Music department’s ‘Too Many Sopranos’ to hit stage
UIndy’s Department of Music is preparing to premiere their latest opera, “Too Many Sopranos,” this month in the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center.
Edwin Penhorwood, a faculty member of Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, wrote the piece nearly ten years ago, where it was first performed as part of a workshop in Bloomington, Ind.
“Its different when you’ve actually got an audience there, so I’m looking forward to premiering all of our hard work.”
“It’s pretty new,” said Kathleen Hacker, chair of the music department and artistic director for the show. “It was commissioned by the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, who gave it a world premiere. We got wind of it when it was presented on IU’s main stage a few years ago.”
Penhorwood’s piece is a two-act opera that concerns four soprano divas attempting to get into heaven, but are informed by St. Peter that their presence would throw off the balance of the choir because the choir does not have enough males. They are then told to either stay in Hades, where male singers go, or bring some male singers back from Hades.
The piece is meant for a full orchestra, but according to Hacker, since the cast is made up of undergraduate singers, and they will be performing in a recital hall as opposed to a concert hall, the orchestra will be whittled down to a woodwind quintet.
James Caraher, the conductor and artistic director of the Indianapolis Opera, will do the task of reducing the orchestra to a chamber orchestra. His quintet will consist of three percussionists and two keyboard players, some of which will be UIndy students.
Caitlin Deranek (left) and Jessica Wentworth (right) prepare for their opera “Too Many Soprano’s.”
Other than Caraher, the music department is also receiving assistance from Mark Gilgallon for stage direction and theatre faculty members, Jim Ream for set design and Cate Moran for costume design, respectively.
Auditions for “Too Many Sopranos” were held Aug. 27, and the cast has been rehearsing ever since. Rehearsals consist of attending a class known as “Opera Scenes” for the first semester, before moving on to work with adjunct faculty member Amy Eggleston.
For the music department, “Too Many Sopranos” marks a departure from more established opera pieces, such as “The Mikado,” the Gilbert and Sullivan show performed in the winter of 2008.
“Musically, ‘The Mikado’ is not as complex. The music kind of does what you expect it to,” said Caitlin Deranek, who plays Madame Pompus in “Too Many Sopranos” and had a role in “The Mikado,” “The music for ‘Too Many Sopranos’ is definitely modern music. It’s full of very difficult parts, and everything that sounds easy is not.”
Hacker also talked at length about the challenges of performing a piece that can be considered relatively unknown.
“We’re not sure what we’re going to end up with,” she said. “It’s a brand new show so it has a little bit of a 20th century language, although it’s very lyrical and very accessible. But we won’t know how the orchestra will end up until we actually get there.”
Deranek elaborated on the challenges of rehearsing for an opera, in contrast with rehearsing for musical theatre, since she had a part in the theatre department’s Fall 2008 production of “Into The Woods.”
“You have to have every note under your belt. We have roughly ten spoken lines in the entire two-hour show. It’s an immense amount of music and every note has to be perfect.”
Still, she said she anticipates the premiere with some pride.
“I’m looking forward to everyone seeing what we’ve done,” Deranek said. “Its different when you’ve actually got an audience there, so I’m looking forward to premiering all of our hard work.”
“Too Many Sopranos” premieres Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center and runs through Feb. 13. Admission is free.
