2002 Season Opera Theatre of the Rockies
 

Leonard Bernstein's Candide

  

This bizarre, farcical Leonard Bernstein operetta, adapted from Voltaire's famous satire, pokes fun at religion, philosophy, love, death - the whole human comedy. It also has wicked fun with absurd operatic conventions: A couple kiss, then sing, then kiss again, as if torn between the joy of physical intimacy and their desire to express themselves vocally. Daniel Fosha stars in the title role, a poofy-shirted simpleton, the illegitimate son of a baron, raised by a tutor who teaches him that this is "the best of all possible worlds." Fosha's sweet, clear tenor voice is best when accompanied by his character's sadness, as in the haunting aria "Candide's Lament." .
Most of his co-stars manage to ground their characters in reality, even as they stretch them to extremes.
Soprano Margaret Simpson (who shares the role of Cunegonde with Amanda Kelts in alternating shows) takes her voice and our hearts soaring to amazing heights with "Glitter and Be Gay" - a happy and tragic ode to the seduction of jewels. Robert Tiffany has most of the operetta's heavy lifting. Not only is he the narrator, he jumps into various key roles, hilariously juggling costumes and accents.

A nimble 26-piece orchestra under the direction of our beloved former symphony conductor Christopher Wilkins flits through Bernstein's lovely score with ease.

Warren Epstein, The Gazette

Based on the scathing novel of social and moral satire originally written by French philosopher François Marie Arouet de Voltaire in 1759, Candide was first adapted as an operetta by composer Leonard Bernstein, writer Lillian Hellman and lyricist and poet Richard Wilbur for the Broadway stage in 1956The innocent lilt of Dan Fosha's voice along with his boyish face make Candide's plight all the more naively charming and contrapuntal to the production's overall cynical punch (as Voltaire would have wanted it).

Perhaps the high point of the production was Margaret Simpson's delivery of "Glitter and Be Gay." Perfectly capturing the pathos of luxurious boredom, Simpson swooned across the bed on center stage with the presence of Madonna doing "Like A Virgin," the comic timing of Sandra Bernhardt, and the voice of, well, not quite Maria Callas, but stunningly controlled nonetheless.

Also fabulous, of course, were the inimitable producer and founder of OTR, Martile Rowland (performing with her company for the first time), as the one-buttocked Old Lady, Spencer Neil as the pouty and fey Maximilian and Sarah Barber as the buxom and lusty Paquette.

Conductor Christopher Wilkins, thrilled to be back in Colorado Springs and to be working with Rowland and Director Steve LaCosse, led the orchestra and chorus through the production with the rare and infectious enthusiasm he brought to the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra.

Noel Black, The Independent

Lady of the Camellias

...here we had Murray Ross bringing Alexander Dumas' original literary work of the doomed courtesan of the Parisian salons in the first half of the nineteenth century - along with his artistic sensibilities and a choice few of the local actor's establishment mating with Martile Rowland and Verdi's La Traviata along with her now prospering pool of operatic performers who first and foremost must have the vocal equipment to power through large performing spaces...

...And it is these singing actors that produce this kind of impression. I maintain that there is nothing more emotionally powerful in performance than putting music to one's words - all the more so when the singer can produce powerful and beautiful waves of sound. Our "Lady" was the work of OTR stalwart Judeth Shay Burns. She was asked to engage in witty and potent dialogue and sing some of the most musically and dramatically challenging arias and duets in the soprano operatic repertorie - while projecting an unexpected vulnerable heart which gets horribly broken and then she must die of tuberculosis before us while we are but a few steps away...

...great performance, beautifully sung - all the way to her final aria - and truly allowing the at times square peg into round hole hybridization of these disciplines to congeal. Her young eager lover, who was trying to pry her from her courtesanly ways, was performed by tenor Daniel Fosha, who, as we've grown to expect, was believable and appealing in his dramatic role as Alfredo, but this time, nailed his notes - even the money ones with impressive power and consistency through his lyric tone. The father, Germont, was another OTR regular, baritone Steven Taylor, who sang through Act II with true brilliance...

David Sckolnik, Artspeak review

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