Thursday – 22 January 2009
Last night, SaraRules and I went downtown to see Utah Opera’s performance of Regina. I was looking forward to it, as it is not only a modern (1949) American opera, but it is performed in English – I wanted to see if it was easier to follow without having to divert my attention to the supertitles.

It was… well… let’s just say that I now have a “least favorite opera.” I was truly underwhelmed by the overall performance, as was SaraRules. I asked her to rate it, she gave it a 5.8; she asked me to do the same – I gave it a 4.0… possibly a 5.0… out of ten.  Why? My reasons include:

  • In the first act, there were two or three portions where the cast broke the fourth wall… that seemed rather contrived, almost as if they didn’t expect the audience to be able to piece together something that had just occurred onstage,
  • The breaks between accompanied and a capella parts – both spoken and sung – were harsh and jarring to me,
  • The casting of Deanne Meek as Regina Giddens – mostly her voice didn’t seem to lend itself to the performance; she often seemed overwhelmed by the orchestration,
  • The costuming seemed out of place for the period, and
  • The production quality – sound, use of microphones(!?) – didn’t seem up to Utah Opera’s normal standards.

There were some redeeming qualities, however:

  • The casting of Lisa Vroman as Birdie Hubbard
  • The casting of Kristopher Irmiter as Horace Giddens
  • The casting of Tracey Luck as Addie
  • The set design – I really liked how the set transformed from indoors to outdoors and back

And, to be honest, the redeeming items added at least two points to my rating. To be fair, I would be willing to see this again, if performed by another company, to juxtapose the performances before completely writing off this opera.

Stray Toasters

Namaste.