Evan's "The Rock Tenor'

In musical theater, baritones get the short end of the stick. The villains—from Jud Fry in Oklahoma to Javert in Les Miz— all baritones. Ditto for opera, where the scheming Scarpias and the drunken Falstaffs pitch low F's all evening.

Tenors, on the other hand, get to play the sensitive rebel, the vulnerable poet, the artistic dreamer and the forlorn lover. If Byron could sing, he'd have hit high C's with ease.

So it's easy to see tenors as the precursors to the gods of rock and roll. And conceptually, it makes sense for Rob Evan of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to create of a show that blends the songs of rock, opera and Broadway into a single evening. The strengths of Evan's performers stems from their ability scour music libraries for material that lends itself to bridging genres. The phenomenal execution of this concept would have merited my first standing ovation of the year— if the performance had ended at intermission.

Blending Orff with Bon Jovi

After opening with a subtle (and fairly lackluster) Beatles medley, the song list segued into verse long interpolations of Journey, Rush and the Rolling Stones. The four supporting cast members (Dustin Brayley, Morgan James, Alex Keiper, and Aaron Lavigne)— dressed mostly in black— all looked lovely, sensitive and damaged or in need of rescue. Rob Evan even sported rock star hair, even if only the style worn by Rick Astley.

But the show's brilliance transcends appearances or staging. It shines throughout the first half in the orchestrations that blend the various musical styles, juxtapose themes in the story line, and reflect the characters' emotions. Henry Aronson's insightful mixing of "O Fortuna" from Orff's Carmina Burana with Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" powerfully expresses mankind's misfortune in confronting fate— the devil-may-care attitude of Bon Jovi's borderline nihilism finding a more than apt counterpart in the medieval railing against merciless fortune. (Bon Jovi: "It's all the same, only the names will change/Everyday it seems we're wasting away" vs. Orff's text: Fate/monstrous and empty/you whirling wheel,/stand malevolent/well-being is vain/and always fades to nothing)

Later, Jeremy Roberts seamlessly blends "Bring Him Home," from Les Miserables, with rocker Chris Daughtry's "Home," a feat carried off beautifully by Evans and the supporting singers. The entire show is worth seeing to hear and see Morgan James's seemingly effortless genre-bending hybrid performance slip from screaming notes on Eleanor Rigby to a purely operatic voice required by a Puccini aria. At the end of the act, I wanted to download all these re-orchestrations to my iPod.

Second-half letdown

Musical purists might balk at putting Journey on the same musical footing as Puccini. But with a great deal of help from Nick Kourtides's spectacular sound design and Herrick Goldman's almost overwhelming concert lighting, director Vincent Marini did a superb job of stylizing this production, right up until the intermission.

In contrast to the re-orchestrated brilliance of the first half, the numbers of Act II all seem designed to please the crowd. They give the musicians and cast a chance to display their prodigious talents (especially violinist Susan Aquila and cellist Betsy Goode, who rock!). A weakly inspired and thoroughly unintegrated Meatloaf added nothing to the evening.
Act II delivered solid performances, to be sure. But then, so do most decent local cover bands.

Still, the group's enthusiasm never waned. It's been a long time since I've seen a cast having this much sincerely self-indulgent fun on stage— even if, like romantic tenors of all genres, they're making love and drama out of nothing at all.