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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Operatic love, American style

Wild West setting makes Puccini work perfect for CdA stage

The setting is a mid-19th century mining camp in California’s Sierra Nevada. But it might as well be a nearby mountain town during the Great Idaho Gold Rush of 1860.

The story – full of bandits and bar fights, pistols and prospecting – focuses on forbidden love in the Wild, Wild West. Think: spaghetti Western meets Italian opera.

But before the barmaid and outlaw can ride off into the sunset, they have to make their escape. And, as is the case with most operatic love triangles, the odds are against them.

Gun-toting, saloon-managing Minnie is the heroine of “La Fanciulla del West,” or “The Girl of the Golden West,” which Opera Coeur d’Alene is staging this weekend. The undertaking, chock full of card games and cowboy boots, is the small opera company’s largest undertaking to date.

“It’s not done often because it is so big,” said Chris Burchett, of Onalaska, Wisconsin, who sings the role of Agent Ashby, a Wells Fargo representative whom he said is reminiscent “of Tommy Lee Jones in ‘Lonesome Dove.’ He’s pretty driven and won’t stop until he gets his man.”

Along with Minnie and the sheriff, Agent Ashby is after the bandit in this opera, which is one of Giacomo Puccini’s lesser-known works.

Set 165 years ago in the gold rush that helped shape – and romanticize – the American West, “La Fanciulla,” sung in Italian with English supertitles, is based on the 1905 play by David Belasco. When it premiered at the Met in 1910, the enthusiastic audience gave the cast more than 50 curtain calls. But other Puccini operas – “La Bohéme,” “Madama Butterfly,” “Tosca,” “Turandot” – surpassed its popularity in the long run.

Aaron St. Clair Nicholson, artistic and general director for Opera Coeur d’Alene, selected the three-act opera in hope the story and setting would resonate with a North Idaho audience.

“It wasn’t very long ago that this town was full of miners. That’s why people came here. So it makes sense,” he said. Plus, “There’s gunshots and fights and broken bottles.”

There’s also a lot of leather in this opera, which could be – or maybe should be – called “The Golden Girl of the West.”

Minnie, the wily woman at the center of the showdown – and only one of two women in the opera – likes her Bible and her bourbon. She also relishes her role as mother-sister-friend to all of the Cloudy Mountain miners. She guards their gold, gets their mail, and owns and operates the mining camp’s social hub: the Polka Saloon.

Everyone’s in love with her. The miners. The sheriff. The handsome, well-bred stranger who turns out to be a bandit.

She only has eyes for the latter. His name is Dick Johnson.

“He’s a very conflicted guy,” said tenor Roger Honeywell, of Toronto, who portrays the desperado. “He comes from a good family, but after his father dies he realizes his father was a bandit so then he takes on the family business of banditry.”

Johnson comes to the Cloudy Mountains to rob Minnie’s saloon. He gets shot. His fate – and the fate of the love triangle – ends up resting on a high-stakes card game.

The bandit is the prize. If Minnie wins, she gets her man. If the sheriff wins, he and Agent Ashby get their outlaw.

“The thrust behind this story is love and redemption,” said soprano Jill Gardner, of Kernersville, North Carolina, who stars as Minnie. “Minnie brings that element of morality and compassion to the Wild West. She takes her position with (the miners) very seriously. It’s a little bigger than Wendy,” the mother-sister-friend to the Lost Boys and her own brothers in “Peter Pan.”

This is Gardner’s first time portraying Minnie – a role which requires “tremendous stamina,” according to co-star Jason Stearns. It also marks a milestone for her; with this production, Gardner will have sung professionally the roles of all of Puccini’s heroines.

“The crux of the piece for me lies in the fact that the sheriff represents law and order, whereas Dick Johnson represents lawlessness. He’s a bandit. And Minnie, who has a heart of gold, is a believer. She is a Christian. She believes in love.”

Stearns, of Sarasota, Florida, sings the role of Jack Rance, the sheriff. He usually gets cast as a villain. “This guy’s not a villain,” he said. But, “It’s the Wild West. You’re only as powerful as how fast you can draw your gun.”

Rance is a quick shot and a gambler, a jealous, passionate and cynical man who thinks he can wear down Minnie and win her heart.

But, Gardner said, “In the true spirit of the West, she falls in love with the bandit.”

She does so, Stearns adds, “not knowing he’s a bandit. And she saves him. It goes beyond the law.”

And that, Gardner said, “is what love does. The power of love is stronger than laws.”

While the leads come from out of town, Coeur d’Alene audiences will recognize many local cast members.

Baritone Carlos Monzon, who lived in Spokane from 2005 to 2008, returns to the region from New York City, where he now resides, to sing the parts of two characters: bandit José Castro and Billy Jack Rabbit, who works in Minnie’s bar.

The cast also includes Whitworth University associate professor of voice Scott Miller, who plays Nick, the bartender, and Kent Kimball, artistic director of the Northwest Sacred Music Chorale, who plays a card dealer.

Choral master Max Mendez, an instructor at North Idaho College, sings the part of Jake Wallace, a traveling minstrel. He also directs the chorale of cowboy miners, which include Tacoma baritone Ryan Bede, Coeur d’Alene Summer Theater artistic director Jadd Davis, tenor Cody Bray, Spokane singer Nathan Heard, Post Falls elementary music specialist Isaac Robbins, and Michael Heitmann, a University of Idaho vocal master’s student and teaching assistant.

Spokane Symphony’s Eckart Preu is conducting.

“Great music. Great story. It looks beautiful. What else do you need?” Honeywell said.

A stagecoach, perhaps? Wells Fargo is bringing one of its iconic stagecoaches to both performances. Selfies with the transportation relic are encouraged.