This Wild West opera strikes gold

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 13, 2004

SEATTLE – Puccini’s rootin’ tootin’ Wild West opera “The Girl of the Golden West” is infrequently performed, but after you’ve seen Seattle Opera’s current production, you’ll wonder why.

This opera works on so many levels – great music, colorful setting, engaging story – it deserves a bigger audience.

Maybe it’s because Puccini spun out lyric gold in operas such as “La Boheme,” “Madame Butterfly” and “Tosca” that the rough-hewn leather and hot gunmetal of the boisterous “The Girl of the Golden West” seems at odds with his other operas.

The setting is the California Gold Rush of 1850 and the story is pure spaghetti western, American style.

Minnie, a gutsy saloonkeeper with a golden mane of hair and heart of gold, outwits a lusting sheriff named Jack Rance and saves a petty thief named Dick Johnson from the hangman’s noose, finding love along the way.

Musically, this opera is full of riches with its complex orchestration, wonderful choral work and beautiful melodies, some of which were borrowed by Andrew Lloyd Webber when he wrote “Phantom of the Opera.”

The sets, borrowed from Utah Festival Opera, capture the rugged frontier setting. The rustic Polka Saloon looks straight out of a Hollywood Western and Minnie’s mountain cabin glows like a jewel in a snow-filled forest.

The story begins in The Polka, where a Wells Fargo agent announces that a bandit named Ramerrez is in the vicinity. A stranger calling himself Dick Johnson enters the saloon. He and Minnie hook up, then begin to waltz and a romance is born.

They make a date to meet later at Minnie’s cabin, but Sheriff Jack Rance crashes their party and announces that Dick Johnson is in fact the bandit Ramerrez.

Minnie proposes a poker game. If she wins, Ramerrez goes free. If she loses, Rance gets Ramerrez and Minnie.

Minnie has a card up her sleeve – literally – cheats and wins the poker game. Rance and his men round up the bandit anyway and put a noose around his neck. Minnie pleads for his release and the miners are moved by her love. The lovers are free to go, singing goodbye to California forever.

“The Girl of the Golden West” calls for three great lead singers, and Seattle Opera has them in the principal cast.

Andrea Gruber galvanizes this production with her intense performance. Her big, dramatic soprano is ideally suited to the role of Minnie who is, by turns, the tender-hearted heroine to this rag-tag bunch of gold miners and the gun-toting frontier gal who fears no one.

Bass-baritone Greer Grimsley is a sensation in the role of Jack Rance. He exudes dark sex appeal and sinister attitude, but the chaste Minnie is having none of it. Dick Johnson is her kind of man, and Richard Margison brings his big tenor voice with its lofty high notes to the role.

These three artists, all veterans of Seattle Opera productions, have never sounded better. The supporting roles are all well sung and the chorus – all male for this opera – sings superbly.

Rozaril Lynch photo

Andrea Gruber and Richard Margison in “The Girl of the Golden West.”