Under the Tuscan sun
Renee Fleming right at home in musical-opera hybrid ‘The Light in the Piazza’
Although Renee Fleming ranks among the world’s most celebrated opera singers, her musical interests certainly don’t stop there. The soprano fell in love, for example, with the Broadway hit “The Light in the Piazza” during its opening 2005-06 run at New York’s Lincoln Center.
“It blew me away,” she said. “And everybody speaks like that, because it was just such a fresh, unique take on musical theater. It combines the different styles of singing extremely well and the character of Margaret Johnson and the story are quite unusual.”
More than a decade later, Fleming is headlining a Chicago production of that very musical Dec. 14-29, in a cast that includes three-time Olivier Award winner Alex Jennings, who has appeared on the Netflix series “The Crown.”
The 10-performance run will take place at the Lyric Opera House but not under the auspices of Lyric Opera of Chicago. Instead, it will be presented by a British production company, Scenario Two, which also oversaw two iterations earlier this year in London and Los Angeles. Before making its Broadway debut, the musical was developed at Seattle’s Intiman Playhouse in June 2003 and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in early 2004. It was later seen in Chicago as part of
a national tour and via a 2012 production at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre.
Based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer, “The Light in the Piazza” is on one level a romantic, effervescent story about a mother, Margaret Johnson, who takes a summer trip to Italy in 1953 with her daughter, Clara (Solea Pfeiffer). Their plans are turned upside down when Clara falls in love with a local, Fabrizio Naccarelli (Rob Houchen).
But below the surface, much more is going on. Because a childhood accident caused Clara to be developmentally disabled, a condition that is not readily apparent, Margaret struggles both with overprotectiveness of her daughter and her own repressed doubts about love.
“It’s quite complex, the situation,” Fleming said. “As a lyric soprano, I was always playing young women who are typically victimized by men. So, it’s wonderful to be able to play a mature woman who comes into her own, who begins to address the fact that she can be autonomous, that she can manage the situation on her own.”
The major addition to the production’s cast for the Chicago engagement is Pfeiffer, who recently completed a run at New York City Center as Eva Peron in “Evita.” The score for “The Light in the Piazza,” which will be performed here by conductor Kimberly Grigsby and the Lyric Opera Orchestra, has been one of her favorites since she first heard it in college.
“I think [composer and lyricist] Adam Guettel is an absolute genius,” Pfeiffer said, “and I’ve never really heard a score that is able to turn intangible feelings into music [as this one does]. It’s really like listening to what falling into love feels like.”
That said, Pfeiffer never thought she’d be able to perform Clara, because she always considered the role intended for a “blond, white girl.” So, as a mixed-race actress, she was thrilled when she was invited to take it on.
“Hopefully,” she said, “this will spark interest in other young actors of a different race who will be able to see [this casting] and say, ‘Oh, yes, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to play this role.’ Because before this came along, I had counted myself out, and that was a silly thing to do.”
For each of its stops, this production has been staged in classical venues, including a concert hall in London and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the home of the Los Angeles Opera. Such venues make sense for this work, said director Daniel Evans, because “The Light in the Piazza” is a musicaltheater hybrid that blurs the boundaries between the operatic and Broadway worlds.
Accentuating a kind of generation gap, the roles of the older characters — Margaret as well as Fabrizio’s parents — were written for classically trained singers, and the younger characters can be performed by Broadway singers.
Fleming called performing in the Tony Award-winning musical a “huge stretch” because it has so much dialogue and multiple monologues. “That was a new experience,” she said. “I kind of panicked at first. I thought, ‘If I don’t say something, there is silence.’”
Such heavy inclusion of spoken text is very different than opera, where normally all the words are sung. “The music is a consistent foundation in opera,” Fleming said. “We’re used to it, so this is a very exposed feeling. But I’ve learned to love it.”
As she did in 2018 with her Tony Award-nominated role in the Broadway musical “Carousel,” Fleming also has had to adapt to using a microphone — a big departure for a singer used to filling a theater with her unamplified voice. “With the microphone, it’s a very different thing,” she said. “But once you trust the sound and allow people to do their jobs, it’s fine. It’s actually what makes it possible to do all those shows.”
Evans praised the scenic design by Robert Jones, which suggests multiple locations in Florence, where most of the action takes place. “One has to have an open set that can allow the piece to flow,” he said, “so there are not endless scene changes.”
“The Light in the Piazza” has something “very deeply personal” to say about the nature of love and truth, the Welsh director said, and he has strived to make sure the actors and production team connect with that message.
“The story itself is charming and fascinating,” he said, “but there is something about the musical themes and narrative themes that just combine to make this a very moving piece of theater.”