Opera has been very good to Terrence McNally. He scored one of his biggest hits with “Master Class,” inspired by Maria Callas’ infamous voice lessons. “Golden Age,” which opened last night, isn’t on that level, but it’s still the playwright’s liveliest effort in years.
Not that we actually hear much music here, since the show is a backstage comedy: Characters don’t sing so much as talk about singing.
The backstage in question, elegantly re-created by set designer Santo Loquasto, is in a Paris theater during the premiere of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “I Puritani,” in 1835.
Bellini (Lee Pace) is surrounded by his stars, who fret, gloat, emote and pout. And that’s when they’re not onstage.
The heavier emotional baggage is hoisted by two guests: Spanish diva Maria Malibran (Bebe Neuwirth), who’s over the hill but still charismatic, and Bellini’s patron and lover, Francesco Florimo (Will Rogers).
These two embody the play’s more serious side, with chatter about art and death, love and legacy. Fellow composer Rossini (F. Murray Abraham until next Tuesday, then George Morfogen) even puts in a reflective cameo.
But the mood turns to full-on comedy whenever the “Puritani” crew is on, with its barbed but affectionate bickering.
After Bellini tells baritone Antonio Tamburini (Lorenzo Pisoni) that he was “just a hair flat at the first hemi-demi-semi-quaver,” the singer smoothly replies, “I’m not a magician, Vincent. Silk from a sow’s ear I cannot make.”
Director Walter Bobbie brings the same comic flair he did in “The School for Lies,” setting a brisk but unhurried tempo that’s perfect for the farcical goings-on — a cucumber joke is straight out of “This Is Spinal Tap.”
The timing is key, too, because the scenes coincide with arias from the opera in progress wafting through — Florimo’s monologue about his love for Bellini coincides with an offstage aria in which the tenor, Giovanni Battista Rubini (Eddie Kaye Thomas), expresses his feelings for his wife-to-be.
Pace (“The Normal Heart,” TV’s “Pushing Daisies”) has the debonair good looks of a golden-age Hollywood heartthrob. He elegantly underplays Bellini’s exhilarated highs and his depressed lows, and his rapport with Neuwirth is tainted with lovely wistfulness.
But the play must end, and McNally chooses to resolve the diverging moods’ push and pull in a bittersweet manner: The curtain comes down not just on “I Puritani,” but on an entire era.
Suddenly, trouser-stuffing gags feel very far away.