#The light in the piazza la opera free

Italy is in every moment of Adam Guettel’s musical – or at least an idealised Italy, as comfortingly picturesque as the London of a Richard Curtis film.įirst staged in 2003, with a book by Craig Lucas, The Light in the Piazza scooped half a dozen Tony awards for its Broadway production in 2005. And if her character – Margaret Johnson, a 1950s American tourist in Florence losing her daughter Clara to a whirlwind romance – is going to blame her confusion on anything it might as well be that. Thankfully, the period before there is more to enjoy from this musical genius, “Piazza” is still very much alive and, in this staging, as vital as ever.‘T his is what Italy does to you,” growls Renée Fleming as the plot of The Light in the Piazza reaches its most tangled point. He is at work on another show, a musical version of “The Days of Wine and Roses,” for which I cannot wait, especially since that feels like material that will suit his gifts. On Broadway, Guettel is famous for having a limited output. But I mean those comments as minor criticisms: Evans gets the emotional key of this exquisite piece of theater precisely right. Note also that Evans’ staging has a few visual jitters and abrupt transitions, when the pervasive metaphor of the work always is fluidity, albeit buffeted by changing breezes. It’s less emotionally intense than from either Celia Keenan-Bolger or Kelli O’Hara, both of whom played this role with astonishing levels of detail, but its blend of fear and utter determination works beautifully with what Evans is, I think, trying to do.

Pfeiffer, a free-voiced soprano, has much of Audrey Hepburn’s retro sense of glamor, and this interpretation of Clara also is quite different. It’s crucial in a musical romance that you pull for this naive couple, and, indeed, you most certainly do. There are other fascinating adjustments: Houchen is a tenor, not the expected baritone, and his performance matches that of Pfeiffer, in a very sweet and lovely way. Fleming is, of course, also a very different kind of singer, and her presence also emphasizes the intentional clash of styles in Guettel’s work between the vocal conventions of one wartime generation (the excellent British actor Alex Jennings is on hand as Signor Naccarelli, Fabrizio’s very involved father), and the jazzier experimentation of their children, enjoying the dividends of a new post-war freedom.

#The light in the piazza la opera free

Clark’s Margaret was more dominant in the narrative, more focused on worrying about Clara Fleming takes a different tack, forging a more insecure character whose natural inclination is to set her daughter free and yet who fears that both generations of women are lost in a mist of confusion. If you know Victoria Clark’s Tony Award-winning performance as Margaret, you’ll find Fleming quite different. Clara, we come to see, has suffered trauma in her childhood and thus is not all she first seems her mother’s question, and the show’s main concern, is whether to protect her, and the vulnerable Italian family she would be joining, from potential battering by life’s headwinds, or allow her a chance at romantic happiness that may well not come again. A young Italian man, Fabrizio (Rob Houchen), becomes enamored with Clara, which presents Johnson, whose own marriage has failed emotionally, with a dilemma. The story, set in that era, follows Margaret Johnson (Fleming), a North Carolina mother on a grand Italian tour with her daughter, Clara (Solea Pfeiffer). If the show is not familiar, despite its origins at the Goodman Theatre in 2004, know that “Piazza” is based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, as published in The New Yorker. Ponder some deeper questions of the heart with someone you love. So what have you got going on this holiday season that would prevent you for partaking for one night? Some torturous party with 93.9 FM, all Christmas bonhomie, all the time? Please.