Born Again Savoyard

Anna Marie Linvill

“Now that you have free time again, you should audition for the Durham Savoyards!” Pip Merrick bubbled enthusiastically, her bright blue eyes entrancing. “Do it! Do it!” cheered Tonya Brami. “Your kids are out of the house and your book is published, what else are you going to do?”

“I don’t know if I am up to it,” I said, shrugging them off. “My voice is really out of shape. I haven’t set foot in a theater for over a decade!” And the last time was in Gaddafi’s Libya, I wanted to add. But let me start at the beginning.

In case you don’t already know, the Durham Savoyards is a theater group in Durham, North Carolina, devoted solely to the performance of the works of librettist Sir William Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, whose light, comic operas were the toast of London and the broader English-speaking world between 1871 and 1889. Brimming with Victorian euphemism, political satire, and double entendre, Gilbert and Sullivan operas were very edgy for their time, and so well loved that the Savoy Theater in London was established by famed impresario and hotelier Richard D’Oyly Carte solely for the purpose of staging them. D’Oyly also established the Palace Theater in London, hoping to leverage the popularity of these operas into the establishment of a purely English operatic style and tradition. Gilbert and Sullivan’s influence on the development of musical theater in the English-speaking world truly cannot be overstated. When Gilbert and Sullivan’s works entered the public domain in 1961, after the death of Sir William Gilbert, amateur groups, often calling themselves Savoyards, after the Savoy Theater in London, began to pop up in communities all over the world.

I have deep affection in my heart for Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas. When I was a child, one of my favorite movies was the Kevin Kline film adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance. My father used to quote-sing lines from the opera all the time . . . “a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox, ha ha- ha ha- ha ha- ha ha, a pa-ra-dox,” or “I am the very model of a modern major general, I’ve information ve-ge-ta-ble, animal, and mineral . . .” I think much of my skeptical political orientation is due to early exposure to Gilbert and Sullivan. Take this gem from Pirates of Penzance:

“Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart
Away to the cheating world go you
Where pirates all are well-to-do
But I’ll be true to the song I sing
And live and die a Pirate King!”

So when, in 2008, my first year as a music teacher at the American School of Tripoli in Libya, where my husband was posted as the military attaché in the US Embassy, I was assigned the task of selecting a musical for the entire school to perform; I chose a simplified version of The Pirates of Penzance. It seemed appropriate considering the cheating and iffy deal making going on in real life behind the politically correct scenery in Libya.

I admit, it was borderline madness to attempt to bring off such an ambitious theatrical feat with young students. But, like a cartoon character who walks off a cliff into open air, only falling after they look down, realizing there was nothing underneath them, I did not know it was supposed to be impossible, and by some miracle, pulled it off. With the help of parents, colleagues, and an army of seamstresses, I was able to transform a rowdy bunch of international third through tenth graders into opera-singing pirates, maidens, and bobby-hatted policemen. Because there were very few opportunities to attend live theater in Tripoli, the show was attended by not just the students’ parents but also by ambassadors, dignitaries, and English-speaking expatriates from many countries, starving for any form of entertainment. It was a huge success.

The production took place in the only theater in Tripoli, the Al Kashaf Theater [the hidden theater]. When Gaddafi came to power in 1969, he kicked all foreigners out of the country and initiated a cultural revolution. Western musical instruments were burned, theaters and cinemas demolished. Al Kashaf Theater somehow escaped Gaddafi’s purges. From the outside it looked like nothing more than a warehouse, tucked away behind shops and apartments in the old Italian part of downtown Tripoli, where during the brief Italian colonial period, Italian expats had once lived and spent much of their free time. I learned about this theater when I joined a British expat theater group called the Tripoli Players, who, with donations from international corporations, had renovated the theater, repairing the leaky roof, replacing moldy curtains and seats, and upgrading the lighting and sound systems.

The Players would stage an elaborate traditional musical British Pantomime in Al Kashaf around the holidays every year. These were not the silent Marcel Marceau still miming shows, but outrageous political satires lampooning everything from stereotypical gender roles to expat life to Gaddafi and his goons. Amateur theater was one of our only entertainments in the outpost of insanity that was Gaddafi’s Libya. It was great fun, but it was also deadly serious and our antics were sponsored by the British and American Embassies as part of their cultural diplomacy strategies in a very delicate political environment.

