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Last lap at Ohio Light Opera: a few questions for Steven A. Daigle

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by Daniel Hathaway

2026 will mark the end of an era for Ohio Light Opera at the College of Wooster. Artistic director Steven A. Daigle will retire at the end of this summer’s season, which makes this a good opportunity for an exit interview. What has his job entailed for the past quarter century, and how does he see OLO moving into the future?

I reached Steve by telephone on Memorial Day in a moment of calm before the cast, orchestra and crew descended upon the Wayne County campus to set things in motion for this season’s six shows. I began by asking how he and his colleagues go about choosing the titles for a season.

Steven Daigle: Well, there is a formula that we’ve been using since I’ve been artistic director. ’Doc,’ James Stewart, used one before, but since then we’ve expanded the repertory to include musical theater. With our mission now, we pick three musicals, and we try to have one of them be an early musical — this summer, it’s The Boys from Syracuse.

We try to choose stylistically different titles for the other two, and I think we’ve achieved that in My Fair Lady and Damn Yankees. They’re golden age musicals from the 1950s and 1960s, but in a way they couldn’t be more different from each other. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera embraces the nuances of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (June 14)

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by Stephanie Manning

If you’ve never seen Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, don’t let the title fool you. Although the carousel in question is literal, it’s also a metaphor — for cycles of unhealthy relationships, social ostracization, and abuse.

Eighty years on from its Broadway debut, Carousel finds itself in a tricky position in the musical theater canon. Featuring some of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beautiful songs, the work is so beloved that TIME Magazine named it the best musical of the 20th century. But it’s also faced criticism for its portrayal of domestic violence.

Deftly directed by Steven Daigle and unafraid to face some thorny topics head on, Ohio Light Opera’s Carousel made for a compelling start to the company’s 46th season at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre on June 14. [Read more…]

Backstage at Ohio Light Opera: it’s a team effort

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by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway

Over the years, we have written many previews and reviews of Ohio Light Opera productions. But we’ve never taken the opportunity to sit and chat with a selection of company members who represent the many areas of expertise needed to mount six productions in repertory.

We asked OLO artistic director Steven Daigle to suggest a group of colleagues who would be willing to participate in an informal roundtable discussion about how all the moving parts come together for a summer of lyrical theater.

After seeing the second performance of Guys and Dolls on June 12, we returned to Freedlander Theatre later that evening to meet up with music director Michael Borowitz, choreographer, director & cast member Spencer Reese, returning cast member Maggie Langhorne, first-summer cast member Kate Bilenko, and assistant production manager & scenic designer Daniel Hobbs.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera: 
Camelot (June 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In short, there’s simply not a more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot

On June 10, Ohio Light Opera opened its 44th season with the first of thirteen performances of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, brilliantly time traveling its audiences in Freedlander Theater at the College of Wooster back to a legendary and evanescent Medieval era when knights in shining armor gathered with King Arthur at a round table (where all are equal) and pledged themselves to a code of purity and chivalry.

[Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera Tools Up For Its 44th season at the College of Wooster

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by Daniel Hathaway

In mid-May, the annual influx of a special summer population brought more than 120 singing actors and instrumentalists to Wooster for the 44th season of Ohio Light Opera. Between the opening downbeat of Lerner &  Loewe’s Camelot (1960) on June 10 and its final curtain call on July 30, OLO will have presented 50 performances of six shows from the lyric theater repertoire in Freedlander Theater at The College of Wooster.

The launching of Camelot will be followed by opening performances of Frank Loesser’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961) on June 15, Vincent Youmans’ No, No, Nanette (1925) on June 22, Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) on June 29, Emmerich Kálmán’s Arizona Lady (1954) on July 6, and Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) on July 13 — all on Thursdays at 2pm.

Once each title has been rolled out, all six shows will be running “in repertory” during the last three weeks in July. That means you could spend a week at the Festival and see all of them in rotation — a type of binge watching to which some OLO devotees are addicted, and for which Wooster lodging and restaurant packages are available.

I caught up with artistic director Steven Daigle by phone to ask him what personally excites him about the coming season, which will be his 33rd with the company. [Read more…]

Ohio Light Opera Premiere: Franz Lehár’s Cloclo (July 25)

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by Kelly Ferjutz
Special to ClevelandClassical.com

Ohio Light Opera is no stranger to the works of Franz Lehár: prior to this year, seven of his operettas had been performed by the company, the most frequent being his luscious The Merry Widow. Number eight, having opened at Freedlander Theatre on July 25, is Cloclo, which is not in the usual Viennese operetta mode. First off, it takes place in Paris, as well as the French countryside near Perpignan. And written a few years after the end of WWI, its musical sensibility sensibility is a good bit different: it includes jazz, a tango, blues, and even a take-off on the final scene from Fledermaus — not originally written by Lehár. You know the one, when the inmates and jailor are happily mixed with champagne. [Read more…]

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