CAPE MAY — Good things come to an end entirely too soon. Fortunately citizens and visitors to Victorian Cape May have another two weeks to savor the musical riches provided by Stephen Rogers Radcliffe and his merry menage of musicians. The Cape May Music Festival runs to the end of the month.

Radcliffe becomes more and more adept at programming music to please every taste and even to stir up a bit of controversy.

A music director can’t get in too much trouble with classical, chamber music, pops or even jazz but just let him try some avant garde and he (or she) can stir up a hornet’s nest.

The great thing about Radcliffe is that through talent, charm or even chutzpah he seems to get away with anything. He is a pleasure to review and even when the music is not our cup of tea it is usually over with so soon that we don’t notice that we’ve been had. Bravo!

On Sunday night, the Cape May Festival Orchestra was in its Pops mode and the concert was of such quality that it could hold its own with anything we might hear and see on PBS or Arts and Entertainment.

The concert featured soprano Lynne Vardaman, tenor Mark Heller and baritone Richard Holmes along with a stage full of 40 instrumentalists and their kinetic conductor. We hope that Radcliffe, in a burst of enthusiasm, doesn’t someday throw himself off the podium like the late Dmitri Mitropoulos.
The two male soloists immediately established their credentials with the rollicking We’re Gondolieri from G&S’s The Gondoliers. They gave the duet a strenuous workout which brought a delighted audience response. They did more with the rapid fire patter of G&S and were joined by Lynne Vardaman in some tender love duets. They got seriously operatic with excerpts from La Boheme.
The orchestra was in fine fettle with lush Pucciniesque support for the singers. Heller was tender and effective as Rudolfo but had a little vocal difficulty at the climax of Che gelida manina that he could have resolved easily by clearing his throat. This simple move was prevented by not cutting off his remote mike for a moment. He recovered nicely while Vardaman was performing a limpid rendering of Mi chiamano Mimi. They handled the duet O Soave fanciula in grand style which made the audience eager to hear more.

Heller was great singing Freddie Aynsford Hill’s On the Street Where You Live. Many do not realize that the song was sung in the film version of My Fair Lady by Jeremy Brett who later went on to become the quintessential Sherlock Holmes in the BBC television series. The Holmes of the evening, Richard, delivered an impassioned “Were Thine that Special Face” from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate.

Radcliffe pointed out the ascending chords in excerpts from Phantom of the Opera were “borrowed from Puccini’s lending library called Tosca.” Speaking of, you should pardon the expression, stealing, we detected some unauthorized theft from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in the concert climax’s Leonard Bernstein’s hits, or was it the other way around.

Who gave the imaginative excuse for musical plagiarism by saying “There are only so many notes to work with?”