The Harrison Opera House is alive with international stars and the ‘Sound of Music’
NORFOLK — For Rob Fisher, are the hills alive with the sound of music?
“Ab-so-lutely!” said Fisher, a Norfolk native and leading figure in musical theater. He came home last month to conduct a new production of “The Sound of Music.”
The classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical will be performed May 13 through 15 at the Harrison Opera House and is co-presented by Virginia Arts Festival and Virginia Opera.
Fisher has been staying in an Airbnb not far from his childhood home in Bayview.
“I was just in the backyard listening to the birds and comparing the birds here to my birds in Connecticut. I’m a little sad to say, but the birds in Connecticut win in terms of melodiousness.”
“Here, the sound of the wind in the loblolly pines is a kind of music I miss. Really, I’m ridiculously attuned to the sounds of nature.”
For the past month, he has been most tuned into “The
Sound of Music,” which will be marked by his signature approach honed in the New York City Center Encores! series, which he directed from 1994 to 2005. The series consisted of concert stagings of forgotten musicals. Rather than impose an updated concept, his practice was to scour the score and story structure for the creators’ intent. The series made him famous.
He breathed life into
“Chicago: The Musical,” now the longest-running revival on Broadway, and it became his biggest success.
Fisher has taken part in his hometown’s arts festival since its inception. In January the fest named him the Goode Family Artistic Advisor for Musical Theater and American Songbook.
He’s proud to be associated with the festival, even though his usual gigs are with major theater and opera companies and orchestras worldwide.
“The lineup is always so stellar. The whole town should be proud.”
Fisher’s contribution has often been to lure top talent to Hampton Roads. On May 21 he will conduct the Virginia Symphony Orchestra in concert with two superstars, sopranos Renée Fleming and Kristin Chenoweth.
“The Sound of Music” is Fisher’s first full-scale musical here. It’s the mostly true story of a would-be nun in 1938 Austria whose temporary job as a governess for seven children turns into a lifetime commitment when she falls for their naval officer father. A harmonizing family band results.
The 1959 musical and 1965 film differ from the real story published by Maria von Trapp in 1949 and by other authors. For example, to flee the Nazis, the family didn’t hike to Switzerland but merely crossed railroad tracks behind their villa and boarded a train to Italy.
When Fisher worked on the show for Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2014, it broke attendance records. He noted tons of family groups in the audience.
In 2012 he conducted a concert version for New York’s Carnegie Hall with 55 musicians that “was sumptuous,” he said.
In Norfolk, 39 Virginia Symphony players will perform, forming a bigger band than was used for the original Broadway run.
One of the many decisions facing a director of “The Sound of Music” is whether to lean toward classically trained singers or musical theater performers.
Fisher and Matt Kunkel, stage director for the show, cast both.
“Fisher is perhaps the conductor who moves most comfortably between the Broadway and classical realms,” reported classicalvoiceamerica.org, the online news journal of the Music Critics Association of North America.
“I’m lucky to be experienced in both worlds,” Fisher said, “and know how to speak to them from where they’re coming from. And they are coming from different places.”
Opera singers tend to be better at reading music and arrive with songs and dialogue memorized.
By contrast, “a lot of musical theater people have not learned ways to work on their own,” Fisher said. Many prefer to find their characters in rehearsal.
“I don’t find it a problem,” he said.
The division between the two camps is becoming less sharp.
“These days, there are musical theater performers who are excellent singers and opera singers who are wonderful actors. There is a big overlap of people who can do everything and that’s how we cast the show,” Fisher said.
Soprano Aundi Marie Moore swings both ways. The classically trained Chesapeake native, who
has sung at Metropolitan Opera, has a thriving, diverse career. In the role of the head nun, she will sing the challenging showstopper, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”
Moore is Black, and it is feasible that a mother abbess in Austria in the late 1930s could have been Black. Historian Shannen Dee Williams wrote on religiondispatches.org that she unearthed “a long and rich history of Black Catholic nuns” in the Americas, Africa and Europe.
“It was our intention from the beginning,” Fisher said, “to make this convent the place where nuns of every color, who might not be welcome other places, would be welcome.”
Still, Moore was cast for “what she brings to the role,” Fisher said, “which is this deep understanding and wisdom when she looks at Maria. And this tremendous warmth and faith.”
Mikaela Bennett, who plays Maria, was classically trained at Manhattan’s Juilliard School. In 2019 she played another Maria, from “West Side Story,” at Lyric Opera Chicago. In July she’ll reprise her “Sound of Music” role at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“She is a star,” Kunkel said. “In five years, we’re all going to be saying I knew her when. She has this glorious soprano. She’s one of those artists who can do it all and wants to do it all. “As an actress, she’s willing to try anything. The icing on the cake is she’s so good with kids.”
Kunkel said the child actors cling to her.
“Climb all over her is the more apt phrase. They love her so much. She has nothing but sweetness.”
Of the seven von Trapp children, all but the eldest are local. Liesl, played by Kiara Lee, is studying musical theater at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Four study at the Hurrah Players, the Norfolk family theater that has sent many grads to Broadway.
“They’re exceptional kids,” Kunkel said. “Even our little
Gretl. She just turned 6 two weeks ago. She’s a little bitty professional. She remembers things better than I do.” That’s Stormie Treviño, whose father is Alex Treviño, the marching band director at Old Dominion University. Her sister, Rainey Treviño, also was cast.
The creative team is incorporating beloved songs that were added to the film. These include “I Have Confidence,” which a nervous Maria sings on her way to meet the von Trapps, and “Something Good,” sung by Maria and “the Captain” as they fall in love.
The connection between Bennett and baritone Edward Watts, who portrays the patriarch, is “electric,” Kunkel said. Watts has had leading roles on Broadway.
Both Kunkel and Fisher raved about the cast. “I think it’s really going to be a cut above,” Fisher said. “The cast is super. Every single one is perfect for the role.
“The first time we meet Mikaela, she opens her mouth and sings, ‘The hills are alive!’ ”
It’s the sound of a voice, Fisher said, “that the hills would be glad to hear.”
IF YOU GO
What: ”The Sound of Music,” co-presented by Virginia Opera and Virginia Arts Festival
Where: Harrison Opera House, 160 W. Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk When: 8 p.m. May 13; 2 and 8 p.m. May 14; 2 p.m. May 15
Tickets: Start at $39
Details: 757-282-2822, vafest.org