ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Ohio Light Opera: Offenbach’s La Périchole (July 18)

by

by Kelly Ferjutz

You’ve heard of “screwball comedies,” right? Well, here’s your chance to see a screwball comedy disguised as an operetta. The sumptuous music is by the German-French master, Jacques Offenbach, and features a sparkling new English translation by OLO’s Jacob Allen. The original French libretto from 1868 is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Offenbach wrote nearly 100 operettas from the 1850s–1870s, on more than a dozen of which Meilhac collaborated, while Halévy assisted on more than twenty. Today, only half a dozen or so are still in the active repertoire. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Bernstein’s Candide (July 11)

by

by Timothy Robson

Ohio Light Opera’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is in the midst of a repertory run through early August in the Friedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster. It is a splendid affair in every regard, and I can recommend it without reservation. The principal roles are double-cast — I saw it with the July 11 ensemble. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: The Pajama Game (June 16)

by

by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

OLO Pajama Game 1Who would ever have thought that labor troubles in a pajama factory in Iowa could become the fodder for an award-winning musical comedy that is still lively and topical at almost 65 years of age? The twentieth century might almost have been known as the century of the labor union, which peaked in the 1950s. At that time, they were still a major force, as cheekily demonstrated in the buoyant presentation of The Pajama Game that opened the Ohio Light Opera season in Wooster on Saturday evening, June 16. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: George Gershwin’s Primrose

by

by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

OLO-PrimroseGeorge Gershwin wrote the music for the English premiere of Primrose, catering to the British type of lyric theater —very different from the American. It’s a charming work, but has been hampered by being thought of as ‘too British’ for American sensitivities. Humbug!

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years (July 19)

by

by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

OLO-Dancing-Years-1The Dancing Years, an OLO premiere this season, first appeared in the UK in 1939, and ran for 1150 performances, well into the beginning of WWII. Ivor Novello wrote the book and the music, while the lyrics are by Christopher Hassall. Novello was heavily influenced by the approaching war and the situation he had encountered in Vienna shortly before beginning this work. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: Kiss Me, Kate and Annie Get Your Gun (June 25)

by

by Kelly Ferjutz
special to ClevelandClassical.com

OLO-Kate-1Many aspects of Ohio Light Opera’s productions are moving forward along with their repertoire, which is expanding beyond the traditional Gilbert & Sullivan oeuvre and the European Operetta into an exploration of early American musicals and Broadway masterpieces of the Golden Age. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera — Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings (July 19)

by

by Robert Rollin

OLOLast Friday evening the Ohio Light Opera performed Cole Porter’s 1955 Broadway musical, Silk Stockings in Freedlander Theater at The College of Wooster. The show jumps between Paris and Moscow to depict a love story between Stephen Canfield, a sophisticated and somewhat world-weary American theatrical agent, and Comrade Ninotchka Yaschenko, a Soviet apparatchik.

Yaschenko is sent to Paris to bring back famous Russian composer Peter Ilyich Boroff, who has overstayed his official visit. Canfield manages Borof and also the dim-witted American diva Janice Dayton, who is in Paris to make an independent film about Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Canfield’s plan is to use Boroff’s communist party-approved Ode to a Tractor in the movie for $50,000, and to take a large cut for his commission.

Porter and his librettists George S. Kaufman, Leueen McGrath, and Abe Burrows add three bumbling but good-natured Soviet agents, several other minor characters, and a troop of chorus girls to the Paris mix to create a frivolously amusing and complex entertainment. [Read more…]

Review: Ohio Light Opera: H.M.S. Pinafore, opening performance (June 27)

by

by J.D. Goddard

OLO“Beginning in the 1870s, two Englishmen — playwright William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan — revolutionized the musical theatre, creating a series of witty, melodic operettas that set a new standard for stage professionalism. Sullivan’s music sparkled with fresh melody, and Gilbert’s librettos blended silliness and satire in settings that ranged from pure fantasy to the utterly realistic. Innovative producer Richard D’Oyly Carte publicized these shows as “light operas”, but by any name, they were musicals — some of the finest the world would ever see in any language.” —John Kenrick

On Thursday afternoon, June 27, I traveled to Wooster to be delightfully entertained once again by a musical production of the Ohio Light Opera, the resident professional company of The College of Wooster. This was the opening performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1878 operetta H.M.S. Pinafore (The Lass that Loved a Sailor). This season marks the fifteenth time the OLO has counted Pinafore among its 120 productions over the past 35 years.

[Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us