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St. Pete Opera returns with ‘A Little Night Music’
In the middle of its 19th season, St. Petersburg Opera Company (a.k.a. St. Pete Opera) finds itself firmly woven into the cultural fabric of the community. The faithful know that SPO productions are performed by professional singers from around the world, and are delivered with sets, costumes and a full orchestra, at the Palladium Theater.
Onstage March 7, 9 and 11 is the company’s first Broadway musical since Kiss Me Kate in 2018. It’s A Little Night Music, by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Hugh Wheeler (book), and as such it’s not only in English – a rarity for SPO, where the productions are generally in Italian or French – it has lengthy amounts of spoken dialogue, also a switch from grand opera.
Desiree and Fredrik: Sarah Heltzel and John Robert Green.
With its romantic entanglements, mischievous misunderstandings and oversexed shenanigans, the plot of A Little Night Music is, in fact, cut from the same libretto as many European operas, including the observational “Greek” chorus commenting on the goings-on.
“It’s a great show, and it’s written in the style of a turn-of-the-century operetta,” co-founder and general director Mark Sforzini said. “It has influences from Yohann Strauss and Franz Lehar.
“And Sondheim’s very influenced by other composers, Debussy, Ravel and Rachmaninoff. So you hear all that classical influence. If I was to pick musicals that I would say had operetta qualities, or opera qualities, this would be one of them.”
Janice Meyerson as Madame Armfeldt.
Although there was an English-language version of the opera The Merry Widow five years ago, musical theater as a genre was taken off the St. Pete Opera menu as a result of the pandemic. “When something as severe as that arrives,” Sforzini continued, “you have to cut expenses.
“It wasn’t cutting out the English language – it was cutting out the thing that really technically wasn’t opera. Cutting out the Broadway, which is not opera. And we ARE an opera company …”
With finances (and attendance) in better shape than they were in 2020 and 2021, Sforzini felt the time was right to go back to Broadway for Season 19. The maestro was ready: With Sondheim’s complex, engaging score (much of it in dreamy waltz time), “it’s one of my favorite Broadway musicals,” he said.
“We’ve done Sweeney Todd, we did Into the Woods twice, and we did A Little Night Music in 2010. We did Putting it Together. So I’m a big Sondheim fan.”
Countess Charlotte (Sarah Nordin, left) and Anne (Lauren Steinert).
A Little Night Music also has several of the composer’s most famous songs, including “Every Day a Little Death,” “Liaisons,” “A Weekend in the Country” and “Send in the Clowns.”
The latter is performed by the lead character, Desiree Armfeldt, an actress who’s questioning her decisions in life. In the SPO production, Desiree is played by mezzo soprano Sarah Heltzel, from Boston.
Stage director Ben Robinson.
“It’s less stressful, in a way, for me because the pristine nature of what you need your voice to be, as an opera singer, requires so much attention and physical exactitude. In this particular show, for me the singing is really about storytelling, primarily.
“Some of the other roles are more demanding, vocally, but this is really an acting role that happens to have some singing. And while the bulk of my work is opera, I still consider myself an actress first.”
Heltzel has performed in A Little Night Music in other cities, assaying both Desiree and Countess Charlotte Malcolm, wife of a hotheaded dragoon (the show is set in early 20th century Sweden).
“The score and book are brilliant,” she expressed. “It’s still demanding, but it’s demanding work that I adore.”
Both Heltzel and New York bass-baritone John Robert Green, who has the role of Desiree’s one-time lover Frederik Egerman, travel the world to perform in the grandest of grand operas.
Green hasn’t appeared in a straight (non-opera) musical in decades. “I’m having so much fun,” he said. “I think vocally, it’s so much easier than singing an opera. But then you have the dialogue side of it, that I think is harder. Because dialogue is its own beast. So it kinds of evens out.”
In opera, he added, “the music tells you so much about your characterization. If you’re angry, it’s going to be louder, or faster. When you have dialogue, there’s no music to tell you. So you have to make your own choices, and it’s a whole different experience.”
