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photo by Chris Lee
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Stephanie Blythe & Laura Osnes
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The 1965 movie version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “The Sound of Music,” with book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, and orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett, so dominates the public’s perception of the work that it is good to be reminded that it is based on the 1959 Broadway stage musical, after Maria Augusta Trapp’s book “The Trapp Family Singers,” as we were, resoundingly, by Carnegie Hall’s uplifting gala benefit staged concert performance, on April 24, in association with Rodgers & Hammerstein: An Imagem Company, as adapted by David Ives, with Trude Wittmann, and featuring theater singers and actors and a very special opera singer.
The performance, with Rob Fisher pacing the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Gary Griffin directing, and Joshua Bergasse choreographing, got underway with an immediate and striking coup de théâtre, as nuns on the stage, echoed by nuns in the boxes above, and nuns processing up the aisles, all carrying candles, in the darkened hall, and played by women of Pennsylvania’s Mansfield University Concert Choir, led Peggy Dettwiler, chanted a radiant “Dixit Dominus,” the Preludium.
We soon met our Maria Rainer, the wayward postulant, portrayed by Laura Osnes, who deserves to star in a stage production of the play, sweetly singing the title song and, after leaving Nonnberg Abbey, introducing herself, and music, to Captain Georg von Trapp’s hitherto strictly regimented children, with an energetic “Do-Re-Mi,” and comforting them during a storm, with the song of “The Lonely Goatherd.” Osnes also got to sing two songs, written by Rodgers alone, for the film, after Hammerstein’s death—an introspective, then resolute, then not “I Have Confidence” and, in duet with Tony Goldwyn’s Captain, “Something Good,” which replaced the original musical’s “An Ordinary Couple.” Goldwyn’s solo moment to shine was his sadly patriotic “Edelweiss,” a salute to his homeland, Austria, just as it is being subsumed in the Anschluss with Nazi Germany.
Members, save Liesl, the oldest, of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, under Dianne Berkun’s direction, the children often, inevitably, stole the spotlight, not only in songs with Osnes, but also, especially, in “So Long, Farewell,” which stopped the show. A crystalline high note from Jake Montagnino (Friedrich) here drew mid-song applause. The others were Olivia Knutsen (Louisa), Jacob Sutton (Kurt), Grace Luckett (the outspoken Brigitta), Natalie Hawkins (Marta), and Charlotte Knutsen (Gretl). Mary Michael Patterson, as Liesl, and Nick Spangler, as Rolf, collaborated on a charmingly sung and danced “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” before Rolf’s collaboration, more or less, with the Nazis.
In a role she seemed to have been born to play, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, as the Mother Abbess, made a first strong appearance, listening to Joy Hermalyn (Sister Berthe), Linda Mugleston (Sister Margretta), and Faith Sherman (Sister Sophia) fret about “(How do you solve a problem like) Maria.” We often forget that “My Favorite Things” is a duet between Maria and the Mother Abbess, but Blythe certainly reminded us. She capped her performance with her opulently operatic account of her song—aria?—“Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” to ring the first act curtain down on a triumphant note, and its no-less-glorious reprise, in the finale of the opus.
As two of the principals, whose fluid principles change with the times and the regime, Elsa Schrader, who almost becomes the Captain’s wife, and Max Detweiler, the impresario who arranges the second act’s Festival Concert/Contest, where the von Trapp family sings in public for the first time, Brooke Shields, paired with Patrick Page, took honors in two songs, “How Can Love Survive?” and “No Way to Stop It,” that were omitted from the film. The von Trapps win the contest, but are already fleeing for the Abbey and then, to the Alps and freedom in Switzerland, when the announcement of their victory comes. Taking the third prize is the Saengerbund of Herwegen and making cameo appearances as this trio were Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, and Kym Karath, the movie’s Friedrich, Louisa, and Gretl. Appearing in the first act party scene, as the Baron Elberfeld, who protests, “I am not a German. I’m an Austrian,” was Daniel Truhitte, the film’s Rolf.
Completing the cast were Joel Hatch and Veanne Cox, as Franz, the butler, who sides with the Nazis, and Frau Schmidt, the housekeeper, who doesn’t; Cotter Smith (Herr Zeller), Daniela DiGiallonardo (Baroness Elberfeld), Reed Birney (Admiral von Schreiber) and, rounding out the ensemble, Christine DiGiallonardo, Nadia DiGiallonardo, Patty Goble, Amy Justman, and Kevin Munhall.