by Peter Feher
The Ohio Light Opera is traveling to a world terrifically out of time in The Arcadians, the company’s sixth and final production of the summer.
No, not Arcadia, the mythical realm where shepherds and nymphs always tell the truth and, as a result, never grow old. That vision of utopia lasts for only one act of Lionel Monckton, Howard Talbot, and Arthur Wimperis’ 1909 musical comedy. For the remainder of the show, we’re whisked to what would have been familiar territory for the three songwriters but what, in 2024, might seem like an even more fantastical setting: Edwardian England.
The delightful sense of dislocation owes a little to OLO’s staging and a lot to the inevitable reality that The Arcadians has aged. Like much turn-of-the-20th-century musical theater, the story here — by librettists Mark Ambient and Alexander M. Thompson — comes second to the songs. [Read more…]
In 1858, a French government critic described Offenbach’s first two-act operetta, 
The variety of titles that make up Ohio Light Opera’s annual summer series is its secret sauce. Go to a few shows and you’re bound to find something you’ll like, or maybe in this case a dark horse to love. Emmerich Kálmán’s 
For over four decades Ohio Light Opera has enthralled audiences with performances of the complete Gilbert & Sullivan catalog as well as American and European operettas and titles from the Golden Age of musical theater. Performed in the intimate Freedlander Theatre located on the campus of Wooster College, 
