Fiddler on the Roof at the Cincinnati Opera

 

by Margaret S. Hamilton

 

“Every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking his neck.” Tevye, Act One.

 

In addition to the standard repertoire, in recent years the Cincinnati Opera has performed Gershwin’s opera, “Porgy and Bess,” McCartney’s “Liverpool Oratorio,” and a comic operetta, “Pirates of Penzance.” This year it was “Fiddler on the Roof.”

 

Bringing the first full scale Broadway musical to the Music Hall stage was an ambitious and successful project for the opera company. Levi Hammer, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, was the outstanding choice as conductor. Hammer recommended Max Hopp, a German opera singer who had performed the lead role in Germany, as Tevye, the milkman and father of five daughters.

 

And the rest of the magic followed: singers from the worlds of both opera and musical theatre joined the cast, in addition to the Cincinnati Opera Chorus and Children’s Chorus, members of the Cincinnati Ballet augmented by additional dancers, including the six talented men who danced in the wedding scene with bottles on their heads.

 

The fiddler on stage was Charles Morey, a member of the Cincinnati Symphony, who stood on the rooftops of the sets during the show, playing fiddler’s tunes characterized by musical intervals of a fourth, an element of Jewish and eastern European music.

 

The libretto of “Fiddler” is based on the stories of Sholem Aleichem, a Yiddish writer who wrote about Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly the stories of Tevye the Milkman. The events in “Fiddler” take place in 1905, when many Jews were forced from their homes and emigrated to other places, including America.

 

“Fiddler on the Roof” first appeared on Broadway in 1964, followed by the movie in 1971.

 

Tevye works long hours hauling milk cans from the local farms. He had an arranged marriage to Golde. After raising five daughters, he and Golde admit that they do, indeed, love each other.

 

But Tevye’s daughters prefer to marry for love: Tzeitel marries the village tailor; Hodel becomes engaged to a dissident student; and Chava marries a Christian. Tevye bans Chava from the family but whispers a quick blessing before she leaves the village. Golde, in full operatic soprano mode, tells her they are leaving for America.

 

The familiar songs still echo in my mind: “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a Match,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Tradition,” and “If I Were a Rich Man.”

 

The image of the fiddler, balanced on the peak of a roof, sawing away on his fiddle, is still with me. Life in an Orthodox village in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century was fraught with economic and political tension. Every day was a balancing act: enough food, wood for the stove, and avoiding the local police. The fiddler has one foot in traditional religious ways, and the other in a more modern era. This is Tevye the milkman’s struggle. It becomes a universal struggle when the police evict the entire village from their homes and they emigrate to other parts of Eastern Europe and America.

 

Readers and writers, have you seen a stage production of “Fiddler on the Roof”?

 

Margaret S. Hamilton’s debut amateur sleuth mystery, What the Artist Left Behind, is on submission.

 

https://margaretshamilton.com/