Many might think a night at the opera is stuffy and full of tragedy, but the Division of Music’s newest opera production plans to get more than a few laughs.
Ohio University’s Division of Music will present Mozart’s opera Le Nozze Di Figaro in the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium on Friday and Saturday.
Le Nozze Di Figaro, or The Marriage of Figaro, tells the humorous events of Figaro and his bride-to-be’s wedding day. The opera will be sung in Italian with English supertitles.
“Mozart is one of the most commonly performed and this (opera) is in his top two or three,” said Phillip Christiansen, assistant professor of music and stage director for the opera.
The show was originally intended to be four hours long.
“Audiences are less comfortable sitting for four hours and making an evening of it than they used to be,” Christiansen said. “We have cut this down to about a two-and-half hour opera.”
Along with traditional cuts, other traditions were upheld in the opera, such as exit arias and the famous Act II finale. Christiansen said the opera contains a number of arias, solo songs, and ensembles of different sizes.
The stage manager, Anna Kovacs, a sophomore studying stage management, said operas are very different from musicals and plays.
“It’s a lot longer and very fast-paced with constant page turning,” Kovacs said. “If you get off count it’s a lot harder to recover.”
Christiansen said the students in the Division of Music are trained to be classical musicians, which helps them in other genres.
The actors have spent an hour and a half every Monday through Friday during the semester preparing for the show. Christiansen started casting during the summer.
“Any free moment I had… It was like a Figaro overload, so that I knew it like the back of my hand,” said Ellen Estes, a senior studying music theory.
Estes plays the part of a Cherubino, a teenage boy who dresses up as a girl. It is customary for a woman to play the part of Cherubino. Estes said she had to build up the endurance to perform two arias in the show.
“If you’re running a marathon, you know how to run, but you’re not going to start practicing to run that day,” Estes said. “I’ve worked out my voice in a way so that I can handle it.”
The opera showcases five leads and four secondary leads as well as nine principals and a chorus of nine. When they are not singing, the leads are talking in recitative dialogue, which is like a sung conversation.
With the story taking place during the course of a day, Estes said costume changes are not that difficult, except for the actors playing two roles.
“Anyone who thinks the opera is boring or old should come to this, and your mind will be changed,” Estes said.
@han_nahdebs
This article appeared in print under the headline "Mem Aud to host comedic opera penned by Mozart."
