INTERVIEW: Ted Sperling is ready to conduct Kelli O’Hara, Bill Irwin in ‘Babes in Toyland’
MasterVoices, formerly known as The Collegiate Chorale, is in the midst of celebrating its 75th anniversary, and they are ready to put on a show. On Thursday, April 27, the company will present a concert of Babes in Toyland, the legendary musical, at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Slated to appear in the program are Kelli O’Hara, Bill Irwin, Christopher Fitzgerald, Lauren Worsham, Jonathan Freeman, Chris Sullivan, Jeffrey Schecter, Blair Brown, Michael Kostroff and Jay Armstrong Johnson.
At the helm of the production will be MasterVoices’ artistic director Ted Sperling, who will conduct and direct the evening. The 1903 show, with music by Victor Herbert and libretto by Glen MacDonough, hasn’t been revived in decades, and that makes MasterVoices’ concert extra special.
The musical tells the story of a scary uncle who tries to kill his nephew and niece in order to gain their inheritance. The children must employ the help of several fantastical characters in order to save their lives and all of Toyland.
Joining the company for the evening will be the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Sperling about the concert performance, which will also play April 29 at the Tilles Center in Brookville, New York. Here’s a sample of what he had to say:
On what audience members can expect …
“It’s should be a really fun, funny evening full of gorgeous melodies and some hijinks. I think a lot of people are familiar with the title, Babes in Toyland, and have seen some version of it, most likely a movie version, but no one in over 80 years has seen anything close to what the authors wrote in 1903. So we’re going to be giving them a glimpse of that and certainly a very complete look at what the musical program would have been back then.
“It was originally a three-act extravaganza, so we’re streamlining for today’s audiences. Ours will be a two-act. We’ll still perform a lot of the music that went along with these giant stage effects like volcanoes erupting and shipwrecks, but we’re going to ask them to use their imaginations to picture those scenes because we can’t recreate that at Carnegie Hall. And I think a lot of the humor still stands up today. It’s fun to see how jokes still land from 1903, and we’ve assembled an amazing cast of comic people who sing beautifully.”
On casting the show …
“It’s been a really pleasant experience calling people and asking them to do this. I think MasterVoices has always prided ourselves on our casting. A lot of these people have worked with us before, and the others know people who have performed with us. A lot of them are connected in some way or another with me or with Kelli O’Hara. There’s a contingent of people who worked [on] Nice Work If You Can Get It with Kelli. A bunch of us all did The Mikado together at Carnegie Hall several years back, and even Kelli and Bill Irwin have worked together. They did King Lear together at the Public Theater.”
On his role as conductor and artistic director …
“Well, I am the artistic director of the group, MasterVoices, so I tend to conduct most of our programming. We do basically three big concerts a year, so it makes sense for me to do them. But this also is a piece that I picked because I loved it, and it’s very much in my wheelhouse as well. I have a big Broadway background. I also have a classical musical background, and this lives very comfortably straddling both worlds.”
On working with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s …
“Well, one of the things I love about working with Orchestra of St. Luke’s is that they started as a chamber music group, so they really listen to each other. And they even talk to each other and ask a lot of questions and venture opinions because that’s how chamber music works. It’s a negotiation. It’s a democratic process, so it’s a hybrid when I’m there as conductor because ultimately I’m the one who has the final word. But I really love collaborating. That’s why I’m in the theater. I love gathering opinions, and weighing pros and cons, and coming up with the best possible solution.”
On his past successes, including The Light in the Piazza, Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, South Pacific and others …
“I think it’s important to pinch yourself occasionally, yes. You can get sort of used to things, of course, when you do them over and over again, but especially being at Carnegie Hall was something that I talked about as a kid. I have a best friend who I’ve known since kindergarten, and I just reminded her recently then when we were kids she said, ‘When you play Carnegie Hall, I want a ticket.’ And since then she’s come to see many times there, so you never get tired of performing there.”
On staying busy …
“I think there are many people like me who take on a lot because we love to work. We love to push ourselves, but, yes, scheduling can be a real challenge. Sometimes you’re not completely the master of when things land.”
On MasterVoices’ 75 years of history …
“Well, over the course of 75 years, any group has got to change, but because we were coming up on this important milestone, I did some reading of what the group was like when it started and what its aims were. And I was really gratified to see that I think we are very much in alignment with the original goals on two main fronts. One is that people come to sing with us because they love singing, and they want to sing in a group that challenges them, that keeps them interested, that has a very high standard. But I was also interested to see that, right from the beginning, the repertoire was unusual for its day, that Robert Shaw was commissioning work, right from the beginning, from his contemporaries, and that he was doing a wide range of material. He would often start a program with a [Johann Sebastian] Bach cantata and end with a Broadway show tune. So even in one concert he would encapsulate a lot of the different kinds of things that we’re still doing today.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
MasterVoices will present Babes in Toyland at Carnegie Hall Thursday, April 27 at 7 p.m. Click here for more information on MasterVoices’ other concert dates and tickets.