After the Libyan revolution, I lost my appetite for performing. The once burning urge to make music and do theater had dimmed to the faintest of embers. I rarely sang in the shower and only sang publicly at intimate family or neighborhood gatherings. I lost several friends to the revolution and its aftermath, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died when rioters set fire to the US consulate in Benghazi. Some of my Libyan theater and musician friends had fled into exile. One was murdered. The revolution had begun to devour its own children. It took me more than a decade to process my feelings from this experience and write it all down.

I tried to explain all of this to Pip, but she would have none of it. “Just give it a try. It is a really great group of people, and loads of fun. It will be good for you.”

Why was Pip pushing me to join the Savoyards now, out of nowhere, just as I was emotionally wrapping up this long, dramatic period in my life? I really thought my theatrical days were behind me. My husband and I had finally put an end to our wandering, settling down in historic Hillsborough, North Carolina. The kids were both in college. I was content with my bees and chickens and wildflowers. Then again, was the universe trying to tell me something? I really had no excuse. Perhaps, now that I had closed the book on that period of my life, it was time to start a new chapter, or rather, revise an old one.

I was still a little buzzed off Tonya’s high octane high balls when my husband and I left that high pressure cocktail party. As soon as we got home, I sat down, opened my laptop, and registered for the auditions. All that night, my heart raced. Was I crazy? I was so out of shape vocally that I was sure to make a fool of myself. I had two days to pull myself together. What was I doing?

I had not auditioned for an operatic role since 2007, seventeen years prior. The next day, I sat at the piano and ran through a few of my old vocal exercises. My once shimmering coloratura soprano was laggy, saggy, and baggy. Singing is an athletic endeavor that demands huge reservoirs of breath and a fine, almost yogic control of muscles from the diaphragm to the tongue and the tiny muscles that control the opening of the nostrils and lifting of the soft palate. I had not had a vocal coach in almost two decades, and it showed.

I shook the dust off my copy of The Pirates and Penzance and got busy working on Mabel’s aria, Poor Wandering One, the only Gilbert and Sullivan aria for soprano I thought I could do passably well with only two days to prepare. I knew it inside and out, but could I sing it?

At auditions, the waiting room was full of singers, some fresh faced and dewy, others lined with laughter, character, and obvious theater experience. Most of them, it seemed to me, knew each other well. It would be tough to land a role in such a tight-knit company, I thought. Jim Barnette, a veteran Savoyard with a rich baritone and a classic southern accent to match, welcomed me, asked my name, and wished me luck. How nice of him, I thought.

When my turn came, the stage and music directors asked me to share my history with Gilbert and Sullivan. I felt a little trickle of cold sweat run down my side as I retold the Pirates of Penzance in Libya story. They laughed when I pretended to be the US ambassador singing “Tarantara!” It was a promising prelude. Then the accompanist played the opening bars of Poor Wandering One, and I was off. It wasn’t my best performance, but it wasn’t my worst either. Luckily, it was over quickly. I came out of the audition room to quiet but enthusiastic stage clapping from the waiting room. I was shivering with an excitement I hadn’t felt since I was in my twenties.

After a couple of days, I received an email. I was invited to callbacks, a second round of auditions, for the Duchess, a not insignificant comic role. I would have to prepare her aria and do a cold reading—materials attached. I downloaded the music and got to work right away. I did not know The Gondoliers and when I looked at the music, I was shocked that they were thinking of me for the Duchess. The role was written for a deep, low contralto, not a high soubrette coloratura soprano, but I shrugged and got on with learning the music.

The halls of the Durham Arts Council in downtown Durham were crowded with dozens of veteran Savoyards and gorgeous young singers. Some, like Lily Vance, also a newcomer, had stunning operatic voices and were fresh out of music school. Nick Malinowski, a tenor with an absolutely gorgeously smooth tone and perfectly placed vowels, warmed up his well-oiled vocal chords right there in the hall. It was very intimidating. The handsome and hip Brady Bowman, a talented local actor I had seen perform in a local courthouse drama at Hillsborough, North Carolina’s historic courthouse, made the rounds, distributing hugs to old friends. I was quietly envious and very nervous.

