eresa
Stratas's Broadway debut was unlike any other. When the soprano
took the stage on opening night of Rags, August 28, 1986
-- and when she left it on closing night, four performances
later -- she broke both hearts and records. The $5.5-million
musical was the most expensive failure in Broadway history --
until Carrie came along a few years later.
I was the show's production assistant, brought to the team by Stratas. I'd met her at my previous job, office assistant at the Kurt Weill Foundation. One day, she played me a tape, the title song of Rags. She explained the background: a young Jewish immigrant girl in 1910, chafing under her father's strictness, yearns for freedom, to tinkling ragtime rhythms. (The title also refers to clothes made in sweatshops.) It sounded like a great part for Stratas. True, she was forty-seven at the time, but opera singers regularly play young; to this fan's besotted eyes, age was no obstacle. "No, honey," she replied, "they want me to play her friend."
That might have been a warning. The script had been conceived as a television miniseries, with multiple plot lines and many characters: focus would remain elusive throughout months of rewriting. "Rags" was an obvious Act I curtain number, but it didn't close the act, because it was sung by the ingenue (the near-unknown Judy Kuhn). The authors never constructed a comparable turn for Stratas. (Her best numbers, "Children of the Wind" and "Blame It on the Summer Night," came earlier in Act I.) In retrospect, it seems clear that Rags needed an overhaul before proceeding. But with a show about immigrants in New York City, lead producer Lee Guber hoped to capitalize on the centennial of the Statue of Liberty in the summer of 1986.
Rags seemed to have everything going for it: book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof), lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Pippin, Bernstein's Mass), score by Charles Strouse (Annie), a sensitive conductor in Eric Stern, and a top-notch cast, including Larry Kert, Terrence Mann, Marcia Lewis, Lonny Price and Dick Latessa. Even Stratas's standbys had star quality: Donna Murphy (just starting her career) for the first two weeks of rehearsals, then Christine Andreas, already a two-time Tony nominee. Many members of the company, especially Stratas, saw the show as a tribute to their own immigrant forebears. This was a labor of love, a show about families by a company that came to resemble a family, as we encountered one setback after another.
Rehearsals began in April; within weeks, the director, choreographer, lighting designer and three cast members left the show. Schwartz and Strouse temporarily took over the staging; they were too close to the material to solve many problems. Choreographic duties now went to Ron Field, but the uncredited Graciela Daniele staged Stratas's elaborate Act II hora. Jay Presson Allen was called in as a script doctor, then let go. All these people had to be paid: Rags grew expensive.
What Boston audiences saw -- and cheered -- was a shapeless dramatic structure enlivened by a gorgeous score and a spunky cast who could sing, dance, act and clown with élan. Ensemble players took on several roles, some major. When veteran director Gene Saks took over the production in New York, he immediately streamlined the show, turning the ensemble into a chorus. Several leading roles were whittled down to insignificance, and cast morale suffered. Broadway audiences saw a shapelier drama, but one with less heart. Weeks after the overkill that attended the Statue of Liberty's centennial, Beni Montresor's giant replica of the Statue (on his gloomy, unwieldy set) provoked giggles and groans. Nevertheless, in New York as in Boston, the show got standing ovations every night.
The notices weren't bad -- Stratas got near-unanimous raves -- but a mixed review in The New York Times sealed Rags's doom. The cast staged a protest march, leading the Saturday-matinée audience down Broadway, but that night's performance was the last. Months later, Stratas won a Tony nomination and the Drama Desk Award; she declined to participate in the hastily recorded cast album. Rags has been revived a few times but has never shaken the whiff of missed opportunities.
For Stratas, Rags was an adventure. Daily, the rehearsal rooms resounded with her cackling laughter, passionate enthusiasms and professional perfectionism (not her most endearing trait). Soon we were all mimicking her baritonal "honey" (hawny) and "absolutely" (ab-suh-LOOOT-lee). The cast adored her, and she them. When Lewis belted "Penny a Tune," Stratas gasped, "That woman has a trumpet in her head!" That head was clutched to Stratas's breast during a song of mourning in Act II, and Lewis marveled at the enormous sound the tiny soprano commanded: "Where does it come from?" Stratas was especially trim at the time; she was living on water, broccoli and occasionally chopped garlic, to the consternation of her leading men, Kert and Mann, but she looked fabulous in rehearsal leotard and blue jeans. When anybody sneezed or was injured, she flew to the rescue; she was full of holistic remedies and expertise learned from working in Mother Teresa's hospice in Calcutta.
Opera singers aren't used to eight performances a week, but safeguards were built in to protect her voice. Like all Broadway musicals, Rags was miked; Stratas waged war with the sound designers to get her levels right. Strouse composed most of her material in her middle-to-lower register; as a result, her upper register blossomed. One afternoon, like a kid with a new toy, Stratas pulled me into a rehearsal room. "Listen to this," she said, then hit a high F -- then launched into a flawless account of the Queen of the Night's "Der Hölle Rache." Yet I was more impressed by the husky, erotic whisper in which she sang "Summer Night," transposed down an octave, at rehearsal one day -- so transfixing that I couldn't do my chores.
Stratas has never worked on Broadway since Rags. Many of our "family" are gone now, fallen not only to the passage of sixteen years but to AIDS, which hit our company hard. And the Mark Hellinger Theater has been converted to a church. But would I give anything to do it all again? Ab-suh-LOOOT-lee, hawny!
OPERA NEWS, August 2002 Copyright © 2002 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.