The production, sung in English and shortened to a length of about an hour, will take place Sunday, Nov. 13 at 5:30 p.m. in the Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts. Admission is free and open to the public; there are no tickets required. Dr. Ann Marie Daehn, director of the MSU opera program, joined us on “Arts News” to talk about this performance.
“It is the most amazing collaboration,” Daehn said. “Dr. Chris Kelts, my colleague, is just so in love with this piece, and the singers are really enjoying learning from him. And just having that whole orchestra in the pit at [Hammons Hall] is just a really special learning experience, but it's also really making for such beautiful music and theater.”
Considering that Engelbert Humperdinck was a disciple of [19th-century German composer Richard] Wagner, the orchestra for this supposed “children’s opera” is huge, Daehn said.
“It's surprisingly large," she explained. "I just poked my head down there [in the orchestra pit]. I'm not sure the exact count, but I was like, ‘Wow. They just keep going and going,’ and they're far underneath the stage also. So it's a pretty good-sized group. It’s just so lush and beautiful. And it’s just great for our students to be experiencing something so big and robust, but also for perfect for their voices at the age they are.”
Daehn has cut the opera down from somewhere over two hours in length to about 65 minutes.
“It’s kind of a delightful chunk of all of the best of the story," she said. "And you get the best of the music.”
She assured me no characters were lost in this abridgement.
“Every character is there," she said, "and every character is still kind of significant in the same proportion. But we just miss some of the repetitions. And you get all of the orchestral pieces, but maybe not their entire length. It’s like a buffet, where you get just enough to keep your belly full and appease your taste buds, but you don't miss out on anything.”
The performance will run straight through with no intermission. With free admission and no tickets, Dr. Daehn said audience members can “just come and sit wherever you want to sit. [Hammons Hall] is a wide open space. And I've been moving myself around during rehearsal, and there's just not a bad seat in the house. The balance is great. The singers are just — they're so strong. I feel really blessed to have the students we have.
Is the Witch played by a male or female singer? (Character tenors often play the role, though it’s written for a female voice.)
“Yes, we could do either one,” Daehn said, but they went with a female singer.
“Zoe Meyer is her name. She's a sophomore, if you can believe it. And she came up and did her audition. And she just has such a big personality and such a strong instrument. And Dr. Kelts looked at me and I looked at him and he's like, ‘Well, I think you got your witch right there!’ And she's just doing a fantastic job.”
The production features an all-student cast, something Daehn feels very strongly about. “That's one of the things I think is most important at a university. You know, why do a show if you can't cast it from your own students? The idea is that they're there for experience.”
Noting that the MSU opera program is “big on heart and light on money,” Daehn said the stage production is “a very suggestive type of set, but it looks really cute and it does everything we need to do. It gets the job done. You really get a little bit of that Candyland feel when we are there for the Witch’s scene. And the actors make you feel like you're right there.”
For more information, contact Dr. Ann Marie Daehn by email at adaehn@missouristate.edu, or visit the Missouri State University Opera Theatre Facebook page.