The callbacks took place in groups, and we sang in front of each other, one right after the other. I powered through the aria, wobbling heavily on the low notes as I overcompensated for my light soprano with false heaviness. I got a little tongue twisted over some of the words in the second verse, while trying my best to give the Duchess some character. It was not my best performance. Others, I felt, had done much better renderings, especially Brittany Wagner, who took a more aggressive approach to the role than I had. The reading went better than the singing for me, but I did not leave the room feeling confident. I was surprised and relieved when, a few days later, I was offered the role of Vittoria, a featured soloist in the chorus—and the role of understudy for the Duchess, to be played by Brittany Wagner. Without thinking about what I was doing, I agreed to do both.

When I walked into the first rehearsal, I was greeted by the most eclectic bunch of people I have ever worked with in classical music. I almost thought I had walked into a gaming convention or a comicon by mistake. Half the people in the room looked like my son’s college gaming friends—regulars at Durham’s Atomic Empire. Folks with rainbow-colored hair and tattoos covering most of their bodies, wearing meme T’s and funny earrings milled about, hugging and kissing, singing and quoting lines from Savoyards shows past. Several of the women were proudly au naturale, sporting braless tank tops with unshaved armpits.

Interesting, and how French! I thought. I looked around to see if I recognized anyone. Pip saw me come in and skipped over to greet me. “You got a role! I can’t believe it! And your first time, too!”

“It’s all your fault, Pip!” I said, shaking my finger at her.

I found a seat in the soprano section between a professionally dressed redhead and a too-cool-for-school brunette in a leather jacket and boots. I sat perusing my score, quietly eavesdropping on the people around me. Everyone seemed comfortable with everyone else. Octogenarians joked and flirted lightly with twenty somethings. An elderly Asian man wore a traditional Chinese robe and sported a long white beard, as if he had stepped straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado. Sarah (the redhead) was also a first-time Savoyard. A trained soprano from Philadelphia, she was returning to music after a seven-year hiatus. Liz, the cool brunette on my other side (another newbie), had a Ph.D. in musicology from Duke, sang in a femme rock band, and worked in the tech industry. I was dressed like a farmer in flannel, Levi’s, and worn leather boots, having come to rehearsal straight from feeding the chickens. All three of us looked a little shell shocked.

During that first rehearsal, we received a crash course in Savoyards’ culture and history. The group had an official historian and several members, including Shiangtai Tuan, the bearded Chinese fellow in the robe, the Savoyards’ self-proclaimed “Ambassador from the Orient,” who had been part of the group since at least the 1970s. A few had performed every one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s canonical operas with the Durham Savoyards and knew every word and every note of every one of their shows.

The director, Melissa Craib-Dombrowski, and her sidekick, Pam Guidry-Vollers, explained that some of the members were second- or third-generation Savoyards. Pam herself was the grandchild of an early member, and her son, James, having been on set practically from birth, was the set designer for this production of The Gondoliers. The Savoyards, it seemed, was more like a huge extended family than an opera company.

As an understudy with a role to play as well, I was required to be at rehearsal four evenings a week for three months. I basically had to learn the entire score. Pip grinned at me slyly when I teased her for misleading me about the time commitment involved in participating in the show. “I didn’t think you were going to go out for a role,” she teased. “I am in the Royal Chorus. We get to show up on Sundays for rehearsal, and at performances, we sing along with the chorus while we watch the show for free from the box.”

“You tell me this, now?” I mock-shouted at her one Sunday afternoon.

“You never asked!” she laughed.

Gilbert and Sullivan’s tunes are notoriously catchy, and the songs often have several verses of pattering, Victorian tongue twisters. By the second week of rehearsals, my head was swimming with them. I was having trouble falling asleep at night because my brain would not stop rehearsing Gilbert and Sullivan’s ridiculous little ditties. After one of these long, almost unbearable nights, I stumbled into Cup-A-Joe’s in Hillsborough, only to be greeted by one of my friends at the regulars table with the encouraging affirmation, “Hey! What’s happened to you? You look like you’re circling the drain!”

“Ha ha! I am!” I replied, wild-eyed.

