Suburbs get a taste of opera

Opera is one of the most expensive art forms out there. You typically need a full symphonic orchestra, stagehands to move elaborate scenery, designers to whip up period costumes and trained singers who can hit all the high notes without amplification.

Yet, Elgin Opera and DuPage Opera Theatre have found ways of making operatic art in the suburbs despite these trying economic times. Both companies' efforts sing out over the next two weekends.

Greatest Italian hits

On Saturday, Jan. 31, Elgin Opera will stage an opera gala concert called "A Taste of Italy" at the Hemmens Cultural Center. The concert features the 40-member Elgin Opera Chorus, the 50-piece New Millennium Orchestra led by conductor Francesco Milioto and a group of talented opera soloists singing music by 19th-century Italian composers like Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti and more.

"This is perfect since you get all the best excerpts from each opera," said Solange Sior, artistic director, co-founder and frequent onstage soprano with Elgin Opera. "You know, sometimes you sit through three hours of opera just to get the famous aria or duet - well, we're giving you just those."

Like the opera hits concerts popularized by The Three Tenors in the 1990s, "A Taste of Italy" should be perfect for newcomers and for die-hard fans who just want to get to the good stuff, Sior says. And since Elgin Opera is translating the sung Italian with projected English titles, Sior says there's no reason for people to be scared away by fears that they won't understand it.

"We have all the most famous Italian numbers they've ever heard," Sior said. "And people hear much more opera than they think in movies and TV and cartoons - they're loaded with opera."

Sior is putting the best face on "A Taste of Italy," pointing out how Elgin Opera is able to incorporate the young artists of the Elgin Opera Training Ensemble into the mix. They will sing Neapolitan songs during the "VIP Champagne Lounge" intermission for members of the Elgin OPERA Guild and the company's main donors.

But you can detect a touch of resignation in Sior's voice. Just last year, Elgin Opera made its Hemmens debut with Donizetti's "The Love Potion" ("L'elisir d'amor e") as its first fully staged opera with a complete symphony orchestra.

"The Love Potion" was Elgin Opera's biggest production ever. But this year the company had to scale back.

"We had to reduce our budget due to the economy," Sior said. "This year we wanted to do 'Tosca,' but just to rent the set, it was $20,000."

Go begging

For adventurous opera fans who would like to see a full-length production instead of a greatest-hits concert, DuPage Opera Theatre is staging the Midwest professional premiere of Benjamin Britten's 1948 adaptation of John Gay's 18th century "The Beggar's Opera." It bows Friday, Feb. 6 at College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center.

"The Beggar's Opera" is not a traditional opera but a smaller-scale "English ballad opera" with dialogue. Gay wrote it to take potshots at the Italian operas by Handel and his peers that were all the rage in London back in 1728. Instead of florid gods and goddesses or mythological royalty, "The Beggar's Opera" was populated by warring beggars, thieves and ladies of the night.

"Gay just wanted to say, 'Can we just write an opera about our own country and just turn away from all that Italian malarky?'" said Kirk Muspratt, artistic and music director of DuPage Opera Theatre. "It was, 'Let's just talk about the real people,' and the whole time, just like 'Gulliver's Travels' by Swift, it's really talking about the rich people. It's a tongue-in-cheek thing but we'll pretend it's just about us poor people."

"The Beggar's Opera" plot of a notorious murderer and dashing thief named Macheath might already sound familiar. Playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill's adapted "The Beggar's Opera" in 1928 to become "The Threepenny Opera" (most famous for spawning the hit song "Mack the Knife").

Staging the production is Harry Silverstein, an Evanston-based director who has worked at top-notch opera companies like San Francisco Opera and is currently director of the opera program at DePaul University's School of Music.

"The concept of the piece is to break down the fourth wall and invite the public into the production," Silverstein said. "I wouldn't be surprised if members of the cast found themselves roaming out among the audience."

To help facilitate this idea, the orchestra pit is raised to reduce the distance between the performers and the audience. The 12-member orchestra and conductor Muspratt appear onstage as beggars themselves.

Muspratt says his cast of opera singers and musicians loves the freedom to behave more like actors.

"The name of the company is DuPage Opera THEATRE, and if it's just people singing and they can't act, I don't want them," Muspratt said.

And though "The Beggar's Opera" is far from the standard fare of grand bread-and-butter operas, Muspratt hopes audiences will take a chance on it.

"I'm trying to provide an enormous menu and spectrum of repertoire for our patrons, using the 800-seat intimate hall to the best of our advantage," Muspratt said. "An intimate piece like this, you couldn't really do at (the Lyric Opera of Chicago)."

Elgin Opera's "A Taste of Italy"

With The New Millennium Orchestra and the Elgin Opera Chorus

Facts: 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31, Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin, (847) 695-5014 or elginopera.org.

Tickets: $20-$40; $15-$35 students

DuPage Opera Theatre's "The Beggar's Opera"

Facts: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 6 and 7, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8, at College of DuPage's McAninch Arts Center, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn. (630) 942-4000 or atthemac.org.

Tickets: $43; $41 seniors; $33 students