PROFESSOR TO DISCUSS BOUNDARIES OF OPERA, MUSICAL THEATER ON PROGRAM

Jerry McKee was listening to National Public Radio's "Performance Today" show on KRCU one morning when a question occurred to him: What is the real difference between modern opera and musical theater?

McKee teaches a course in critical and creative thinking at Southeast Missouri State University.

He thinks about things like that.

So he called the 800 number the show maintains for listeners' questions and comments. He posed his question and soon found himself talking to a producer who wanted him to appear on the program.

"I said, 'In a heartbeat. Do I get a T-shirt?'"

On Tuesday morning's program, McKee and "Performance Today" resident expert Miles Hoffman will spend 10 to 15 minutes trying to distinguish the boundaries between opera and musical theater. The program airs from 9 to noon daily, with the first hour repeated at 11 a.m.

McKee, Hoffman and host Martin Goldsmith mix it up with varying views on operatic voices, the presence or lack of dialogue and the intent of the composer.

One contends that opera contains no dialogue while musicals combine dialogue and singing. But hardly any dialogue exists in musicals such as "Les Miserables" and "Phantom of the Opera," McKee points out.

Adding to the lack of immutability on the issue, the hosts play a dialogue excerpt from "Der Rosenkavalier," an opera by Richard Strauss.

"Those things break the rules," McKee says.

So does Sarah Brightman's operatic voice, which graced the original "Phantom of the Opera."

Then there are other genre-benders like "Porgy and Bess," which Gershwin termed a "folk opera." And "West Side Story," which has been described as a ballet with lyrics, McKee points out.

His position is that both modern opera and musicals can be reduced to the same core: sex and violence.

"Somebody falls in love and somebody gets killed," he says.

Listeners looking for a definitive answer to McKee's original question will be disappointed.

"The answer is: It's unanswerable," he said. "When you set up a set of criteria, then one or the other genre violates it."

"The essence of the response was, they didn't know."

He said he doesn't quarrel with that conclusion.

"I just made sure I very carefully pronounced four letters: KRCU," he said.