Southern inhospitality: Utah Opera's 'Regina' is based on Lillian Hellman's 'The Little Foxes'

Composer Marc Blitzstein and playwright Lillian Hellman were kindred spirits.

Both championed the disenfranchised in their works, and both were impassioned social critics (which would land them in hot water during the McCarthy era).

So it's no wonder that their paths would cross. That happened in 1936, and their friendship would endure until Blitzstein's untimely death at age 58 in 1964.

While Blitzstein wrote incidental music to two of Hellman's plays, their artistic relationship was cemented when he turned Hellman's 1939 play "The Little Foxes" into an opera, which he called "Regina," after the play's main character.

Utah Opera will be going out on a limb when it opens the new year with a five-performance run of "Regina" starting Saturday.

The opera has occasionally been revived since it premiered in New York in 1949, but it certainly isn't on most operagoers' list of works today.

Nor is Blitzstein a household name. A well-known composer in his day and touted as one of the new breed of composers who were forging a new, distinctly American musical genre, Blitzstein is today relegated to a footnote in music history. And that does a disservice to his music.

"He is a fine composer, and 'Regina' is a good show that should be done more," Kristopher Irmiter, who sings the role of Horace Giddens, told the Deseret News. "It's a very entertaining piece and audiences respond well to it."

While it may be entertaining, "Regina" paints a bleak picture of upper-class American life at the turn of the last century.

The story takes place in a small town in the South. It deals with greed and how greed can destroy a family. It opens with the Giddenses and Hubbards trying to charm an investor into financing the building of a new cotton mill in their hometown, but it quickly devolves into a power struggle between Regina Giddens and her brothers, Ben and Oscar Hubbard, as each tries to gain the upper hand.

Regina proves to be the cleverest schemer among the siblings, and she eventually gets her way.

But it also takes a huge toll on her — she alienates everyone in the two families — and by the time the story ends, Regina has immense power and wealth, but she is alone and lonely and more than a little frightened.

When Bltizstein came across Hellman's "The Little Foxes," he was mesmerized by its potency. In fact, he considered it the best play written in America. He also saw its potential as an opera.

"It has great subject matter for an opera — greed and the lust for power," said stage director Michael Scarola, who has been wanting to do "Regina" for years. "I love the play, I love the movie with Bette Davis, and I find the opera absolutely fascinating."