If a basic is outlined as “that which achieves an enduring repute for high quality and relevance,” then West Aspect Story is basic in the very best and worst methods. With giants like Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and a younger Stephen Sondheim, high quality isn’t unsure. Sadly, with themes of racism and road crime, neither is its relevance.
“After I was a child, listening to the Jets hurl all that negativity towards Latinos, I discovered plenty of slurs. It had a huge impact on me,” soprano Gabriella Reyes tells Observer about seeing the film for the primary time. The daughter of immigrants, she’s singing Maria in LA Opera’s season opener by Oct. 12. “I heard it once more at school and amongst folks I believed have been associates. And likewise seeing it within the immigrant communities, the concern of being despatched again, since I used to be a child. It’s superb to me that it has not gone away. It has escalated.”
Making her LA Opera debut, Reyes is acquainted to New York followers from the Met’s 2024-2025 season as Margarita Xirgu in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar. She additionally sang each Mimì and Musetta in Franco Zeffirelli’s manufacturing of La Bohème.
‘Tony’ to her ‘Maria’ is tenor Duke Kim, who introduced the home down final season as Romeo in LA Opera’s manufacturing of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet.
“Items like this are crucial, ‘trigger we present the battle, the hate but in addition the love people can have,” Kim says of West Aspect Story. “We pose the query—which one can I select? It’s as much as you. And I feel it’s much more vital these days to ask these questions.”
Partnered for the primary time, Reyes and Kim are below the course of the nice Francesca Zambello who, by her personal depend, is directing West Aspect Story for the twelfth time, together with productions on the Bregenz Competition on Lake Constance and an out of doors present overlooking the harbor in Sydney, Australia. Within the U.S., she helmed productions on the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera and the Glimmerglass Competition, all three of that are co-producers on the present.
“The younger folks, it’s making them perceive the extremely horrific state of affairs of the story, which will get extra horrible daily, the unbelievable therapy of immigrants and undocumented staff,” says Zambello in regards to the roughly 1,900 detained in LA ICE raids since final spring, most of whom haven’t any felony report. “It’s superb they wrote this seventy years in the past. All the things in it’s amplified immediately. It’s crucial to me, everybody who’s a Shark is Latino. Lots of the children on this forged are the kids of immigrants, and it’s actually fascinating, listening to every of their particular person tales.”
Conductor James Conlon leads a full orchestra, with Robbins Property-approved and Emmy Award-winning choreographer Joshua Bergasse dealing with the dancers. The music order follows the unique manufacturing and never the basic movie model, with Officer Krupke and I Really feel Fairly each positioned later within the present. Reyes and Kim are the one two opera singers within the forged, with musical theater performers filling out the remainder. The bizarre combine prompted Zambello to mike all of them.
“It provides us the chance to face each other,” says Reyes about being miked, an unusual observe within the opera world because it surrenders management of the voice to the sound mixer. “From an performing sense, it helps me lock deeper into the character as a substitute of getting to cheat out on a regular basis. We’re capable of be intimate, and everybody will hear that, which is completely different in opera.”
For Kim, the issue is sound compression. “Even with the nice expertise we’ve got immediately, it may possibly’t actually seize all of the overtones. Even when you sing louder or softer, there’s a spread. So, it doesn’t transcend the vary.”
Bernstein concurrently composed Candide and West Aspect Story, with each meant as operas, however rapidly settled on musical theater for the latter. Kim finds the tessitura (vocal vary) a bit low for a tenor, and Reyes finds Maria’s fairly broad, requiring her to strike a steadiness between emotion and method. “We predict musical theater ought to be simple. However it’s actually not. There are a few floated excessive A-flats. The excessive C that’s sustained for 5 bars, I’ve to work up my stamina to carry that on the finish of the quintet.”
Tony’s screaming and crying within the second act places Kim’s vocal cords to a merciless take a look at. “My throat is a little bit scratchy,” he notes. “Once we’re having back-to-back exhibits, night and matinee, I’m questioning how I’ll really feel. I’m studying to cope with that problem proper now, to ship one thing actual but in addition have it not harm my throat.”
Reyes, the primary Nicaraguan-American to sing on the Met, believes each Latino singer ought to carry out in Spanish not less than as soon as, citing the custom of storytelling by music and dance frequent within the tradition. It’s partly why she jumped on the likelihood to sing Rosalba in Lyric Opera’s Florencia en el Amazonas (with Maestra Zambello), in addition to the Met’s Ainadamar, set throughout the Spanish Civil Battle.
“Entering into this function, the standpoint of an immigrant who has solely been on this nation a few month, who needs change and falls in love with an surprising man, society must see these tales, that love transcends these partitions and bounds we’ve set for years primarily based off tribalism, primarily based off racism. Love can overcome that,” she says. “On this metropolis, specifically, with how devastating it’s been to the Latin-American neighborhood, I hope it’s a lesson and reminder of what love can do if we really select it.”
LA Opera’s West Aspect Story is taking part in by October 12, 2025. Get tickets right here.
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