As rehearsals went on, and the songs lodged themselves permanently in my brain, my insomnia subsided and I began to feel a change coming over me. I stopped overthinking the music, the words, and the blocking and just began to play. I mean really play, like I used to with my sisters growing up or my cousins at family reunions. I played like I had never done as an adult, even as a member of the Tripoli Players. A new lightness of being came over me and I found that I enjoyed working out new ways to use my voice and develop my characters. I had never allowed myself to do such things when I was a younger, more ambitious, and more disciplined singer. I had always taken myself far too seriously.

The Duchess’s part was so low for me that I could only sing it audibly if I did it in a nasal, Kristin Chenoweth-esque voice I had never used before. I tried it out for the first time with the assistant music director, Cole Swanson, also a Duke-trained musicologist. He approved, so I trotted out my brassy new lisping Duchess at the understudy performance of the show. People came up to me afterward and told me how much they loved my Duchess. Brittany Wagner, who was actually playing the Duchess, cheered loudest of all. “Your Duchess was adorable!” the director noted at the end of rehearsal.

After that performance, I felt like a real Savoyard. I was in—really in. I was also out— out from under the burden of my tough, hard, serious personality. Though I try to have a pretty good sense of humor about life and its absurdities, I have always struggled against my dark and broody side. I am a political science nerd, temperamentally and philosophically inclined to see the flaw in someone’s logic, or the fatal paradox in a political ideology or policy. I prefer to sing melancholy Schubert art songs over upbeat, silly Gilbert and Sullivan arias. I am a notorious overthinker. Even as a member of the ridiculously absurd Tripoli Players, I played straight characters, if I played at all. Often, I was one of the directors. I have never been the funny one—until now—at forty-five. I feel like I have been reborn.

My character, Vittoria, was one of a trio of pretty peasant girls who Gilbert and Sullivan trick the audience into thinking are the lead female characters in the show until they are finally passed over for Tessa and Gianetta, the real female leads. In the first act of The Gondoliers, Vittoria is seduced by Giuseppe, one of the gondoliers (Brady Bowen, who was actually about my son’s age—scandalous!). I was pretty proud when my comic faint—which I added during one of the final rehearsals—elicited a genuinely spontaneous laugh from the cast and crew.

At the end of March, with the cherry blossoms in peak bloom, show week finally arrived. The set was built and costumes were hung in dressing rooms. Everything became suddenly very real, and the energy of the cast intensified. I tried to arrive at the theater early, often before anyone else. The crossover passage at the Carolina Theater was dark and spooky and always smelled faintly of ghostly gas lanterns. There were no gas lanterns, and no gas leaks have ever been detected in that creepy hall, though artists frequently complain of the smell. The ghost light on stage was on before the crew arrived, and the house lights were very low. The gilded boxes and balconies of the historic theater glinted eerily, reflecting the dim light. It was magical.

With hair done up, costumes, jewelry, and makeup on, the cast truly came to life and so did their characters. Conversations in the dressing room were intimate, personal, and often bloody hilarious (in the British sense). There were many moments of small kindnesses backstage, and few, if any displays of overinflated ego. Kate Lamb, fellow chorister and confessed tattoo addict, explained to me that for her, the Savoyards are “the best cure for seasonal depression. They saved me after a really dark time in my life.”

The veteran Savoyards, Jim, Brady, Stuart, Alex, Hannah, and others, brought out the best in everyone with the sheer joy they brought to their roles and their brilliantly silly antics. My favorite biography in the program came from one of the funniest members of the cast. It truly encapsulated the Savoyards’ ethos for me: “Stuart Albert (Duke of Plaza Toro) is a Tony Award–viewing multi-hyphenate whose relevance to the American Theater is often highly overstated. After a series of failed surgeries involving what his doctors refer to as ‘vocal chord blasting,’ Stuart was released into the custody of the Durham Savoyards. He has not left their side for fourteen years.”

To me, the Durham Savoyards represent the best of what community theater can be, bringing together old and young, high art and low art, the experienced veteran player and the novice to create something bigger than themselves—a family. Thanks to “Pip pressure” and the Durham Savoyards, I have been given, and have given into, a second childhood. After the show, my daughter, Delaney, said to me, “Mom, I used to think you were this wise, serious person. Now I know the truth.”