The Gilbert and Sullivan Newsletter Archive
GILBERTIAN GOSSIP
No 7 — July 1977
Edited by Michael Walters
HAROLD ROSENTHAL on PIRATES by NEW YORK CITY OPERA at STATE THEATRE
This was a thoroughly enjoyable performance, far more so, in fact than many I have experienced by the D'Oyly Carte Company. The production by Jack Eddelmann had a lightness of touch that 1 had not expected, and except for the rather strange idea of using the overture to depict "an amateur theatrical society arriving at a seaside resort near Brighton (sic) on its annual outing to perform The Pirates - bank clerks, librarians, shopkeepers & school teachers having spent the year studying their parts" - there was nothing to which an Englishman could take exception! The music was very well played under the baton of Judith Somogi who, like Hazel Vivienne at the Coliseum, showed herself to be an accomplished leader. Henry Price & Gianna Rolandi made an attractive pair of young lovers (Frederic & Mabel); Muriel Costs-Greenspon was an Azucena-like Ruth; Irwin Densen & Richard McKee were both well cast as the Sergeant of the Police and the Pirate King. Only James Billing’s Major-General, which was sung and spoken with a very American accent, jarred; but then he was performing for a New York and not a London audience.
[This report appeared in Opera June 1977. If any American readers saw this production, perhaps they would like to comment? Ed.]
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