessa Becera sang the heroine Mabel’s first aria in an exaggerated coloratura, everyone in the audience could recognize its cartoon quality, while the young hero, Frederic (the charming tenor David Portillo) produced guffaws in the audience with his extravagantly dramatic aria “Faithless Woman.” One love duet between Frederic and Mabel began with true operatic sentimentality but changed suddenly and ridiculously from a slow melody to a hectic race to the finish as the audience cheered.
Cosplay opportunity
This highly entertaining production gave the audience an excellent opportunity for cosplay: many in the audience were dressed as pirates, and pirate hats were on offer in the gift shop. The popular Seattle Seafair Pirates even showed up in the lobby in all their fabulous gear to sing hearty sea songs! Youngsters seated near us reported that they’d never attended a Seattle Opera performance before but loved Gilbert and Sullivan operettas ever since performing them in high-school productions. It is to be hoped that these newcomers will return to McCaw Hall now that they’ve stepped across the threshold.
Congratulations all around, especially to conductor Abell and stage director and choreographer Sean Curran (both in their Seattle Opera debuts) for a colorful and inventive production. It was a pleasure to see familiar singers — Tess Altiveros as Mabel’s sister Edith and Ilya Silchukuo as Pirate Samuel — along with a right hearty gang of debutants.
It's not too late for you to get your pirate mojo on!
Performances through November 1. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.seattleopera.org.
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