Della's Gift and Holy Night

Della's Gift and Holy Night

McCullough Theatre, through May 1

Running Time: 2 hrs, 40 min

Two become one – that's the image that we hold of true love, isn't it? Two hearts, two souls, so in tune with one another, such perfect complements, that they complete one another, merge into a single being. Beautiful to imagine, but oh so difficult to achieve in the world, which exerts so many different pressures on us and where we're so loathe to surrender our individual identity, even for the one we care for most deeply. The two operas Della's Gift and Holy Night offer us intimate examinations of that difficulty from either side of a century's divide, in a meager Fifth Avenue apartment in 1905 and the same apartment, much refurbished, today.

In Della's Gift, the residents of the room are Della and Jim, the young couple at the heart of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," she of the lustrous long hair, he of the heirloom gold watch. They are rich in love but little else. Their clothes are plain, their home a sparely furnished flat. O. Henry pretty quickly cuts to the chase, setting up each one's desire to buy the other an expensive gift for Christmas: jeweled combs for her hair, a platinum fob for his watch. But librettist Paul Woodruff lets the story breathe, adding in the couple's encounter with a pair of snooty swells and assorted creditors – the landlady, the butcher – to heighten our sense of the poverty that wears them down day by day. Composer Dan Welcher draws deeply from the music of the day, steeping us in a kind of burnished romanticism, genteel and golden, that warms us to the honeyed love of Jim and Della. And as portrayed here by Stephen Ruduski and Kelly Hart, the two project an endearing wholesomeness; they're innocents whose love truly conquers all.

In Holy Night, Joshua and Dennis appear to be just as much in love as Della and Jim – in fact, they're about to seal their commitment to each other with an exchange of rings in a ceremony – and they're much better off financially (real estate in that neighborhood has taken a serious upturn in the past 100 years as the tony furnishings in Christopher McCollum's set attest), but that doesn't leave their union free from strain. Both men have issues with their families – Dennis is estranged from his; Joshua still hasn't quite left his behind – and when Joshua's family comes over for a Christmas Eve celebration, the ties that bind threaten to split the men apart. Woodruff's original libretto casts these two as much more cosmopolitan than their counterparts in Della's Gift, smarter and savvier about life but also less optimistic, more prone to suspicion and darker moods. Welcher explores that musically with occasional dissonance and strains of melancholy. It gives the work a richer humanity in some ways, a frailty that pulls at our hearts. We understand the stresses on these men, and unlike with Jim and Della, we're not sure whether their love can survive them. And both Drake Dentzler and Yoon Sang Lee convey the depth of feeling in their characters' relationship and the pain and uncertainty that clouds it.

Welcher and Woodruff created these companion pieces almost 20 years apart, but you wouldn't know it watching this production. Despite the obvious differences in tone owing to the operas' different settings, the pieces feel much more like they belong together. Both capture the buoyantly playful spirit of young lovers, the chattiness, the private jokes, the teasing, the way so much of the world exists to be made fun of. (And no doubt some credit for that – and for all the productions' emotional honesty – should be extended to director Robert DeSimone.) In both, the Christmas setting exposes how we sometimes need to make a statement of our love through gift or action at that time of year, how we have twisted the holiday from an occasion for offering some part of ourselves to one when we have to prove something of our love with a gift. Ultimately, both Della's Gift and Holy Night show us a way beyond that, to forgiveness and the shedding of self that allows lovers to unite. In this expression of the meaning of true love, these lovely new operas merge together; two become one.