TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- An evening of one-act operas will be presented by the Indiana State University's Opera Workshop on Saturday, Nov. 18 and Sunday, Nov. 19 beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Center for Performing and Fine Arts on the ISU campus.
The program will open with Seymour Barab's popular children's opera "Little Red Riding Hood." First performed in 1962, "Little Red Riding Hood" is one of the ten operas most frequently produced in the United States during the past quarter-century. Senior music education major Bethany Cottom will sing the role of Little Red, graduate voice performance major Natalie Inskeep will play the dual role of Mother/Grandmother, Chad Roscoe, a junior music education major, will portray the Wolf, and sophomore theater major Michael Finchum and senior liberal arts-music major Bryan Halleck will each sing one performance as the Woodsman.
British composer Vaughan Williams's "Riders to the Sea," a lush post-Romantic opera based on the classic one-act play by Irish playwright J. M. Synge, will follow. Set on the Isle of Arran, "Riders to the Sea" is a story of tragedy and resignation in a small fishing community that has lost many of its menfolk to deaths at sea through the years. Three of ISU's graduate voice performance majors fill the leading roles in this opera. Megan Bowen will sing the central role of Maurya, the matriarch of the family, while Keisha Cook and Erin Shafer will portray her two daughters, Nora and Catherine. Bryan Halleck and Michael Finchum are double-cast in the role of Bartley, Maurya's only remaining son.
The third and final act will be Douglas Moore's zany send-up of 1950's television: "Gallantry: A Soap Opera." Complete with commercials by the alluring Lady Announcer (junior music education major Jodi Lemmon) for sponsors Lochinvar Soap and Billy Boy Wax, "Gallantry" tells the tale of distinguished surgeon Dr. Gregg (senior music education major Michael Grubb) and his unrequited love for the lovely Nurse Lola (senior music education major Amanda Writtenhouse), who is engaged to humble hospital clerk, Donald Hopewell (junior music education major Matthew Tabor). What will happen when Donald Hopewell turns up as Dr. Gregg's emergency appendectomy patient, with Nurse Lola in attendance as anesthetist? How will Lola respond when she finds out that Dr. Gregg is actually married?
Opera Workshop is headed by Colleen Davis, stage director; and Mark Carlisle, music director and conductor, accompanied by Andrea Marlow.
The program will be free and open to the public. For more information, contact the music department at (812) 237-2772 or visit the department's web site at http://www.indstate.edu/music .
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Contact: Colleen Davis, ISU Music Department, (812) 237-2746 or cdavis18@isugw.indstate.edu
Writer: Paula Meyer, ISU Communications & Marketing (812) 237-3783, pmeyer4@isugw.indstate.edu