U of A’s Tartuffe-A Lively Musical Romp
L to R Ken Ryals, Angeline Klein and Nathan Krueger
When Charles Roe, the artistic director of the University of Arizona’s Opera Theater looked around for an opera to produce for the school’s 2007 spring production, he decided on Kirke Mechem’s 1982 work, Tartuffe. The director had heard the opera a number of years ago and was impressed by Mechem’s varied musical score and recognized he had a good singing troupe of graduate and undergraduate students that could give the eclectic score the justice it was due. And as an extra added incentive, Roe wanted a work that would equal if not surpass his successful and moving production of Mark Adamo’s modern adaptation of Little Women which the opera theater presented last year. So Tartuffe it was, and happily for the audiences who attended, the production turned out to be quite an artistic success for the University’s opera department.
Mechem, who also wrote the libretto, pared down Jean Baptiste Moliere’s long, wordy but beautifully elocuted 17th-Century satire of religious pomposity written in verse and came up with a shorter three-act version that better accomodated his bouncy, rythmic and at times plaintive score. This way, Roe and his musical director, Adam Boyles were easily able to channel their resources to effectively meet any of the composer’s vocal challenges in order to give the production a stately professional sheen.
