Opera Review: Blythe is the spirit of Arizona Opera’s ‘Mikado’

Stephanie Blythe does not appear on stage in “The Mikado” for more than an hour into the piece, but once she enters, the production is all hers.

General Director Joel Revzen’s coup in enticing her from the Metropolitan Opera to portray Katisha in this season’s Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera certainly paid off.

Blythe was magnificent with her incredible vocal range and commanding on-stage presence.

She actually surpassed her quite good Count Orlofsky in last season’s “Die Fledermaus,” but that was a trouser role and as Katisha she simply has it all.

Not that the rest of the production suffered.

Patrick Miller displayed a fine tenor as Nanki-Poo and Anne-Carolyn Bird’s Yum-Yum was beautiful, although what she was given by composer Sir Arthur Sullivan is mainly ensemble singing which does not showcase her voice fully.

The second act solo, however, was delightfully comic and beautifully sung.

Daniel Sumegi did a fine job with the sneeringly conniving Pooh-Bah and Curt Olds’ Mikado was a wonderful cohort to Blythe’s “daughter-in-law elect.”

It was the role of Ko-ko that failed to attain its full comic heights until nearly the end of the piece when Neal Davies hit his stride in the build up to “Tit-Willow,” and then mugging the sad song which convinces Katisha to marry him rather than the younger Nanki-Poo whom she has long had eyes for.

Davies admits to having played the role only once before in his high school days and would have a broader character had he, like the most famous G&S comic actor Martyn Green, played the role over the years.

Then he would have developed more body language and stage business which is so typically characteristic of the role.

“Mikado” came late in the collaboration of W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan and contains some of wordsmith Gilbert’s best rhymes and lots of typically Sullivan tunes.

Actually the partners were better at shining the theatrical lights on the foibles of the British—the navy in “HMS Pinafore” and the English judicial system in “Trial By Jury”—than in making fun of things Japanese.

There is a fetish about death and executions throughout “Mikado” even though handled in the light-hearted way Arizona Opera managed.

When Yum-Yum collapses in tears on her wedding day because her friends from school remind her of her bridegroom’s impending execution in a month, it actually gets laughs.

Well, it’s supposed to.

It does not pay to get too analytical about Gilbert & Sullivan.

The inscrutable Japanese logic of having one person take over the duties of all the high officials in the city when the various individuals resign is exceeded only by Ko-ko’s admission that he actually did not execute the Mikado’s son after all.

Once the emperor ordered the execution, Ko-ko explains, the condemned is already, in effect, dead, so why not say so?

Excuse me?

But such resolutions are necessary in comic opera because it needs a happy ending, no matter how ridiculous.

The other elements of the production all worked well.

Costuming was colorful, enhanced by the sunny and also mood lighting of Connie Yun.

Director Kelly Robinson has a knack for handling the chorus in enough of a Japanese manner to add to the fun, clearly making American actors playing a British cast pretending to be Asian.

His addition of special material about the recent American election and financial crisis struck a wonderfully comedic note with the nearly sold out house.

The orchestra, under Revzen, was seamless, as always.

The set, on loan from Orlando, was reminiscent of the pre-WW II hand painted Japanese dishes Mom bought from F.W. Woolworth for everyday use.

They are probably what suggested it.

Next up for Arizona Opera is “The Elixir of Love,” a different type of production with comic overtones but more in the tradition of Grand Opera.

Tickets for both the January 17 and 18, 2009 performances are available from Arizona Opera at 520-293-4336 or TicketMaster.com.

Donald.Behnke@yahoo.com