“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small” “And now, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up” and “I hate that word. It’s a return” are some of Norma’s most iconic declarations. And by Norma, I’m talking Desmond not Druid.
Norma Desmond, the beautifully delusional heroine of Sunset Boulevard, isn’t terribly unlike her druid priestess counterpart and namesake in so far as her infrequent, yet highly anticipated returns to the stage. Full-scale stagings of Bellini’s masterpiece Norma occur less frequently than Bohèmes and Magic Flutes, and they usually herald a new or returning torch bearer of the demanding role—for better or worse as history and critics sometimes snark.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Norma, an aging and all but forgotten (fictious) queen of the silent movie era, is the primary occupant of 10086 Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard is the musical theater adaptation of the iconic Billy Wilder film of the same name (1950), and Webber’s large-scale musical work also appears far less frequently on stage than his Josephs, Superstars, and Phantoms. Similar to Bellini’s Normas, a Webber Norma usually signals the arrival of a magnitudinous star, a star on the rise, or the return (“I hate that word!”) of a standard bearer, as in the case of Glenn Close who both premiered the role in the United States in 1993, and revived her portrayal to gargantuan acclaim in 2017 at the Palace Theatre on Broadway.
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The musical Sunset Boulevard is also rich with crossover trivia. Patti LuPone was Norma’s originator, and LuPone has proven her crossover chops again and again, appearing on the opera and concert stage in works of Kurt Weill and Jake Heggie (in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and To Hell and Back, respectively). And a recent, ongoing international tour of Webber’s Sunset sees soprano Sarah Brightman as its star. Brightman, of course, originated the role of Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera, introducing the world to repertoire that would become crossover staples and competition pieces: “Think of me” and “Wishing you were somehow here again” in particular.
Interestingly, Sunset Boulevard nearly bypassed the musical dramedy genre altogether and crossed over completely into opera before it’s iconic “With one look” and “As if we never said goodbye’” even had the chance to become MT diva concert staples. Andrew Lloyd Webber wasn’t the only writer inspired by Wilder’s film. In Look I Made A Hat (Sondheim, Knopf, 2011), Sondheim illustrates the challenges of writing his Tony Award winning musical Passion by addressing his own near-attempt at Sunset Boulevard:
“First, I wanted to make it [Passion] into a musical, the problem being that it couldn’t be a musical, not even in my nontraditional style, because the characters were so outsized. This was a lesson I had learned from Billy Wilder, a man whom I met for a little more than three minutes at a Park Avenue cocktail party sprinkled with celebrities, to which I’d been invited by the daughter of the hostess. At the time (around 1960) Burt Shevelove and I were toying with the notion of transforming Sunset Boulevard into a musical. We had actually sketched out the first few scenes, so when I found myself introduced to Wilder, the movie’s director and co-author., I plunged right in. Blushingly, I allowed as how I was a co-author of West Side Story and Gypsy and now had an interest in adapting his movie. ‘But you can’t make a musical out of Sunset Boulevard,’ he snapped. Startled and dismayed, I assumed that what he meant was the rights were not available. I was wrong. He continued, ‘It has to be an opera. It’s a story about a dethroned queen.’ Instantly, I recognized that he was right and relayed the story to Burt and we abandoned the project; I had no desire to write an opera, which is a form I resist.” (Sondheim, 146)
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Regardless of the trivia and the tales from stage left, I’m just thrilled that Webber’s score exists. When I was a freshman in high school, just shortly after the show’s US premiere, I became obsessed with the musical. My grandma had gifted me a Reader’s Digest premium gift (remember those?) in the form of a four CD box set of instrumental show tune classics—think lush, schmaltzy string orchestra elevator-music treatments of “Kiss today goodbye” and “Some enchanted evening” (aka, grand elevator music, and I loved it). The set included a bonus CD called something like “Betty Buckley: Spotlight on a Broadway Star.” Buckley, of Cats “Memory” fame had taken over the role of Norma and recorded some of Norma’s arias. I became instantly hooked on both Buckley and Sunset, and managed to get my hands of three separate double-disc, full length cast recordings (London, LA, and Canada)—not an easy feat for a 15-year-old without a driver’s license in the days before Amazon and YouTube. I devoured the recordings after getting home from school most days, making note subtle of differences in the orchestrations, the singers, and errors in their respective libretti booklets. I didn’t have much of a social life back then. I regret nothing.
This winter, Sunset Boulevard returned to Broadway in a very different way. And the 15-year-old devotee in me was instantly wary of the initial press buzz—that this production would be minimalist, and that some expositional songs had been cut. I was skeptical, but also really optimistic. Much like I remind my students that casting directors are actually rooting for them to do their best, I root for shows to be wonderful. I don’t root to be proven right or against a show’s success. Why bother going? Yes when the New York Theatre Guide announced that, “The new Broadway revival of Sunset Boulevard is bringing a stark, expressionist style to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s beloved musical, but all the show’s iconic songs sound as lush and gorgeous as ever before,” I was a little nervous.
On New Year’s Day, my partner and I saw Mandy Gonzalez (of In The Heights and Hamilton fame) as the Norma alternate, and I was gob smacked and riveted. I didn’t want the show—with its virtual absence of props, scenery, and Sunset’s traditional visual grandeur—to end. This production really had me wondering aloud to my partner about what really is important to me about the show, and why I still loved it in this different incarnation. John remarked that they didn’t change the orchestrations at all. Specifically, its full, lush texture. Had that not been the case, and had this minimal production been paired with a small pit band combo, or just a piano, I have a strong feeling that my reaction would have been less favorable. My questioning continued, and I considered how I wouldn’t want to sit through Die Frau ohne Schatten with its 167-instrument orchestra paired down to a piano reduction, yet I could happily listen to Tosca accompanied solely by an electric studio piano. So, am I really that fickle when it comes to the variables that change from one piece to the next, and within the same idiom or genre? Probably. And I’m ok with this. This type of reflection gets me thinking about all sorts of matters of art, including expectations, my own musical tastes, along with my own musical prejudices and my capabilities to evolve and adapt. But in the matter of Sunset Boulevard and me (age 15 or 44), it comes down to the music. And that’s going to prove most helpful to my understanding of the evolution of crossover and what it means for me as a performer, and how I approach it with students.
