In the past decade, there has been a procession of pop artists trying their hands at classical music with mixed results, from the bloated and pretentious (Paul McCartney, Roger Waters) to a more natural synthesis of rock and classical (Joe Jackson).
Carly Simon was ahead of the curve in 1993 when she wrote her opera of family conflict, Romulus Hunt, which received its belated South Florida premiere Saturday night at the Gusman Center. The benefit event raised funds for CHARLEE Homes for Children, a foster-care organization, and the Girls Advocacy Project, which mentors juvenile girls in detention.
The popular singer-songwriter, who also performed a benefit concert Friday night for the CHARLEE Homes, was clearly moved by the performance and in a brief curtain speech stressed the need for parents to think long and hard before getting divorced and consider the impact on their children.
DEALS WITH DIVORCE
The one-act opera concerns Romulus ''Rom'' Hunt, a 12-year-old boy who is conflicted over his parent's divorce. Shuttling between his loving but uptight mother Joanna (Kimberly Daniel de Acha) and Bohemian father Eddie (Ismael Gonzalez) and his artsy ditz of a girlfriend Mica (Beverly Coulter), Romulus (Steven Nikolic) is torn between his affection and resentment for both parents. He is aided in his lonely search for answers by the dreadlock-bedecked Zoogy (Elker L. Harris), an imaginary friend who functions as a kind of Rastafarian good fairy. After Rom is injured in a track event, an uneasy resolution is reached, with the boy realizing his parents' love and concern for him is deep and genuine even with their considerable imperfections.
Romulus Hunt is too talky at times and, even at 75 minutes, feels loosely constructed, with the Zoogy character, especially, feeling like a heavy-handed theatrical device.
Yet the scenes of family conflict and the emotions of Romulus and his parents feel very real, drawn, as Simon has stated, from her own domestic experiences as a child and divorced mother. There's a refreshing lack of cynicism and a gentle humanity in the opera, which clearly resonated with the receptive Gusman audience Saturday night.
A MUSICAL SUCCESS
Simon's music is largely successful, aimed at the broad family audience Romulus Hunt is intended to reach. Like Joe Jackson, she doesn't attempt to inflate the material by self-consciously grafting on grand operatic tropes that are alien to her style.
Rather she mines her own musical vein of melodic pop, lyrical vocal lines alternating with an urban-flavored sensibility.
At times the music shows surprising sophistication as with the complex lines of the two women's confrontation scene and the trio for the adults A Boy of 12 Is Like a Tree. Simon even throws in a brief self-mocking moment with Eddie's brief riff on You're So Vain.
The cast was solid to excellent with Coulter especially fine as Mica, showing her wide vocal range. De Acha seemed a bit too seasoned to be credible as the mother of a 12-year-old but was a sympathetic figure singing her reflective aria, Am I Still Young? Steven Nikolic was terrific as Rom, showing a veteran actor's relaxed ease on stage and singing and acting naturally without the overdrilled hyperkinetic style of many young actors.
TECHNICAL GLITCHES
The amplification was problematic, adding a strident edge to the women's voices. Harris' mike failed in the opening scene, which made the first ten minutes a muddle and rendered much of the exposition inaudible. Otherwise the staging, handled in large part by the Florida International University music and theater departments, was solidly done. Britto created a few of his colorful canvases for panels, but otherwise the bare-bones staging was simple and effective, fluidly directed by Phillip M. Church. Conductor John Augenblick drew alert and responsive playing by the 10-musician pit ensemble.
It may not be a heavyweight verismo masterpiece, but Romulus Hunt is a worthy, largely effective work that hovers gracefully between musical theater and opera. With an added 15 years' experience it would be interesting to hear what a Carly Simon opera would sound like today.
