Review: Gianni Schicchi & Buoso's Ghost"Sequel doubles the pleasure: Buoso's Ghost is inspired followup to Gianni Schicchi"The Star-Ledger (Bradley Bambarger) One-act operas often end up as orphans, too short to fill an evening at the theater and not always easily complementing another work. Such great operas as, say, Bartók's hour-long Bluebeard's Castle aren't heard as often as they should be. Puccini aimed to get around this by composing three one-act operas as a triptych, although even they vary widely in tone. New Jersey Opera Theater, for the third production of its summer season on the McCarter Theatre Center's Berlind stage, took the imaginative route in presenting the best part of Puccini's Il Trittico, the comic jewel Gianni Schicchi. Following the cue of presenters in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and Chicago, the Princeton-based company paired the Puccini on Saturday with Buoso's Ghost, composer-librettist Michael Ching's wonderfully entertaining 1996 "sequel" to Gianni Schicchi. In Puccini's opera, wealthy Florentine patriarch Buoso Donati has died, and his gold-digging relatives are chagrined to find that he has left them out of his will in favor of a monastery. Although the family holds its nose, they recruit savvy middle-class striver Gianni Schicchi to help them "amend" the will. That he does, along with tricking the greedy snobs by leaving the best parts of the estate to himself (although that benefits at least one Donati, Rinuccio, who wants to marry Schicchi's daughter, Lauretta). Buoso's Ghost picks up right where Gianni Schicchi leaves off, with Schicchi finding evidence that the Donati clan actually poisoned their elder relative. Out for revenge, they accuse Schicchi, who obviously profited the most from the will. A magistrate arrives, but Schicchi again outfoxes his supposed betters; as in the Puccini, the fun comes in watching the money-grubbers squirm. Although it features one of Puccini's most meltingly romantic tunes – Lauretta's plea "O Mio Babbino Caro" … – his comedy can be a black one, underlining the worst of human nature. After all, there's a corpse on stage throughout the night, unmourned and buffeted. The Princeton production, directed by Michael Scarola, played Gianni Schicchi strictly for laughs, but the emphasis on farce at least smoothed the segue into the fizzing Buoso's Ghost. Written in a witty, Broadway-tinged idiom, Ching's score includes echoes of Puccini and affectionate parodies, including a sharp-eared gospel bit. New Jersey Opera Theater's array of young singers from across the country gave generally fresh, game performances (even if there was some mugging in the tag-team physical comedy). The chamber orchestra, conducted with precision by James Caraher, also handled these scores with more surety than it did the Mozart of a week ago. But the key to this double bill's success rests with the Schicchi. And Ewing resident Steven Condy – such an ideal fit for the title role of the company's Falstaff this spring – embodied Schicchi with sonorous zeal. ...Condy was ideal, his baritone both strong and disarmingly subtle; whether with a cocked eyebrow or a bounding leap, his comic timing was deft, too, especially in Buoso's Ghost. The entire cast seemed to have as much fun performing Ching's work as the full house did watching. Even the curtain calls were funny |
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