‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘Ernani’ Review: In a Shtetl and in Spain

Lyric Opera of Chicago presents the U.S. premiere of a new staging of the classic Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick/Joseph Stein musical, as well as a traditional production of Verdi’s tale of three high-born men in the 16th century competing to marry one woman. 

Steven Skybell as Tevye

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG

By Heidi Waleson

Sept. 20, 2022 4:40 pm ET

Chicago

Making standard repertory feel new and immediate is the eternal challenge of the opera house; now Lyric Opera of Chicago has accomplished that with an unexpected work: “Fiddler on the Roof.” The story and tunes of the 1964 Joseph Stein (book)/Jerry Bock(music)/Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) musical—Tevye the milkman, his marriageable daughters, the shtetl, “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset”—are as baked into American culture as the “Star-Spangled Banner.” But this gripping production by Barrie Kosky, the Australian-born director who spent 10 years as head of the Komische Oper Berlin, gives the show an edgy, anxious darkness. It’s still set in 1905, in Anatevka, a poor, tightly knit Jewish community not far from Kyiv in imperial Russia, yet one can’t miss the contemporary relevance in a world teeming with refugees. The production had its premiere in Berlin in 2017; who would have known that five years later, present-day Ukrainians—albeit mostly non-Jews this time—would be fleeing their homes once again.

Instability and poverty are signaled by Rufus Didwiszus’s Act 1 set, a towering construction of old wardrobes that rotates on a turntable in front of a fuzzy photographic backdrop of bare trees, and Klaus Bruns’s costumes, all in drab shades of brown and gray. Wardrobes are used for comic effect—characters crawl through their doors to enter and leave the stage; Tevye and his wife, Golde, sleep in one. Yet the village built from them is makeshift. In Act 2, the construction is gone and snow is falling. Tevye’s family fragments and the community members, heading into exile, stack a few remaining bits of furniture in a pile and leave it behind to be pilfered by the locals.

The company of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

PHOTO: LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO

In this production, the strength of the community is its people, powerfully depicted in the many big chorus numbers. For “Tradition,” villagers flood the stage, waving their arms with manic intensity; in “To Life,” 12 male dancers are stunningly choreographed by Otto Pichler (original) and Silvano Marraffa (revival) with an almost brutal physicality. Comedy also gets its big moment: Tevye’s nightmare, which he invents to get out of his agreement to marry Tzeitel, his eldest daughter, to the butcher Lazar Wolf, is hilariously packed with skull-headed dancing demons.

The lighting (by Diego Leetz; re-created for the Chicago by Marco Philipp) also plays a vital role: In the wedding of Tzeitel and Motel, so easy to stage as an outpouring of sentimental kitsch, the bride and groom stand isolated in light, as if in an old photograph, while the shadowed ensemble sings “Sunrise, Sunset,” here sounding like a memory of perpetual loss. Lyric fielded a potent 40-member chorus; with the dancers, and numerous actors and supernumeraries, in addition to the 18 principal singers, this was a very big show.

Maya Jacobson as Chava, Lauren Marcus as Tzeitel and Austen Bohmer as Hodel

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG

Paced astutely by Mr. Kosky, the principal performers, all music-theater specialists rather than opera singers, made the book scenes, with their hoary jokes, sound fresh. As Tevye, Steven Skybell (who also starred in the landmark Joel Grey production in Yiddish) wrestled sincerely with the changing world, especially his daughters’ insistence on choosing their own husbands; his refrain, “On the one hand . . . on the other hand” felt genuine, as did his conversations with God. “Do You Love Me?” sung with Golde, had the hesitant approach of a man coming to grips with something new; in “Chavaleh (Little Bird),” his despair over his daughter Chava, who has married a Christian, felt bottomless.

Debbie Gravitte was a sensible Golde; as Hodel, Austen Danielle Bohmer brought a pure, heartrending soprano to the devastating ballad “Far From the Home I Love.” Lauren Marcus (Tzeitel) and Maya Jacobson (Chava) were lively, as were the three suitors (Drew Redington, Adam Kaplan, Michael Nigro), with Mr. Redington (Motel) turning in an exuberant “Miracle of Miracles” as the timid tailor suddenly finds his voice. Joy Hermalyn was a classic, kibbitzing Yente; Melody Betts, a hilarious, cleaver-wielding ghost of Fruma Sarah in Tevye’s nightmare. Drake Wunderlich, a fifth-grader, was the endearing link to today—in a green hoodie and jeans, he rode onstage on a scooter, pulled a violin out of a wardrobe and played the eponymous fiddler’s tune, summoning Tevye, Anatevka and the story.

Omi Lichtenstein as Bielke, Liliana Renteria as Shprintze, Steven Skybell as Tevye and Debbie Gravitte as Golde

PHOTO: TODD ROSENBERG

Conductor Kimberly Grigsby kept the show percolating; the 33-member orchestra, larger than most Broadway pit bands and enhanced with mandolin, accordion and drum set, sometimes sounded scrappy but rose to the occasion in the extended klezmer-inspired sections, especially the Bottle Dance at the wedding. Peter Wiejaczka’s sound design was tinny and unnecessarily loud. And while the final scene suggests a happy ending for the wanderers—Tevye, Golde and their two youngest daughters are headed for America, perhaps to be the ancestors of the boy in the green hoodie—the memory of their forced displacement remains.

***

Russell Thomas in ‘Ernani’

PHOTO: CORY WEAVER

Lyric’s production of Verdi’s “Ernani” (1844) was pure tradition, but in a good way. The buoyant conducting of Enrique Mazzola, the company’s music director, demonstrated his profound understanding of the opera’s bel canto roots, and Louisa Muller, the director, embraced the absurdities of the plot and managed to make its conflicting debts of honor plausible. 

The shortish version: Ernani, a nobleman living as an outlaw after his father’s murder by the previous king of Spain, is in love with Elvira; Elvira’s elderly guardian, Don Ruy Gómez de Silva, and Don Carlo, the King of Spain, are also intent on marrying her. After various confrontations, disguises, and uncomfortable alliances made and broken among the three men, Ernani finally weds Elvira, only to be obliged to kill himself in fulfillment of an oath made to Silva.

Ms. Muller interpolated a nonsinging actor to play Ernani’s father—we saw the murder during the Prelude and he appeared sporadically as a reminder of his son’s noble heritage and desire for revenge. Scott Marr’s sets evoked early 16th-century aristocratic Spain with their Moorish-inspired decoration and air of chilly, empty grandeur, as did his dark-hued costumes and Duane Schuler’s moody lighting. (Lyric previously mounted this production in 2009 with a different director.)

Quinn Kelsey and Tamara Wilson in ‘Ernani’

PHOTO: LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO

The principals were top-notch. Russell Thomas was a lyrically passionate Ernani, his tenor penetrating without being stentorian. As Elvira, the rich-voiced soprano Tamara Wilson brought youthful joy and hope to her opening aria, “Ernani, involami”; there’s little of that to be had in the opera, but Ms. Wilson managed to give her beleaguered character some sense of agency. Quinn Kelsey, his dark baritone exploding with rage and entitlement, created a Don Carlo mired in violence and brutality; his Act 3 decision to be a clement ruler was quite a surprise. Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn gave Silva a coldly implacable authoritarian edge; his first costume, trimmed in what looked like wolf fur, suited him perfectly.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).