“Queenie Pie,” American composer Duke Ellington’s unfinished journey into the world of opera, is a gem, a flawed gem with beautiful possibilities, but without the artistic setting it deserves.
It has plenty of swing, plenty of brilliant music in the inimitable Ellington style and a plot that might have carried it to greatness if it had been finished. But it wasn’t complete at the time of Ellington’s death in 1974 and the attempts to make it whole have had various amounts of success. Long Beach Opera’s Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek commissioned Ken Roht to make his own adaptation, one more resonant to current issues, and that version opened Saturday night at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro in a production that had much going for it.
First, there was the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra under conductor Jeffrey Lindberg, a 16-piece ensemble that became, for the two hours of the opera, a delicious big band with heavy licks of brass and a clear understanding of the music’s style and swing. Then there was the scenic design by Danila Korogodsky, a delightfully modern suggestion of a Harlem beauty shop in the first act and an equally attractive green island setting in the second. Of course there was the cast, which sang with great enthusiasm when called upon (which wasn’t frequently in the first act). There was even the outline of a libretto, which might have been intriguing if fleshed out.
What there wasn’t was a cohesive, intellectual satisfying or even complete opera.
Ellington completed a one-hour version of the work from television in 1972, after decades of work, but it was not produced. The longer versions have been created from Ellington’s notes, sometimes just scraps of paper. They have been done in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn and recently, in 2008, at the Oakland Opera Theater. This version is the one librettist McGettigan created for the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas in Austin, arguably the closest to Ellington’s vision.
But even that is no more than a pastiche: long passages filled with music and dance but with repetitive and less-than-informative words projected fitfully on a screen above stage. (Strangely, the spoken dialogue isn’t reproduced.) When the singers are given the chance to actually sing with Ellington’s music, the story soars and reaches its heights. But just as often it is killing time, and some in the audience wondered what was inspired and what was just notes for later.
“Queenie Pie” tells the story of a woman (the commanding Karen Marie Richardson) who is the queen of beauty in Harlem but who is challenged by a light-skinned and younger beauty, Cafe O’Lay (Anna Bowen). The plot, which involves a gunshot death and a magic island of restoration, doesn’t deserve much notice.
Richards can scat-sing with the best of them, a little Ella Fitzgerald in her soul as she answers the phone or struggles with her emotions. Bowen has a lighter voice but when she and Richardson face off one on one (too few times, alas) they are powerful and electric.
Keithon Gipson is Holt Faye, Queenie’s manager, lover and in the second half of the opera reappears as the King of the magic island Queenie is sent to. He can handle all of Ellington’s challenges with a simple masculinity and a resonant voice. Jeffrey Polk is Lil’ Daddy, Queenie’s factotum (and the opera’s comic relief) and the Witch Doctor as well, two very different personalities but always someone to watch on stage.
Roht directs the ensemble cast with enthusiasm, and there is plenty of dancing, often delightful, in the mix he creates as choreographer as well as director. Costumes by Dabney Ross Jones are delightful, effective and never too showy. Brandon Baruch’s lighting, though, leaves a little to be desired, especially in the follow spot. The Warner Grand is less than an ideal space for opera, and the cast has body mikes that had some interference from patron’s cellphones in the first half of the evening.
“Queenie Pie” is often exciting, often less so: it is all that remains of what might have been, and needs to be appreciated for that alone.
John Farrell is a Long Beach-based freelance writer.
