Steppin' Out
Story
Members of Lyric Theatre perform in Victor Herbert's 'The Serenade.'
Lyric Theatre is singing to the tune of one grand
By Heather Zimmerman
When Lyric Theatre presents The Serenade, the operetta will be performed as a staged reading, without sets or costumes, but it will also be a grand production--literally.
The company received a $1,000 grant from the New York-based Victor Herbert Foundation in support of staging The Serenade, a light-opera farce written in 1897 by composer Victor Herbert.
The Serenade runs July 29-30 at the Mission City Center for the Performing Arts, 3250 Monroe St., Santa Clara.
Herbert was a classically trained cellist and a military band conductor who made a name for himself as a Broadway composer. Today, Herbert is best remembered for his show Babes in Toyland, but about a century ago, Herbert was a musical celebrity, and his works helped shape early Broadway.
"He was a household name at the turn of the last century. Everybody knew who Victor Herbert was," says Bruce Herman, the musical director for The Serenade and the treasurer and a board member of Lyric Theatre.
Herbert was also a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP.
The Victor Herbert Foundation was established by Herbert's daughter in the 1960s, and is a private foundation that supports the musical arts and copyright protection. Herman says he applied for a grant from the foundation partly because Lyric Theatre had received a small grant from them for its 2003 production of Babes in Toyland. "I sent them a recording of the production," Herman says, "and I guess they liked what they saw, so I decided to try again."
Herman also notes that Lyric Theatre was introduced to the foundation through playwright Alyce Mott, who heads the Victor Herbert Renaissance Project. Herman got acquainted with Mott through the project, which aims to revive interest in Herbert's music. In an unofficial capacity, Mott also acts as a liaison between the Victor Herbert Foundation and theater companies looking for Herbert's work.
The company used Mott's libretto for its recent production of another Herbert show, Naughty Marietta, and for its production of The Serenade, Lyric Theatre will be using a libretto that Mott has updated for modern audiences. The farce has a complicated story involving a flirty girl, her near-sighted guardian who wants her for himself, and a dashing suitor who woos the girl right under the guardian's nose. Mott didn't alter the story, but she did change some outdated jokes and obscure references.
The Serenade is being presented as part of Lyric Theatre's Discovery Series, which focuses on staging musicals and operettas that have fallen into obscurity. And in fact, Herman says he can find no record of any productions of The Serenade after the 1940s.
Although it's virtually unknown now, The Serenade is considered Herbert's first masterpiece. "It was an immediate hit, both popular and critical," Herman says, "and it ran in repertoire almost continuously for seven years."
Though Herbert and many of his works were once enormously popular, Herman suggests there may be several reasons why the composer and his shows aren't well known anymore. "I think one of the problems might be--and this is true of a lot of his scores--that they require really good singers. A typical Broadway voice could not do a show of his," Herman says.
Additionally, Broadway shows at the turn of the 20th century were lavish productions, even by today's standards. Herman notes that the original script for The Serenade calls for two horses to pull a coach onto the stage. However, the stage directions did allow for practical concerns, suggesting the use of only one horse if two weren't feasible.
The grant money perhaps could have rented a horse--or two--but Lyric Theatre decided instead to use the money to highlight what once made the show so beloved in the first place--Herbert's music.
Discovery Series shows always feature piano accompaniment, and for The Serenade, Herman has hired pianists Adam Aceto and Patrick Johnson, two experts in Herbert's music, to accompany the performance. The classically trained musicians, who regularly perform as a duo, are coming to Lyric Theatre's stage from Ann Arbor, Mich., where they organize an annual Victor Herbert festival. Aceto is also president and Johnson is on the board of the Comic Opera Guild, a light opera company based in Ann Arbor that frequently presents Herbert shows.
"They really have a good feel for Herbert's music," Herman says.
Tickets are $18. For more information, call 408.986.1455 or visit www.lyrictheatre.org.
