There are some nice touches here: the small body of strings highlights Sullivan’s characterful wind writing and lends the music a real theatrical pit-orchestra feel. Conductor J. Lynn Thompson’s tempos are generally spot-on, with enough bounce to keep things moving but also enough freedom to permit the singers to articulate Gilbert’s splendid words with extreme clarity. The engineering tends to spotlight the voices unnecessarily, given the above performance values, but certainly not in a debilitating way. Some of the singing also is quite good, led by tenor Kyle Knapp’s light, lyrical Nanki-Poo. Frederick Reeder does well as (to use Anna Russell’s description) “that small skinny guy who’s amazingly spry with a voice like a vegetable grater,” and as Yum-Yum Karla Hughes has a sweet tone that only turns tremulous on long notes (unfortunate, in her aria that opens Act 2). Julie Wright intones Katisha’s dialogue with impressive melodrama but lacks the voice to match–she’s roundly out-sung by Reeder in “There is beauty in the bellow of the blast”.
However, the main problem with this release concerns the performance of the dialogue. The phony British accents sound absolutely dreadful, while the ponderous pacing and heavy underlining of all the “jokes” betrays not a shred of spontaneity or genuine comic timing. Playing with “period” accents and such is all well and good, but The Ohio Light Opera Company is not a British troupe, and trying to sound so only turns the piece into a caricature of a caricature. Gilbert’s libretto is delightful, his words rightly regarded as integral to the work’s success in the theater, as is Sullivan’s music. They need to trip off the tongue lightly, not come across like a bad diction lesson. If they are going to be included, particularly on disc, then they’re at least 50 percent as important as the singing and playing, and so on those grounds (Katisha aside) this release is only 50 percent successful.
