Larry Adams as Harold Hill and Alicia Berneche as Marian Paroo

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A onetime flute player for John Philip Sousa and Arturo Toscanini who went on to write operas, symphonies, band music, standards and score radio programs, Meredith Wilson is best remembered these days for his 1957 show “The Music Man.” Inspired by his small-town boyhood in early twentieth-century rural Iowa, Wilson worked on “The Music Man” for eight years and wrote over forty songs for it, less than half of which made it into the show itself. One of these, “Till There Was You,” was the only cover song from a musical ever recorded by the Beatles and became a huge hit for the Fab Four in 1964, having been the second song that the group performed on its initial Ed Sullivan appearance that launched the British Invasion.

Ever since its inception, the role of conman and would-be boys’ band director “Professor” Harold Hill has been the domain of actors rather than singers, with the main musical qualification being the ability to crisply articulate or “speak” most of the sung sections with precise and punchy rhythmic syncopation. That Light Opera Works chose a singer, Larry Adams, to play the role suggested the intriguing possibility that the usually spoken sections of the songs might actually be sung, but Adams flabbily speaks his way through most of the songs yet does not have the acting chops to credibly seduce even the town librarian, let alone the entire town. Marian the librarian has the best singing moments, and Alicia Berneche tosses these off with such flair and style that in this production, it is she, not Hill, who comes off as the charismatic and colorful one of the pair and he, the dullard in need of a makeover.

Thankfully, there is enough else right in this production and full-blown, uncut revivals of the show are rare enough to make seeing this elaborate staging well worthwhile. The townspeople character parts are a hoot, particularly Jo Ann Minds as the eccentric mayor’s wife and Barbara Clear as Marian’s mother, who nearly stole the show at the opening. And with a full orchestra and Kevin Bellie’s imaginative and energetic choreography—some of the best seen at Light Opera Works—along with wonderful performances of Wilson’s score and remarkable counterpoint that, for instance, musically layers cackling gossips with smooth as silk barbershop quartet music, the experience is a welcome and timely look back while we pause to look ahead. (Dennis Polkow)

“The Music Man” plays through January 4, 2009 (including New Year’s Eve) at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson, Evanston, (847)869-6300. $29-$87.

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The forerunner of crowd-pleasing, supernatural-themed productions heavy on stagecraft and spectacle such as “Wicked,” Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Iolanthe” was the first stage work fully illuminated by electric light and caused quite a sensation and held audiences literally breathless when the Fairy Queen and her attendants entered with wands, wings and starlit crowns sparkling with transportable lights. In this rare Light Opera Works revival, noisy and poorly contained fog machines substitute for the effect. Fairies have lost their edge since Victorian England, to be sure, so in juxtaposing their enchanted realm with the more mundane world of British Parliament that the work satirically skewers, it is ironically the political realm that has remained business as usual more than century later. Substitute red and blue states for conservative and liberal, and the proceedings allow us a good laugh at ourselves in an election year. The irony is at a premium, with the fairies and the members of the House of Lords achieving the right amount of tongue in cheek, although James Harms’ Lord Chancellor tips over the top and lacks the rhythmic punch and precision necessary for his iconic patter songs. The singing, though excellent throughout, is distractingly and needlessly over-amplified, but the chorus, orchestra and overall sense of mayhem and spectacle, sparkle. (Dennis Polkow)

Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Iolanthe” plays through August 24 at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson, $29-$85. (847)869-6300.

“Every time I see a little girl of five or six or seven,” sings an elderly man eyeing little girls in the park. His nephew gets angry when one of those girls changes out of her play clothes, a sailor suit, and into a dress and wears makeup. He even sings lines about preferring the fact that she has no shape. Is this “R. Kelly: The Musical”? Welcome to “Gigi,” state-of-the-art entertainment for 1958 when the Lerner & Loewe follow-up to “My Fair Lady” was the biggest box-office draw in the country. My, how times have changed. Even the kind of elderly audience that attends Light Opera Works’ Sunday afternoon matinees could be heard audibly gasping at some of the lines, including, “She’s so fresh, so eager, so young,” and of course, “Thank heaven for little girls.” Based on the Colette novel and originally a Broadway vehicle for a young Audrey Hepburn, believe it or not, before Lerner & Loewe musicalized it for the screen while “My Fair Lady” was still selling out on Broadway, the film was a smash success and won no less than nine Oscars, including Best Picture, before a decade and a half would pass and Lerner & Loewe would significantly revise the work and bring it to Broadway in 1973, where it had only moderate success. Part of the problem is that much of the original score was gutted for new and less interesting material, and oddly, it is that version that Light Opera Works decided to present rather than the more sparkling original, despite the obvious politically incorrect objections to virtually any version of “Gigi” in a more enlightened era. There is also the bizarre decision to have the cast attempt to approximate French accents with varying success and frequency, perhaps in imitation of the movie cast, which included Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jordan, who were actually French. But if LOW was trying to make some statement as to the contemporary relevance of this show, I missed it. And if the point to rescue a rarely heard gem for its own sake, why perform the gutted version that eliminates much of the work’s best music? (Dennis Polkow)

At Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson, Evanston, (847)869-6300. This production is now closed.

