With Renée Fleming playing a narcissistic opera star, will “Living on Love” bring new audiences to opera? No, it’s not likely. More probably, the show will induce some opera fans to catch a famous soprano doing something completely different from her usual gig at opera houses, where her characters are usually dying for love. But they had better act soon because this vehicle is not sturdy enough for a long run.
“Living on Love” is derived from a 1985 comedy, “Peccadillo, by Garson Kanin. Though he wrote a number of famous screenplays (often with his wife, Ruth Gordon) and the Broadway hit ”Born Yesterday“ (which was also made into a successful movie), ”Peccadillo” closed out of town. Now, Joe DiPietro has revised it—but not enough.
Strangely, the show has all the ingredients of a good musical, starting with lead characters who resemble the battling pair in “Kiss Me Kate.” Fleming’s co-star is Douglas Sills (who played “The Scarlet Pimpernel”), and DiPietro and director Kathleen Marshall had worked on musicals together (“Nice Work if You Can Get It”) as well as separately. (He wrote “Memphis,” and she directed and choreographed “Pajama Game” and “Wonderful Town,” among others.)
“Living on Love” is a screwball comedy about a married couple with huge egos. Fleming plays an opera star named Raquel De Angelis, whose best days are behind her. She is married to Italian conductor Vito De Angelis, who speaks with a heavy accent. He is also a compulsive womanizer and given to flamboyant gestures, either of romance or jealousy.
