Monday, May 11, 2026
When you head out to Strathmore this Thursday or Friday night for one of the two remaining performances of Washington National Opera’s production of “West Side Story” — and if you didn’t catch it in Baltimore last weekend, you should — don’t expect to see “West Side Story: The Opera.”
True, you’ll be watching a co-production of Houston Grand Opera, the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, and Lyric Opera of Chicago, directed by WNO Artistic Director (and former Glimmerglass Artistic and General Director) Francesca Zambello.
But opera, schmopera — this is simply one of the most rewarding productions of “West Side Story” you are ever likely to see.
Its adaptors wisely chose to cut and change as little as possible and to enhance rather than add. The music is pretty much note for note, and if the lyrics, dialogue and dancing aren’t quite word for word and step for step, you won’t notice. You’ll just be enthralled.
The leads — Shereen Pimentel as Maria, Ryan McCartan as Tony, Amanda Castro as Anita, Taylor Harley as Riff and Yurel Echezarreta as Bernardo — who in some cases appeared in Houston, Chicago or Los Angeles, are outstanding. Composer Leonard Bernstein set the bar high; the show demands operatic voices. Though the members of this quintet (literally a quintet when the song “Tonight” returns) have mostly sung on Broadway, they are fully capable.
Pimental, who played Maria in the 2020 Broadway revival, is phenomenal, as one realizes the moment the first sung words come out of her mouth: “Only you, you’re the only thing I’ll see, forever.” Castro, meanwhile, is a triple threat — singer, comedian and dancer (she is also a choreographer). Their late-in-the-show duet, “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love,” was so stunning I found myself wishing that the sisters’ bedroom wasn’t up on a second-story platform.
Mocked by amigas Rosalia, Francisca and Consuelo, Maria (Shereen Pimentel) sings “I Feel Pretty” in Washington National Opera’s production of “West Side Story.” Photo by Elman Studio. Courtesy WNO.
That won’t be the case at Strathmore, however, because the ingenious set, designed by Peter J. Davison, isn’t traveling to North Bethesda from the Lyric Baltimore; the acoustically excellent but stage-constrained Music Hall can’t accommodate it. The show will be performed in costumes designed by Jessica Jahn, and with props, but without a set.
In Baltimore, neon letters blinked out HOTEL high on the right side of the Lyric stage. A tenement façade with the show’s signature fire escape filled the left side, opening out to the bedroom where “I Feel Pretty” was beautifully delivered by Maria, Rosalia (Daniella Castoria), Francisca (Rachel Josefina, who also stood out in “America”) and Consuelo (Maria Cristina Posada Slye). Flats dropped from above to depict Anita’s dress shop — just wait till she strips off her smock — and Doc’s soda shop. Shiny balloons drifted in for the dance at the gym and chain-link fencing unfolded for the rumble.
At last Saturday’s matinee, the mood at the Lyric was celebratory. “Hello, Baltimore!” exclaimed WNO General Director Timothy O’Leary, and the crowd — including a busload from Friendship Heights and a Women Who Opera contingent — roared.
Then hometown boy David M. Rubenstein, who underwrote the WNO production, introduced himself: “I was the chairman of something called the Kennedy Center.”
(For those unaware, WNO, having ended its affiliation with the Kennedy Center in January, had to secure alternate venues for its remaining 70th anniversary season productions on near-impossibly short notice.)
So what’s different from the Broadway version? Most noticeably, the full orchestra, conducted by Baltimore Symphony Music Director Laureate Marin Alsop on May 8, 9 and 15 and by James Lowe on May 10 and 14.
On May 9, Alsop made a little jump in the Lyric pit to acknowledge the Baltimore audience’s hearty applause. At the pre-performance talk, Lowe played musical clips to demonstrate that Bernstein’s score has “tritones everywhere” (we all got a tritone lesson).
When “West Side Story” premiered at the Winter Garden Theatre on Sept. 26, 1957, Bernstein was 39, choreographer Jerome Robbins was 38 and lyricist Stephen Sondheim — the last to die, in 2021 — was 27. All three are among the greatest of Broadway’s creative forces. Less well known is the fourth member of the cabal, Arthur Laurents, then 40, who wrote the book.=
As is done in opera, the (English and sometime Spanish) lyrics are projected as supertitles. The dialogue is not, but listen closely: Laurents was as sharp and witty a writer as Sondheim, who, when the show was revived in 2020 — a run cut short by the pandemic — told “60 Minutes”: “There are moments in it that embarrass me.”
During the making of the 1961 film, Robbins was fired for being too much of a perfectionist, in the studio’s view. The WNO production’s choreographer Joshua Bergasse (also the choreographer for Shakespeare Theatre’s Zambello-directed “Guys and Dolls”) and associate choreographer Kiira Carper went all out to recreate Robbins’s jazz and ballet sequences and train up the two gangs of dancers.
Those gang members who not only danced and sang but acted supported the leads nicely. Of special note were Anybodys (Madison Hertel), Doc (Wynn Harmon) and Lt. Schrank (Zachary Owen), who got my vote as the scariest character of all.
West Side Story
Washington National Opera
Thursday, May 14, and Friday, May 15, at 7:30 p.m.
The Music Center at Strathmore
5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda
washnatopera.org