San Francisco Classical Voice

It was hard not to hum along when a quartet of well-known Bay Area opera singers joined the Napa Valley Symphony for a Concert of American Operetta last Tuesday at Herbst Theater.

On this non-subscription performance of the Napa Valley Symphony's 66th season, the 51-piece orchestra, led by music director Asher Raboy, was joined by sopranos Peggy Kriha Dye and Tammy Jenkins, tenor Lee Gregory and baritone David Okerlund, all graduates of the San Francisco Opera Merola program and/or Adler fellows, in a program of highlights from operettas by Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, and Rudolf Friml.

Few are likely to have seen stage performances of the eleven operettas from which the selections were chosen, with the possible exception of Romberg's Student Prince, but the familiar tunes are evergreen examples of the light operatic music of the first three decades of the last century. In those days before radio brought into vogue the light crooning style of singing, popular music used the same classical orchestra and vocal styles as grand opera. In the light classics, however, most of the music was in dance rhythms—waltzes, polkas, tangos, fox-trots. This was music to be bought, sung, played, danced, and whistled. Fancy restaurants lured in customers with their dance orchestras, which would play the latest tunes from Broadway. The movies made from these operettas, many with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, have enchanted more than one generation.

Tuesday's concert gave the audience what it came to hear. The first half of the concert was devoted to Victor Herbert, beginning with the orchestra's sprightly "March of the Toys" from Babes in Toyland. Peggy Kriha Dye sang two slow waltzes, "A Kiss in the Dark" and "Kiss Me Again," with a warm, caressing tone, while Tammy Jenkins displayed a glittering top voice in the "Italian Street Song."

The highlight of the concert came after intermission with the excerpts from The Student Prince, which were not only the most familiar selections, but also featured the 20-voice Napa High School Chamber Choir Men. This precision choir took first prize at the New York City Invitational Choral Competition at Lincoln Center last spring. The men's a cappella rendition of "Gaudeamus igitur" elicited one of the biggest ovations of the evening. The choir provided excellent support under Lee Gregory's rousing "Drinking Song" and smoothly sung "Serenade" and for Kriha Dye's "Come boys." Later, Gregory's boyish charm and humor made a hit in Friml's "Donkey Serenade," a novelty number of the "if you won't listen to me, I'll sing to my donkey" variety.

In this repertoire, baritones generally don't get the vocal showpieces the sopranos and tenors have, but David Okerlund hit a home run with the title song from Friml's Rose-Marie. The concert closed with a beautifully sung "Indian Love Call" by Jenkins and Gregory. The quartet sang one encore, "Will You Remember" from Romberg's Maytime, which guaranteed that the audience would go out smiling, with plenty of fodder for the next week's whistling.

Raboy and the orchestra provided finely nuanced support throughout the evening and offered one concert selection by each composer, notably Romberg's Poème and a warmly romantic solo by concertmaster Victor Romasevich in "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life."

(Baker Peeples is the Artistic Director of Lamplighters Music Theater, Conductor and Tenor.)

©2000 Baker Peeples, all rights reserved