Mark Adamo’s ‘Little Women’ @ Fort Worth Opera (Scott Theatre)
—Wayne Lee Gay
Twenty-five years after its premiere in 2000 in Houston, Mark Adamo's Little Women securely ranks as the most successful new American opera of the twenty-first century. The years since the premiere have brought dozens of production across the English-speaking world. Fort Worth Opera first produced the work in 2004; the company brings it back this weekend for an intimate but emotionally powerful production at Scott Theatre.
Louisa May Alcott created, in her novel of 1868-69, a proto-feminist Utopia that has appealed without interruption to succeeding generations of adolescent girls—a world in which the noise and fury of the male gender is held at a safe distance. (The wide appeal of the novel inspired, across the decades, four separate Hollywood takes on the tale, with plum star turns for Hollywood royalty including Emma Watson, Winona Ryder, Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and June Allyson—not forgetting director/actress Greta Gerwig’s recent meta/restructured telling of the story).
Composer Adamo, who produced his own libretto for the opera, honors the implicit sisterhood and female bonding of Alcott's text, with some gentle tweaking to tailor the story into a two-hour opera. More significantly, he gleans two intricately intertwined themes from Alcott's narrative: the acceptance of change, and the value of living in the present moment. The musical score is sometimes dissonant, occasionally noisy, and very often rapturously lyrical; the vocal writing is intricate and challenging for the singers, but always true to the emotions of the work. Wonderful solo passages abound, but the real strength arrives in the numerous memorable ensemble scenes.
In Adamo's operatic version, as in the original, the character of Jo is central. Mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra beautifully meets the immense musical and dramatic demands of the role, bounding with energy while producing an unfailingly gorgeous vocal performance. Her cohort of sisters likewise uniformly find depth and beauty in their roles, with mezzo-soprano Bridget Cappel as Meg, and sopranos Mary Feminear and Megan Koch as Beth and Amy, respectively. Tenor Charles Calotta brings dramatic and vocal clarity to the role of Laurie.
Baritone Erik Earl Larson shows a bit of strain in the upper register as Meg's suitor John Brooke; bass-baritone Christopher Curcuruto, as Jo's German suitor Friederich, winningly performs the most striking moment in the opera, a setting of Goethe's "Kennst du das Land." Director Claire Choquette stages this version with careful attention to the various types of energy each character portrays; the set is partly symbolic, made of stacks of giant books, and partly suggestive of sturdy nineteenth-century New England respectability. Conductor Tyson Deaton keeps both the Fort Worth Symphony in the pit and the singers onstage clipping along neatly.
A quarter of a century after my first viewing of Adamo's Little Women, I remain enthusiastically impressed by the perfect union of its thoughtful plot and constantly engaging music. An extended closing section ties together the many strands of Jo's emotional journey; bring at least two hankies.
[Editor’s note: And a third hankie for the imminent closing of the venerable Scott Theatre itself (and the rest of the complex)—taking decades of theater, dance, and musical memories with it, and leaving a number of local arts organizations seeking new homes.]
WHEN: November 22 & 24, 2024 (final perf. Sunday at 2:00)
WHERE: W.E. Scott Theatre, 1300 Gendy St., Fort Worth
WEB: fwopera.org
