United States Bernstein, West Side Story: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of LA Opera / James Conlon (conductor). Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, 20.9.2025. (JRo)
West Side Story, with its beautiful melodies, complex rhythms and dynamic narrative, deserves an opera house staging, and LA Opera has imported a co-production from Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera and Glimmerglass Festival. A variety of talents from opera, dance and theatre were enlisted to bring Leonard Bernstein’s music, Jerome Robbins’s choreography and the nineteen-fifties neighborhood of San Juan Hill in Manhattan (shortly after to be razed to make way for Lincoln Center) to the opera stage.
There was enough energy in Francesca Zambello’s staging to light up half of Manhattan, but the evening belonged to the handsome young tenor, Duke Kim, as Tony, the Romeo of the story. Kim’s operatic tenor adapted itself to the particular demands of musical theatre singing and, with his flexible technique, he was able to sing over the amplified sound to produce a bright, clear tone. His portrayal of the smitten Tony was at once youthful, innocent and wise. Coincidentally, Kim appeared at LAO last year in Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, and he was equally convincing in that production (review here). His warm resonant tone made him a superb operatic Romeo.
Gabriella Reyes as Maria was winning as the starry-eyed Juliet, but her natural vibrato was less adaptable to musical theatre. She was at her best in duets with Kim, such as ‘Tonight’ and ‘One Hand One Heart’, when her impassioned soprano blended with his velvety tenor. Lost, however, with the heavy amplification, was the pair’s ability to modulate their voices in the softer passages.
Bernstein’s score is a fusion of tender moments of lyrical beauty, pulsing rhythms and the modernist dissonances of urban life. James Conlon, conducting his final season, led the LA Opera Orchestra. No stranger to Bernstein, he was on the podium here for the marvelous 2018 production of Candide. There is no more gifted opera conductor today than Maestro Conlon, but with the amplification of the singers, there was a balance problem, particularly in Act I where the overly miked performers threatened to drown out the orchestra. With the orchestra in the foreground for ‘Cool’ (mainly danced rather than sung), the balance was not an issue. It made me long for Conlon and the LAO Orchestra to perform Bernstein’s 1960 arrangement of West Side Story’s Symphonic Dances.
Joshua Bergasse was responsible for reproducing Robbins’s choreography, with all its swagger and acrobatic intensity. As the second pair of lovers, Anita and Bernardo, Amanda Castro and Yurel Echezarreta danced with zeal and sang robustly. Castro was a firecracker on stage, but I would have preferred her dancing and body language to be less angular and percussive and more sinuous, as befits Robbins’s original choreography.
I sensed that Zambello was trying to maintain an equilibrium between the original production and the taste of today’s audiences. Though the movable set by Peter J. Davison was a sensitive and timeless abstraction of tenement, streetscape, diner and school gym, the costumes worked against the atmosphere of the nineteen-fifties. The women were dressed in either tight skinny jeans circa 2020 or thigh high circle skirts that made them look like children. In order to enter the world of the rival gangs of the Jets and the Sharks who use slang like ‘Daddy-O’ and ‘dig it’, costuming that reflected the period would be an asset.
As for the ensemble of dancers and singers, they gave a lively rendering of ‘Dance at the Gym’ and clowned to the delightful ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’. During those rousing numbers, the West Side of 1957 New York seemed right at home in Los Angeles.
Jane Rosenberg
Featured Image: ‘Dance at the Gym’ in LA Opera’s West Side Story © Cory Weaver
Production:
Book – Arthur Laurents
Lyrics – Stephen Sondheim
Original Director and Choreographer – Jerome Robbins
Director – Francesca Zambello
Choreography – Joshua Bergasse
Sets – Peter J. Davison
Costumes – Jessica Jahn
Lighting – Marc McCullough
Revival Lighting – A. J. Guban
Sound – Andrew Harper
Chorus director – Jeremy Frank
Cast:
Maria – Gabriella Reyes
Tony – Duke Kim
Anita – Amanda Castro
Riff – P. Tucker Worley
Bernardo – Yurel Echezarreta
Action – David Prottas
Chino – Juan Posada
Rosalia – Daniella Castoria
Consuelo – Julia Harnett