Frederica Von Stade’s operatic excellence shines in “Three Decembers”

How does a dysfunctional family function?

That is the story of the opera “Three Decembers,” which Hawaii Opera Theatre is presenting in a production that brings the incomparable mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade to Hawaii. She makes her debut here after nearly 50 years starring in major opera houses around the world, starring in a role written for her. The production opens tonight at Hawaii Theatre — and, in a first, HOT will take it to three of the major neighbor islands over the next week.

“It’s a story that resonates with anybody,” said conductor Adam Turner, who will lead the small ensemble of 11 musicians and play the piano in Jake Heggie’s lyrically engaging work. “I think every person will look at the dysfunction on the stage and identify with something in it.”

Based on a short script that Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally (“Kiss of the Spider Woman”) wrote for an AIDS benefit, “Three Decembers” has three characters. It tells the story of Madeline (Von Stade), an acclaimed but fading Broadway actress, and her two troubled children: Charlie, played by baritone Keith Phares, a gay man whose lover has AIDS; and Beatrice, portrayed by soprano Kristin Clayton, an alcoholic with marital troubles.

Madeline also harbors a terrible secret, which, along with the demands of her showbiz career, has magnified the tensions among family members even as they seek understanding in their relationship.

“You’re rooting for these kids to love their mother, to find connection and some kind of humanity in this Broadway diva,” Turner said.

There will be no supertitles needed for this English-language production, and guest director Karen Tiller said it will be easy for the audience to follow the story.

“It’s a very conversational piece,” Tiller said. “You can tell that the composer and librettist (Gene Scheer) worked really hard to make the words and music work together.”

Having such a small, experienced cast of “singing actors” has allowed Tiller to concentrate on details, especially in family dynamics and character development.

“There’s a lot of emotional content in the piece that is not written,” Tiller said. “We’ve really worked hard on the relationship between these three people. That’s a well-worn path, because it’s family, and then there are just things that families know that you can’t know if you haven’t been a part of that family.”

An intimate, 90-minute production, “Three Decembers” opened in 2008 in Houston. As has been the case with many operas, it received middling reviews, but it has become a contemporary favorite, sustained by its dramatic story and musically accessible score. It has been staged 14 times in the U.S. since the premiere performances and once in Europe since then.

Von Stade, Phares and Clayton were original cast members, and HOT’s production is the first to reunite all three since the premiere performances.

For the performers, the restaging has brought the phrase “life approximates art” to mind. The story plays out over 30 years, with a decade passing between three episodes, each one occurring in December, so this staging, nine years after the debut, nearly parallels one of the periods that elapses during in the opera.

“I feel like this role has been affected by my own life experience,” said Phares, who has performed the role six times and considers it the most important of his career. Though he himself is not gay, he said the idea of family and how relationships evolve are things everyone can understand.

“Part of the beauty of the piece is that the performers and the audience can project a number of scenarios onto it,” he said. “Just when I think of this is a niche sort of the story, I’ll come out and see grown men crying who have no relationship to the AIDS crisis in the ’80s.”

Phares sees more subtlety in the family dynamic than he did in 2008, when he portrayed Charlie as angry and resentful at his mother. For this production, he “has more sympathy for the mother,” he said.

“It’s as though she may have ignored the fact that he was gay, or she might have accepted it, but she didn’t have a real problem with it until there was AIDS,” Phares said.

Clayton sees her character, Beatrice, as “the glue that held the family together,” suppressing her own emotions to the point where she eventually turns to the bottle.

“I think she fell into that trap of ‘I’m going to do it better, I’m going to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and live in the perfect house,’” Clayton said.

In one particularly emotional moment, Beatrice gets drunk and chews out her mother. Clayton expects to bring some fire to that scene this time around, after being somewhat starstruck nine years ago by Von Stade.

“To work with her on such an intimate piece where she’s your mother, I could hardly see her as a character,” she said of the 2008 performances. “But now I finally feel some of the darker emotions, and when I really need to be angry, I can feel free.”

Hot originally asked Von Stade, 71, to do “Three Decembers” next season, but she asked them to move it up a year “because I’m getting up there, I don’t know what state I’ll be in,” she said. However, it appears opera fans will be in for a treat, with her voice clear, strong and delivered effortlessly during rehearsal, her famously impeccable diction razor-sharp in her opening scene aria, “Daybreak at Last.”

“Flicka also has amazing music,” Turner said, using the nickname Von Stade has had since childhood. “But nobody can sing it like Flicka can.”

Madeline has been described as “the role of a lifetime” for Von Stade, but the only real parallels are that both are stars and both are parents. Nonetheless, Von Stade considers “Three Decembers” an opportunity to examine her own life, she said. “I had two daughters who had to put up with their mother going hither, thither and yon,” she said. “So I got to look at that and what my decisions cost them.”

Von Stade said it’s “wonderful” to be back working with the original cast and praised Tiller’s direction. “It just feels natural and dramatic when it needs to be.

“‘Three Decembers’ is very true. It’s very beautifully written, in that the characters are very real. Madeline is very real.”