HOW TO GO
What: ‘An Evening of Rodgers & Hammerstein’ with the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance. Featuring the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dayton Ballet and Dayton Opera.
Where: The Rose Music Center at the Heights, 6800 Executive Blvd., Huber Heights
When: 8 p.m., Saturday, May 16
Tickets: $25-$74; Student prices (full time students of any age) are $25 for tiers A, B & C. To purchase tickets and for more information, call Ticketmaster at (800) 745-3000 or visit www.daytonperformingarts.org.
It promises to be a grand night for singing. And dancing and music and celebrating as well.
On Saturday night, May 16, The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dayton Ballet, Dayton Opera and Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Chorus will join forces to help inaugurate the 4,500-seat Stuart and Mimi Rose Music Center at The Heights. “An Evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein” will also kick off the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance 2015–16 season.
"The music of Rodgers and Hammerstein is enduring and appealing because it's — simply put — fabulous music!" said the DPO's artistic director and conductor Neal Gittleman. "Rodgers had a great gift for melody and Hammerstein had a great gift for words. Together they represent the pinnacle of the old-fashioned Broadway. And it's so good that old-fashioned or not, it really never goes out of style."
Composer Richard Rodgers and librettist/ lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, one of the most successful teams in the history of American musical theater, first joined forces in 1943 to create “Oklahoma.” The collaboration blended Rodgers’ musical comedy with Hammerstein’s operatic background, and resulted in more than 40 shows and film scores. Altogether their work earned 34 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and two Grammy Awards. No creative duo since then has come close to this level of achievement.
On May 16, patrons will be treated to tunes from beloved Broadway shows such as “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “Cinderella,” “The King and I,” and “Sound of Music.” Songs include “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin,’’ “Oklahoma!,” “June is Bustin’ Out All Over,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune,” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”
Gittleman said performing outdoors can sometimes present challenges — heat, cold, wind — but adds that the Rose Center isn’t truly outside. “We’re protected from the elements under a wonderful roof so we should have the best of both worlds — the informality of not being in the concert hall plus protection from the elements. Everyone’s hope, of course, is for a nice Goldilocks evening — not too hot, not too cold.”
Dayton Ballet artistic director Karen Russo Burke is especially excited that her dancers will get to perform to such great music. “I’m not sure that this generation of dancers has seen as many of these shows as someone my age has, but hopefully they will see why they are still so prevalent in the musical theatre repertory,” she said.
“The most exciting thing about this performance is the fact that we are one of the inaugural performances at this new venue,” said Dayton Opera artistic director, Thomas Bankston “It’s exciting and a little scary.” His featured soloists for the evening will include soprano Laura Portune, mezzo-soprano Christina Baldwin, and baritone Gabriel Priesser.
Getting to know Gary Briggle
Minneapolis resident Gary Briggle will play three roles on the special night. He’s had a strong connection to Dayton for many years and calls it one of his artistic homes.
“In addition to Gary’s talents in the realm of opera as a singer and director, he has a wealth of experience in Broadway repertoire, especially in music of ‘The Great American Songbook,’ which certainly encompasses the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein,” said Bankston. “So he was the perfect person to play the ‘triple threat’ role he will play as director, singer and the master of ceremonies who will guide us through all these great songs.”
Briggle, who is also an actor and a master coach/teacher, works in Dayton at least once a year, and was most recently stage director for the Dayton Opera’s production of “Dead Man Walking.” He will return next spring to direct the double bill, “The Book Collector” and “Carmina Burana.”
Briggle obviously thrives on variety. “I love the different perspectives that you get when you are involved in different genres, whether it’s Shakespeare or Mozart,” Briggle noted. ” My great love is as a performer and I think my directing comes directly out of my performing experiences and my instinct as a performer.”
He describes himself as an actor who sings. “I make that distinction because there are singers who act … and that has to do with where your instincts lie as a performer,” he said. ” My first instincts are dramatic rather than musical and if I’ve had success as a singer, it’s because I have a great joy and interest in communicating through music as an actor.”
He said others through the years — teachers, mentors, directors, conductors — recognized that his voice was useful. “Being a tenor means you are always in demand because tenors are rare,” Briggle explained. “They are the most precarious of voice types and audiences pay money to hear tenors at the limits of their range. It’s a little bit like NASCAR, do you go to hear a tenor make beautiful sounds or do you go in hopes the tenor won’t crash and burn?”
How he became a ‘triple threat’
When Briggle earned his bachelor of music degree, he assumed he’d aim for Broadway and sing Sondheim. But others began encouraging him to sing opera as well. Today he loves all of it.
“I enjoy the challenges of Kurt Weill and Mozart in the same way I enjoy the challenges of Chekhov and Shaw,” he said.
After a producer who liked his work and ideas on stage during rehearsals invited him to direct a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance,” he began directing as well. Over the years, he said, that scenario was often repeated. Briggle would first come to a company as a performer and then be asked to return as a director. It happened in Cleveland where he’s had a 20 year relationship with Lyric Opera Cleveland, with the Arizona Theatre Company, the Sacramento Opera in California, the Seaside Music Theatre in Daytona Beach. And it happened in Dayton.
Here, he first came to perform in “Candide” at the Victoria Theatre in 2002. “I had never been to Dayton but I hit it off with both Tom Bankston and Mr. Gittleman, and they started me out directing Gilbert and Sullivan,” he remembers. He’s been coming back ever since.
“I remember when I was exhausted and had a day off during ‘Candide,’ and wandered across the bridge to the art museum,” he said. “It was a revelation about where I was. It was so beautiful, so filled with wonderful, interesting, unusual curatorial choices. It is a very sophisticated collection. I went back and back and back on my days off. Now, when I have colleagues and friends that ask me what they should do, I always fell them first and foremost, go to the Dayton Art Institute. Then I tell them to go to the Oregon District and eat their hearts out!”
Role of the director
In one sense, said Briggle, the buck stops with the director who is the individual responsible for impeccably preparing the staging. “It’s the person who makes all of the decisions about production, with the exception of casting. I’m the one who sits down with Tom to talk about scenery, costumes, lighting.
“I prepare the stage both in terms of artistic choices and what we call the traffic copping — moving large masses of people around on the stage. You have to be able to work with a fine brush when you’re working with the principal artists. Then when the chorus arrives, you need to work with 40 people who represent the world around the story.”
Briggle is looking forward to the Rodgers & Hammerstein evening where he’s done everything from staging the solos to making collaborative decisions with Burke about how the dancers will be used. As host, he’ll also provide brief introductions to each of the major Broadway shows and he’ll join the cast in numbers including “Nothing Like a Dame,” and “Oklahoma.”
“It will be a gala event to be sure,” Briggle concludes. “Rodgers & Hammerstein contributed mightily to the Great American Songbook. These are the songs everybody still sings from Broadway.”
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