Countess Maritza
(with photos from production company)

To celebrate the opening-season production of its 25^th anniversary the valiant Toronto Operetta Theatre offered the charming Countess Maritza, much beloved by Europeans and generally young-at-heart operetta goers who remember it from performances in the old country.

Said one handsome white-haired gent: "I saw it in Hungary 50 years ago and it was far more realistic, showing a village setting and all that."

A smash hit at its premiere in Vienna in 1924, composer Imre Kálmán’s lovely tunes mix Viennese elegance with Hungarian passion to show an impoverished but upright nobleman fall in love with a proper rich and beautiful countess.

Some may long for the vanished splendor of a pre-World War One where wealthy aristocrats danced the night away at Maxim’s in Paris-- but today in Toronto time TOT’s artistic director Guillermo Silva-Marin’s who also did lighting design, set decor, and choreography, symbolized a more realistic time-frame.

A story line that could have easily followed an uncomplicated romantic path of similar operatic farce turns to fortune telling, prophesy and fate to settle matters of the heart. Of course, as in all operettas, a "noble name" is very important and can hardly be avoided.

Says director Silva-Marin: "I wanted to highlight the power we humans give to augury or divination through symbolism and accent this with dreamlike sequences in monochrome of black."

So, instead of traditional village settings we see minimal settings with poles hung with giant tarot cards and the gypsy Manja (sung by splendid coloratura Amanda Jones) opening in Act I with the aria, "Fair of face the man and full of kindness, bearer of a noble name" predicting love’s outcome after a full moon’s turn (four weeks).

So we have two surreal scenes (with the Act I finale and the Act II finale with the entire cast in black and the lights low) directly connected with the gypsy’s foretelling of a happy love ending.

In opera and operetta we depend on great voices but it does no harm when the singers are tall, thin and attractive as is the case in the Countess. (I once saw a Lohengrin at the New York Met where the star appeared with glorious curls in a screen projection and then descended from the boat on the stage revealing a square short figure of heft and my heart only soared again when he departed from his boat onto the screen, again showing his glorious curls.)

The singing was uniformly great. Both leads are seen here for the first time and both produced lover’s magical chemistry in solo duets on stage. Soprano Lara Ciekiewicz lovely Maritza, as wealthy independent-thinking society lady escaping her suitors to her country estate, sang and waltzed in a dizzying way, confounding those of us who can’t even walk and chew gum, and handsome tenor David Curry, even though a little earnest, does a commendable job of singing, waltzing and dancing a complicated Hungarian number which required twisting his leg every which way. Gregory Finney often interrupts as perennially fussy suitor Prince Popolescu. However, we were overwhelmed by Fred Love’s intrepid, athletic pig farmer Baron Zsupán doing a somersault, landing on his knees and continuing his romantic song to mischievous Countess Lisa Wittenburg (Elizabeth DeGracia) without losing a beat. Some time ago Love was a competitive diver, the director assures us.

Conductor Derek Bate and the orchestra were more than equal to the universally high standard of whole production.