Opera, Broadway come to Cape with 'A Little Stage Music' show

From Verdi's classic opera "La Traviata" to new Broadway sensation "Avenue Q," students from the opera and theater workshop at Southeast Missouri State University will bring to life scenes from a diverse selection of operas, oper-ettas and Broadway shows with "A Little Stage Music" at 8 p.m. today (Nov. 11) in Academic Auditorium.

"It's a real mixture," said vocal professor Leslie Jones, who co-directs the workshop with Dr. Christopher Goeke.

The university's department of music holds the workshop, which students are admitted into by audition, every fall and spring semester. Jones describes it as a hands-on class that allows the students to focus on their singing and acting skills.

"It's a way that we can get kids on stage in leading roles but not for a whole production," Goeke said. "We can do the highlights of a production and the students get to go in and work on some meaty scenes."

Each semester the workshop presents a different musical performance. The fall performances are smaller in scale while the spring performances are more ambitious in scope. This spring, the workshop will collaborate with the university's department of theatre and dance for a performance of "Guys and Dolls."

For this year's fall production, Jones and Goeke created something scaled down that would accommodate the 24 students taking part, an unusually large number.

The result is "A Little Stage Music," which features 16 different scenes from classical operas and operettas such as "The Marriage of Figaro," "Die Fledermaus" and the "Pirates of Penzance"; modern operas such as "The Counsul" by Gian Carlo Menotti and "A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim; and excerpts from musicals "The Sound of Music" and "Fiddler on the Roof."

Tonight's show will also feature the provocative song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" from "Avenue Q."

It was Goeke's idea to include an excerpt from the Tony-award winning Broadway musical that features puppets singing sometimes racy, often funny, songs.

"The students are just having a blast with it," Goeke said.

Combining such a variety of musical styles is something new for a workshop production.

"Usually we take an angle," Goeke said. "This time we just wanted to leave it open and see what happened."

"It really did work and I'm quite happy with it," he said.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182