‘Songbird’ Review: Making Offenbach Swing in Washington

The composer’s operetta ‘La Périchole’ gets a smartly trimmed adaptation set during the Prohibition and starring Isabel Leonard and Ramin Karimloo at Washington National Opera.

By Heidi Waleson 

March 20, 2024 at 2:08 pm ET

Isabel Leonard and Ramin Karimloo

PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN

Washington

“Songbird,” the adaptation of Offenbach’s operetta “La Périchole” now playing at the Washington National Opera, harks back to the days when Covid-19 forced arts groups to find new ways to perform. In 2021, the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y.—then helmed by Francesca Zambello, the artistic director of WNO—presented its season as “Glimmerglass on the Grass.” The singers were on an outdoor stage, the orchestra was in the theater, and all the operas were edited down to an intermission-free 90 minutes. I missed “Songbird” that summer because the performance I was to attend was canceled due to lightning.

Working within Covid-era constraints could produce ingenious creations, and “Songbird” certainly qualifies. The piece, adapted by director Eric Sean Fogel, conductor James Lowe and librettist Kelley Rourke, has been trimmed and set in a speakeasy in Prohibition-era New Orleans instead of 18^th-century Peru. Mr. Lowe’s instrumental arrangement replaces the 19^th-century Gallic orchestral spice of the original with the bouncy rhythms and wailing slides of New Orleans jazz, played in Washington by an 11-piece cabaret-style ensemble, including banjo and sousaphone. Ms. Rourke’s snappy new English dialogue deftly relocates and streamlines the story, and her lyrics, a skillful fusion of English and French, nod to the original while—like the musical arrangement—making something completely new.

Kresley Figueroa, Cecelia McKinley and Teresa Perrotta

PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN

From the opening brassy salvos of trumpet and trombone, it’s clear we are in a different world from France or Peru. The impoverished performing duo of Songbird (Isabel Leonard) and Piquillo (Ramin Karimloo) are doing a vaudeville turn at the speakeasy owned by Don Pedro (Jonathan Patton); the villain, Don Andrès (Edward Nelson), here the Mayor of New Orleans instead of the Viceroy of Peru, spots Songbird and wants her. The convoluted plot—which involves finding a husband for Songbird so that Andrès can have her in his household; getting both Songbird and Piquillo drunk; outbursts of masculine jealousy; imprisonment, escape and reconciliation—is about as silly as the original. But the abbreviated book glides easily over the absurdities.

The band, made up of members of the WNO orchestra plus a few guests and led by Mr. Lowe, is onstage in the speakeasy. The playful set and lighting are by James F. Rotondo III and Robert Wierzel, respectively; the colorful period costumes for the flappers, gangsters, and the Krewe members of a splashy Mardi Gras parade are by Marsha LeBoeuf and Timm Burrow. (The Washington production in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater is more elaborate than the makeshift outdoor Glimmerglass stage allowed.) Mr. Fogel’s directing keeps up a madcap pace throughout; with the trims in the story, the resulting string of high-energy musical sequences rarely takes a breath.

Edward Nelson

PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN

The performers appear to be having the time of their lives. Ms. Leonard, striking in her Louise Brooks bob and flapper dress, captures the Songbird’s allure, charm and common sense with her throaty, multihued mezzo and winning stage presence. Delightfully off-balance in the “tipsy aria” and down to earth as she tries to get Piquillo to play along with the masquerade in “You men are so annoying / Que les hommes sont bêtes,” she’s the show’s anchor. Mr. Karimloo, a musical-theater star, has a lighter vocal character than the opera singers; it works, since he’s supposed to be a bit of a wimp, and his Piquillo is lively and appealing, especially in his fits of helpless jealousy. Mr. Nelson has the baritonal resonance for the villain’s menace as well as the drollery for his puffed-up ego—he even joined the pianist for a few bars on one of his numbers. A bevy of WNO Young Artists were ebullient in the supporting roles: Teresa Perrotta, Kresley Figueroa and Cecelia McKinley as the speakeasy’s “Three Muses”; and Sahel Salam as Panatellas, Mr. Patton’s eager partner in crime and bad jokes. The big ensemble numbers were effervescent, though Mark Rivet’s primitive sound design made them overly harsh and blaring.

“Songbird” is its own thing. One could regret the loss of French charm but still revel in the fun and wit of this raucous, all-American replacement, and appreciate how comedy can be translated from one musical medium to another. Several standout musical moments featured the clarinet—in one of them, a can-you-top-this duet with Don Andrès at his most grandiose, David Jones, the clarinetist, played the fanciest riff and then ducked back into the band, miming his terror of repercussions. In the raucous wedding scene—which is reprised for the finale as Songbird and Piquillo’s earlier mock ceremony happens for real—you can hear Offenbach’s cancan embedded in the beat. There’s a hint of it in the staging—not Folies Bergère, but just a little, jolly reminder of where this show began.

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).