Gordon Getty (b. 1933)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (2017)
Opera in Two Acts
Merrivale – Lester Lynch (baritone)
Chips – Nathan Granner (tenor)
Kathie – Melody Moore (soprano)
San Francisco Boys Chorus; Barbary Coast Orchestra/Dennis Doubin
rec. 2024, Scoring Stage, Skywalker Sound, Marin County, CA, USA
Libretto enclosed
Reviewed as download
Pentatone PTC5187050 SACD [2 CDs: 114]
Gordon Getty has come to my knowledge through several songs that have appeared in various recitals, but this is the first opera of his I have come across. Pentatone has already recorded three others, and this one, Goodbye, Mr. Chips composed in 2017, was premiered in 2021 as a screen adaptation. The reason was Covid, which struck inexorably and paralysed cultural life worldwide for many months. The fact is that many activities still haven’t fully recovered. However, during the time that has passed, Getty has reworked some passages in the score, and these changes have been incorporated for this recording, which is not the soundtrack of the film but newly recorded in February, May and August 2024.
The literary source is the book by James Hilton, first published in 1933. The story takes place in a fictional village in eastern England at a public boarding school for boys, Brookfield, where the teacher Mr. Chipping works for 63 (!) years. He becomes very popular among the boys, and cares a lot for them. Chips, as the boys call him, marries Kathie, a truly loveable woman, but the happiness is brief. Kathy and the baby die in childbirth and Chips never remarries. The action covers the end of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century, and the First World War becomes a trauma for the ageing Chips, who on a daily basis has to inform his colleagues of the death in battle of former pupils from Brookfield. There are many sorrows in the play, but also joys.
The libretto is by Getty himself, and it is more epic than strictly dramatic, with Doctor Merrivale as narrator. The story progresses roughly chronologically, but with frequent flashbacks. This poses problems with the staging, when the 85-year-old Chips is supposed to enact his 48-year-old alter ego in some scenes with Kathie. One solution, which Getty suggests, is having a mime as actor while the old Chips sings out of sight from the audience. This is not a problem in a film, of course. The relatively little dialogue is in the shape of dispute and discussion, but one important case is the scene in the first act when the new headmaster Ralston tries to force Chips to voluntarily retire – something that in the end leads to Ralston himself being dismissed. In the second act, when the two meet again under different circumstances, the conversation is on a friendly basis – but in both cases this makes the play come alive. Otherwise there are long monologues – Getty calls them arias – where Nathan Granner in the title role has a heavy burden, which he carries with aplomb. He sings beautifully, with a myriad of nuances and deep involvement.
Next to him Lester Lynch as Doctor Merrivale, the narrator, also has a lot to do, and far from being anonymously neutral he radiates warmth and sympathy. Lynch is an expressive actor – and also a brilliant interpreter of art songs – and his expressivity saves the long recitatives – which I think they are – from being monotonous. The third protagonist is of course Kathie, but she dies very early and returns only in a few flashbacks. However, when she appears, hers is the most endearing and melodically memorable music. She has a long solo when in bed at the maternity hospital. She has been informed that there will be a troublesome delivery and suspects that she might lose the baby, even die. She cares for how Chips will be affected and says sensible things to comfort him. She becomes almost a Madonna figure, and the monologue is the most beautiful scene in the entire opera, celestial and deeply touching.
Melody Moore, whom I have admired since I first heard her wonderful Mimì in Jonathan Miller’s La bohème at the London Coliseum in 2009, has, as I prophesized, in my review of the DVD, since risen to stardom, and is here angelic. She returns briefly towards the end of the opera as the boy Linford, who visits Chips for a cup of tea, a tradition that Chips had launched from the beginning of his tenure at Brookfield and stuck to until the very end. Ms Moore depicts the innocent boy with simplicity and warmth as if he was an angel representing Kathie. There is a fourth singer, who needs to be emphasized: bass-baritone Kevin Short. He doubles as Ralston and Rivers, two formidable characters, who need a formidable interpreter. Short is the answer: powerful, pitch-black tone and expressive. Some years ago I reviewed a recital-CD, where he presented a good dozen of ‘bad guys’, and he was mostly very good at that. The present issue confirms his excellence as ‘baddies’. The minor roles are well taken.
Getty has treated the original with a great deal of freedom, adding things from another story by Hilton and also structuring the opera differently from the original – to the advantage of the understanding. He explains this in some detail in the foreword. It is worth noting that Doctor Merrivale, who in the novella is a minor role, only appearing once, has been promoted to the all-important role of Narrator.
The orchestral contributions are generally rather recessed and chamber-music-like. Solo instruments and groups of woodwind are the order of the day, and rarely is the full orchestra employed for dramatic point-making – but then with stunning effect. The San Francisco Boys Chorus do a good job and brings the opera to a spectacular start with Alma mater …, which returns as finale, tying together all the threads to a unit.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a touching opera, excellently sung and permeated by deep humanity.
Göran Forsling
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Other cast
Faulkner – Michael Jankosky (tenor)
West – Bruce Rameker (baritone)
Ralston – Kevin Short (bass-baritone)
Rivers – Kevin Short (bass-baritone)
Grayson – Kevin Korth (baritone)
Maynard – Samuel Faustine (tenor)
Linford – Melody Moore (soprano)
