By John Farrell, Curtain Call
The Ghosts of Versailles is a big opera, with more than 100 people on stage and a variety of effects.
The opera was commissioned from John Corigliano for the Metropolitan Opera’s 100th anniversary in 1983 but wasn’t finished until 1991. It has had a checkered career since then, being reworked and downsized. Now, as part of the Los Angeles Opera’s Beaumarchais Festival, it has been given its West Coast premier at the Los Angeles Music Center in a full-scale production March 1.
Pierre Auguste Caron de la Beaumarchais was a great playwright. His The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro became great operas. The same characters were also in The Guilty Mother-in-Law, which has been made into several musical versions. This version was imagined by librettist William M. Hoffman as a story of the French Revolution after the fact. It includes not only Figaro and his wife Susanna, Count Almaviva and his wife Rosina, Cherubino and his son, but Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and, most importantly for the play, Beaumarchais.
Beaumarchais’ ghost is in love with the ghost of Marie Antoinette (Antonia, he calls her.) But she wants her life back. Before the end of the opera Beaumarchais and Figaro and all the other characters get involved in a plot that ends with all the ghosts escaping by balloon to America. Before this journey, there are the usual machinations with the guilty getting punished and the heroes surviving. Corigliano calls the opera a grand opera bouffe.
Patricia Racette is Antonia, a woman who still wants her life back and depends of Beaumarchais, the magical playwright, to return her to life. Christopher Maltman is Beaumarchais, the playwright and magician. Lucas Meacham is Figaro, Lucy Schaufer Susanna, Joshua Guerrero Count Almaviva and Guanqun Yu his wife Rosina. The villain of the piece is Begearss, the suitably slimy Robert Brubaker. Cherubino is Renee Rapier, and Patti Lupone does a star turn as Samira, the Egyptian singer who is part of this expansive work.
This production isn’t as big as the Metropolitan Opera’s original, but it has the look of a spectacle, with the opera chorus filling the stage as the plot unfolds. No, it isn’t up to the Mozart or Rossini vision of the other works, but it has plenty of brilliant music and scenic effects that make it charming and engaging.
Tickets are $60 to $331. The sole performance is at 2 p.m. March 1.
Details: (213) 972-8001; www.laopera.org
Venue: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center
Location: 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles