Opera at USC turns to the musical theater format this weekend for their spring production, with three performances of Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 musical, “A Little Night Music.” A number of Sondheim’s works push the envelope of the music theater tradition, being more ambitious musically and conceptually than other such works of the same period.  So it’s natural for Sondheim to be the choice for the opera department’s first foray into musical comedy territory in some time.

It’s not unusual for opera companies to do Sondheim: “A Little Night Music" itself was produced at New York City Opera in 1990 and that production was revived in 2003. Based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1956 film, “Smiles of a Summer Night,” the original production of “A Little Night Music” won 5 Tony awards in 1973. (Plot synopsis can be found here.) Sondheim strove for a musico/structural unity in this work by use of a bold gambit: all the music in the show is in some variation of triple meter, that is to say, music with three beats to each bar. As he put it in a 1982 interview, his intent was "to put everything in some form of triple time so that the whole score would feel vaguely like a long waltz with scherzi in between so that no song would seem to have come from another texture.” (This tidbit and other illuminating observations on the show come from a thorough musical/dramatic analysis by Larry A. Brown.) The most well-known song from “ALNM” is, of course, “Send in the Clowns.”

USC’s production draws not only on the gifts and hard work of the students involved, but two leading ladies and shining stars of our musical scene in Columbia...Helene Tintes-Schuermann of the USC vocal faculty, and Ann Benson from the Columbia College voice faculty. At a time when the Metropolitan Opera’s new boss, Peter Gelb, is trying to bridge the gap between opera and what he terms serious musical theater by commissioning the likes of Adam Guettel, Jake Heggie, and Michael John LaChiusa, it seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the body of work Sondheim has created; if, where, and how his work fits into the picture of late 20th-century American opera, broadly defined.

“A Little Night Music” will be presented Friday April 7 and Saturday April 8 at 7:30 PM, and Sunday the 9th at 3 PM. Shows are at Keenan Theatre at Keenan High School on Pinebelt Road. You can find directions to the theatre and more ticket information on the website of the USC Opera Department.

The epidemic seems to have taken a new turn, adapted new methods, and has reached the heart of our fair city. 

I've waited to see these words in print for some time...Kyle Gann finally said it this week in his blog, Post-Classic:

"There is one big difference between me and all the other classical music critics. Every other classical critic in America, without a single exception that I know of, has one thing in common: they all trust that the classical music world does a pretty good job of rooting out who the best composers are. They all assume that the composers who fight their way to the top, who get the most commissions and performances, who have the most presence in the orchestra world, must be, by and large, the ones who write the best music. They all assume that the composers who don’t get heard about much must not be very good. They all assume, in other words, that the Daniel Gregory Masons and Leo Sowerbys and Howard Hansons of our day are the only composers worth serious consideration, and that no latter-day Charles Ives’s or Harry Partches will ever emerge. They don’t do the homework that I consider basic to a music critic’s job, and scour the periphery of the music world for great composers who might be overlooked. They don’t consider that there are plenty of ways to get celebrated as a composer without writing great music. They don’t doubt the public illusion. In other words, they buy into the system, and they play the game."

I'd extend Gann's thoughts to the classical music performer business as well.

For those in Columbia who enjoy art, I have a recommendation this week. Pack a sandwich in the morning or pick one up at Jimmy John's in Five Points. On your lunch hour, pop over to the Ponder Fine Arts Gallery in the Fine Arts Center at Benedict College. Treat yourself to the exhibit of Richard Hunt's sculpture, now in its last week there. Spend about a half-hour with the work. Then plop down outside the building by the running track, enjoy the spring weather, eat your sandwich, and return to work refreshed.

Richard Hunt is one of our nation's leading sculptors, especially in the realm of large outdoor public commissions. The Benedict gallery is just one good-sized room, with about 18 or so of his pieces there, so you can have a pretty thorough experience of his work in less than a half-hour. Many of the works exhibited are smaller, model versions of some of Hunt's large outdoor works, but they succeed effectively on their own in this scale as well. The works are mostly in metal, polished brass sometimes. Often the base is solid, monumental in nature, with branches of twisted metal limbs rising at varying angles from the mass below. When viewed in a room all together as in the Benedict show, there's almost an anthropomorthic aspect to them. You feel that you are in the presence of certain strange and mysterious "personages" (a la Miro), albeit three-dimensional and made of metal. There are also a handful of intriguing wall-hung pieces as well. It's a jewel of a show.

To get to the gallery, drive through the security gate at the main entrance to Benedict College on 1600 Harden Street. The security guard can direct you to the free parking garage adjacent to the Fine Arts Building. It's super-easy to get there. The gallery is open from 10 AM until 5 or 6 PM (call 803-758-4460 to be sure) this week and Friday is the last day Hunt's work is up.

My readership evidently has gone from just-about-nobody to just-slightly-more-than-nobody in the last few days since Alex Ross, music critic for New Yorker magazine, linked to me on his blog. (Thanks, Alex!) But I worry that you handful of new readers may have come here strictly for the music-related posts, and so I must warn you that I have other passions, too, that compel me to blog. (If I were REALLY honest with myself, I'd have to admit that procrastination- from work, from practicing- is the true compelling force that leads me to blog)

Last night was the Phillip Bush Life Story Invitational Tournament final...otherwise known as the NIT. Held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where I lived from 1983 to 2000, the championship game pitted the Wolverines of the University of Michigan, where I taught from 2000 to 2004, against the South Carolina Gamecocks, from Columbia, where I've lived since 2004. 'Cocks won decisively 76-64, thus vindicating my decision to move here.

Watching the game, I thought I might have conflicted feelings...I love a lot about Michigan, and followed the basketball program closely while there. One of the great thrills of my life was bumping into Tommy Amaker and chatting with him at the salad bar of an Old Country Buffet restaurant in Ann Arbor , on Mother's Day 2001, just after he took the UM coaching job. (My wife accuses me of modeling my UM prof look...mock-turtleneck under dark blazer...after Amaker.) But life's about the present and so I was all for USC last night. I love what these guys did in the SEC tourney and then the NIT.

Then comes the obvious question, why can't they play like this all year? I have one theory and one suggestion. It's said that Dave Odom is one of the best "cram session" coaches around, that is, one of the finest at concocting a game plan on one or two days notice in a tourney when you don't know until that point who your next opponent will be. My suggestion? Next year, everybody around Odom and the team should prevent them from knowing their next opponent until 2 days before each game. Keep them in a hermetically sealed environment if necessary.

The real truth about USC's basketball squad in the two years I've been following them, is that they  play to the level of their opposition. They played Pitt, LSU, and Tennessee (in the first game) tough before losing, and beat Florida (a Final Four team this weekend) twice and almost a third time.  We've seen in the SEC and NIT tourneys that they can beat very good teams. But they lost to Mississippi and twice to Georgia, two of the worst in the SEC. That's what makes their failure to make the NCAA's more frustrating. They are a team that could have done some damage in the Big Dance. Is this tendency to play according to your opposition's level simply a weakness of this group of guys, or does it have something to do with Odom's coaching style? I don't know. I just know that I'm very much looking forward to next season as an opportunity to build on the success of the way this one finished. Of course, I said the same thing after last year's NIT title. Meantime, let's get LSU and Florida into Monday's college basketball championship, and make it a sweep for the SEC, a woefully underrated league this season.