Like any media job, being a magazine writer comes with perks. They’re mostly food related, but sometimes you get an up-close experience with world-class performers that you wouldn’t get doing anything else (not to brag, but I once talked to Colin Mochrie backstage before an improv show).
So it was a nice surprise when I found out Edify was sending me, a guy who’s never been to the opera, to three of this season’s shows.
“We want you to write about it from the perspective of someone who’s never been to an opera,” said our publisher, Trudy Callaghan. “We want it to be fun, accessible, and light — even funny.”
As a deeply unserious person who loves live theatre but has never actually seen an opera, I happily took up the task of attending a rehearsal for Die Fledermaus (pronounced “dee FLAY-der mouse,” which refers to a bat costume mentioned in the show), my first ever opera.
“It’s actually an operetta,” Trudy said as I left the last meeting.
“Even better!”
I arrive at the Fringe Arts Theatre Barn — familiar territory for this Fringe-loving writer — and meet Jonelle Sills in a dressing room while what sounds like soprano giants bellow down the hall.
Sills plays Rosalinde, wife of Gabriel von Eisenstein. He’s about to head to prison for eight days for insulting an official, but postpones his sentence by one day to attend a masquerade ball (crime and punishment are much more playful concepts in these characters’ world). Rosalinde attends as well, along with other characters who pretend to be people they’re not, and it only gets whackier from there.
To the average non-opera-goer, “whackier” might seem like an odd description for a performance medium broadly considered stilted and serious, where full-bodied singers stand on their marks and gesticulate in place, letting the audience focus on their sounds and giving spotlight operators an easy time.
“That’s called ‘park and bark,’ where they just park in one space and vocalize the scene,” Sills says. “There’s actually a joke about it in this show, because in operettas, singers are required to do really physically demanding things. In a sense, operettas are more challenging for singers because it’s comedy. And the music is quite like champagne — bubbly, sparkly and very flourish-y. So you have to make sure that your physical body is calm and grounded and you’re breathing while you’re trying to be funny.”
To bark it bluntly: This show’s as unserious as I am, and hearing the harsh German language sung in such a silly way — at times, it almost borders on yodelling — was downright goofy.
Don’t get me wrong — opera singers are basically people with a secret singing superpower walking among us, and these are some of the best in the country — it was just a delightful surprise to hear it from people doing that dance with the crooked elbows and little kicks (the Happy Prospector, maybe? I don’t know dance, either).
The show, which was written by Johan Strauss II and premiered in 1874, is an all-time classic, and its accessible frivolity is part of why director Joel Ivany wanted to stage it here.
“Many people assume that all opera is big, and it’s serious, but that’s not me,” says Ivany, who with his long hair, sneakers and casual-but-stylish jean shirt ensemble embodies the vibe he hopes will dispel opera’s deeply entrenched, super-serious stereotype — even in an otherwise theatre-loving city like Edmonton.
“You don’t have to dress up super fancy to go to the Edmonton Opera,” he says. “But even on late-night TV, Jimmy Fallon will still put someone in the big horns with the big voice and keep the stereotype going. So part of our goal is breaking down this barrier, because it’s actually quite accessible, and we can actually make it fun, entertaining, relevant and different.”
With dialogue in English, song translations supertitled above the stage, Edmonton references and the aforementioned zaniness, Edmonton Opera’s production of Die Fledermaus might be the most accessible operetta running in the country right now (people 21 years old and younger get in free all season long). That doesn’t mean you’ll fall in love with opera (although…who knows?), but to Ivany, that’s OK too.
“It’s a show within a show,” Ivany says. “So for the characters, act one is the rehearsal for their show, act two is the show, and act three is after the show — and that whole thing is the operetta you’re watching. Does it matter if someone doesn’t get all that? No, they’re still going to have a good time. And maybe they won’t come back, but I’m curious to see how people interact with it, because it’s an old show, but it’ll be a new experience.”
Try something new, see Edmonton Opera’s Die Fledermaus November 7, 9 and 12 at the Jubilee Auditorium.
