THE GYPSY PRINCESS
Any music organization that survives its first decade, let alone the era of Reaganomics, deserves a hand. The Evanston-based Light Opera Works has done just that, and even more impressive, it’s thriving. This past season, all of its three productions played to packed houses. So, what makes LOW tick?
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
A fortnight ago the company kicked off its milestone anniversary with yet another rarely performed golden oldie, The Gypsy Princess by Emmerich Kalman. A student with Bartok and Kodaly, Kalman turned to the more lucrative career of writing operettas (according to John Holland’s informative program notes) after realizing that he would never be Hungary’s national composer, a role he coveted. (Shades of Andrew Lloyd Webber?) But he had in abundance a knack for cabaret songs and czardas. (The czardas, as any red-blooded Magyar will tell you, is a flirtation dance that starts very slowly, then races to a wildly excited climax.)
This synopsis, however, doesn’t quite do justice to the book, which is a cut above average. As social commentary, The Gypsy Princess is good-natured, not bitingly sarcastic as Gilbert and Sullivan can be. It casts a fond, indulgent look at the foibles of a doomed nobility on the eve of the Great War (kin to the aristocrats who played Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game). Class differences can be overcome, as its oxymoronic title suggests. As farce, The Gypsy Princess has something of the grace and sublime irony of the Lubitsch musicals (not coincidentally, they’re derived from the same continental tradition). And in juxtaposing a serious couple with a comic one, it evokes as well the formalism of Mozart’s great comedies. But The Gypsy Princess is no Marriage of Figaro. Its closest model–and rival–seems to have been The Merry Widow, the signal achievement of operetta’s Silver Age. Kalman amply earned the sobriquet “the Hungarian Lehar.” He added to Lehar’s Viennese ingredients a heapful of piquant Hungarian seasoning. Not surprisingly, The Gypsy Princess was a huge hit during its initial 1915 run in Vienna: it represented the peak of Kalman’s career. Nowadays, both the operetta and the man are almost totally forgotten (this side of the Atlantic, anyway), also-rans in the race of music history.
Kraus’s staging was smart and nuanced. Except for an occasional corny joke and silly rhyme, the campy sensibility that had marred some of his previous efforts was kept in check. Kraus, who has a PhD in music from Northwestern, is said to research each production extensively. And it showed–in the witty, updated translation of the libretto (credited to Nigel Douglas) and in the wonderful little touches, such as Boni’s comic bit with a phone. And Kraus did not forget the poignant sadness that infiltrates even the gayest moments. The Gypsy Princess may be dated, but this production made much of its mirth and emotions accessible to today’s audiences, judging by the laughter in Cahn Auditorium.