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One of the practical realities of the enormous expense of producing opera is that all productions—both the good and the bad—will pop up again. This can be a pleasure if a production was interesting and creative the first time around, but a real chore if not. The current Lyric Opera production of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” was first seen here nearly twenty years ago and has been revived every half a dozen years or so since, which means that if you enjoyed John Conklin’s free-floating red furniture across sky blue backgrounds with clouds the first time around, you’ll enjoy it again and again and again. If, however, you were left wondering what any of this had to do with “Barber of Seville” in the first place, your confusion is likely to multiply with each viewing. This revival was intended for Juan Diego Flórez, who wowed us in Rossini’s “Cinderella” two seasons ago and is the Rossini tenor of the moment, but who swallowed a fishbone in sunny Barcelona and somehow thought recovering there was preferable to doing so in a gray and cold Chicago in February. Go figure. Oh yes, and since the baritone set to play Bartolo was covering for another no-show who was set to sing the lead in “Falstaff,” there ended up being as many musical chairs in the casting as there are chairs left on the ceiling. With expectations that low, this is a “Barber” that despite coming up a few hairs short, is still a fun experience. Holding things together through all of these changes, Italian conductor Donato Renzetti keeps the orchestra flexible enough for all of the singing yet brisk and light at all times. And despite some vocal mismatches, everyone could be heard and blended as well as possible. Iowa tenor John Osborn may not have Flórez’ glorious timbre and flexible technique, but he does a solid job, especially in the masquerade scenes and grew more confident as the evening went on. Midwest mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato may not have the dark color that some of us prefer for Rosina but her vocal agility and her acting ability more than compensate. Those of us who have experienced Chicago baritone Philip Kraus’ trademark portrayal of Bartolo over the years at Chicago Opera Theater and his many comic performances at Light Opera Works—a company he founded and shepherded for a decade and a half before his own board unceremoniously dumped him—are delighted to see him singing and acting better than ever in a role that has truly become his own at his hometown opera company. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, (312)332-2244. This production is now closed.

“If you think you’ve seen ‘Oklahoma!’, you really haven’t,” proudly declares Light Opera Works’ general manager and co-founder Bridget McDonough. “Unless, that is, you’ve seen it with the full Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations. When we hear these Rogers and Hammerstein pieces that we think we know, uncut and with their original orchestrations, they are a revelation.”

Robert Russell Bennett was the master orchestrator and “go-to” guy for all of the great composers of Broadway’s golden age whose work is so rarely heard that it has been virtually forgotten today. “The work that he did really adds to the storytelling and really takes the drama to new heights of intimacy and emotion that you just don’t get if you’re seeing the show in summer stock, a high school, a community theater or some other way where the piece has been cut and you’re not having the full experience,” McDonough assesses. “Nowadays, even Broadway revivals do not give you the full orchestrations—it’s not financially possible anymore. So it’s really up to the non-for-profit music theaters like Light Opera Works to keep these American treasures alive as they were meant to be seen. These were complete works that were the product of several art forms combined together and if you take out any of those elements, you’re not seeing them as the true and complete masterpieces that they are.”

What particularly bothers McDonough is the move to deconstruct the American musical. “That can have validity as long as there is some respect for the form,” he says, “but some of these decontructions that we’ve seen in Chicago are done by people who do not understand, appreciate nor even like musical theater. There is a difference between a play and a musical. There’s ‘The Matchmaker’ and there’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’ There’s ‘Pygmalion’ and there’s ‘My Fair Lady.’ And in this case, there’s ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ and there’s ‘Oklahoma!’ Do the play if you don’t like musicals. As one of my colleagues used to say, ‘They turn their nose up at our repertoire, until they have to sell tickets.’ This is a very complicated form. There certainly is a place for scaled-down productions, but you see the Real McCoy at Light Opera Works: a big show, with a full chorus, the full twenty-minute ballet sequence with all of the dance breaks, the full overture, the repeats, all of the fights, the cut songs that more fully explain the characters and the drama. If you really want to know this show, you have to come to us.” (Dennis Polkow)

 “Oklahoma!” runs through December 31 at Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson, Evanston, (847)869-6300.

RECOMMENDED

Borrowing its title from Kurt Weill’s own autobiography, this revue show of Weill’s best-known and best-loved songs begins with his German cabaret days and features a generous amount of “The Threepenny Opera” in its Marc Blitzstein translation sung by well-meaning singers who are able to transmit pleasing pitch but little of the dark spirit and edge needed for these numbers. The foursome has better luck with “The Alabama Song” from “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” better known in America as a hit for The Doors, but here heard in its haunting, cabaret ensemble form. The revue is a bit more stingy in dealing with Weill’s Broadway shows, only offering a hit or two from each of them, although veteran show performer Brian Herriott’s renditions of “The September Song” from “Knickerbocker Holiday” and “Speak Low” from “One Touch of Venus” are significant Act II highlights. The minimal narration and chronological rather than thematic approach of the show seem superfluous, and given Weill’s enormous significance in both pre-Nazi Germany and World War II America (he wrote on his citizenship application “American, formerly German” under nationality and stopped speaking German), there are more insights that could have been shared than sketchy biographical details. Still, hearing so much Weill across an evening makes this a worthwhile experience, even though such an approach makes you wish that Light Opera Works would just stage a full banquet of one of the full Weill works rather than tantalize us with well-prepared appetizers. (Dennis Polkow)

At McGaw YMCA, 1420 Maple Ave, Evanston, (847)869-6300. This production is now closed.