Southeast performances to highlight fun in operas

Southeast Missouri State University music professor Christopher Goeke said opera's emphasis on acting and expression essentially makes it an all-sung musical.

"We express the ideas through singing, but we're committed to making sure the audience really gets the idea," Goeke said.

It's not long or overly drawn out. It's not boring, he said.

As the director, he chose two one-act comedies to be performed next week at the River Campus -- Gaetano Donizetti's "Il Campanello," translated to "The Night Bell," and Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial by Jury" -- to prove the stereotypes wrong.

"I think, like any good theater, like going to anything that you really enjoy in live theater, this will be that," Goeke said. "There will be good characters, good ideas, there's drama, the plot evolves, and they're fun."

Despite being by different composers, the pieces connect well thematically. They're about getting married, and they take a comedic look at relationships as a whole.

"The Night Bell" features a just-married couple, but in the midst of their celebration, the bride's ex-boyfriend humorously interrupts time and time again.

In "Trial by Jury," the couple doesn't marry; instead, the groom leaves the bride at the altar. Goeke said that "breach of contract" was common in Victorian England. Cases like this often ended up in court, although under a manipulated legal system.

"Gilbert and Sullivan kind of make fun of the whole legal system and using the legal system to settle marital spats," Goeke said.

The operas connect musically, too. "The Night Bell" first premiered in 1836 and "Trial by Jury" in 1875. Goeke said the almost 40-year span didn't result in much change stylistically.

He said the recitative style of singing is more prevalent in this year's performances compared to, for instance, last year's two Menotti one-acts. Under this technique, students have to learn to sing with a speech pattern.

"You have to really study the language enough to know where the stresses are, so you sing in such a way that the Italian comes out with natural Italian stress," Goeke said.

The pieces differ based on the composers' cultural backgrounds. Donizetti's presentation follows traditional opera pattern, while Gilbert and Sullivan's setup, common throughout all their shows, parodies it.

"The Night Bell" and "Trial by Jury" will be sung in Italian and English, respectively, but supertitles will be projected above the stage for both.

"With the music, you stretch out words, and sometimes when you stretch out words, you don't remember what the beginning was and what the end was, so it really distorts the language enough that having those supertitles up there helps," Goeke said.

Even so, Goeke said it's important the students project and enunciate relative to the size of the Bedell Performance Hall.

The orchestra's placement on stage behind a scrim rather than in the pit poses its own array of challenges. The orchestra lift will be used as an extension of the stage.

"That throws the action out into the audience a little bit more," Goeke said. "I wanted to bring the action forward as much as possible."

But with the singers ahead of the orchestra, they can't see the conductor's cues. As a solution, a camera will be pointed at the conductor and relayed on two monitors in the front row of seats.

Tim Schmidt, conductor as well as a music professor at Southeast said the key difference was in the sound balance between the instrumentalists and singers.

"With me behind them [the cast], even though they will still have the video monitor, I'm not quite as visibly present," Schmidt said. "There will be a little bit more of a natural sense of all of the sound moving forward to the audience, and they have that, but they still don't have the normal cues, visual cues, that they're used to as immediately accessible to them."

Schmidt added being in an orchestral pit and being on stage can each be effective, depending on the show and staging.

"It's figuring out what's going to work best for that particular show, so that the overall effect is one of unified music and dramatic action," Schmidt said.

"The Night Bell" and "Trial by Jury" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22 and 3 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Bedell Performance Hall. General admission tickets are $18.

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