VIDEO
Theatre

'The Beggar's Opera'

Students in J-Term Opera Production class give 1728 opera a modern spin and message

February 1, 2011

From the outside, it looked like a frantic race to the finish line — only with costumes, choreography and music. But on the inside, the major players were calm. Pull together a full-length opera in 30 days? Not a problem.

After all, the challenge was not a new one. This has become a January tradition at Carthage. As the snow falls and temperatures plummet, a select group of students battle the winds on Campus Drive to get to the chapel for class and rehearsal. Throughout J-Term, their afternoons are filled with the music and script of that year's opera. In 2010, they performed Mozart's Magic Flute to a packed chapel in early February. In 2008, it was Pirates of Penzance. In 2007, Die Fledermaus.

This year, the J-Term Opera Production class performed The Beggar's Opera Feb. 4-5 in A. F. Siebert Chapel. The 31 students in the class spent January memorizing lines and music, designing and building the set, and scavenging their rooms and the campus for props and costumes.

"There's a lot of weight for each person to carry," said stage director Matt Boresi, an adjunct professor of music theatre at Carthage and co-instructor for the course. "We have a lot to do. But the mood stays pleasant, even though our sleeves are rolled up."

By the end of the term, they were ready to show the world what focusing on a single opera for a single month can create. "It's nice to have everyone completely immersed in the process," Mr. Boresi said. "They are snowed into campus and not taking any other courses for the most part. So everybody has their heads fully in the production."

About The Beggar's Opera: "Earthy, gritty"

The Beggar's Opera tells the story of Macheath, a "highway man" who makes his living robbing tourists. "He's a very handsome, devil-may-care character," said Prof. Gregory Berg, music director and co-instructor for the course. "He loves women and women love him."

"We have a lot to do. But the mood stays pleasant, even though our sleeves are rolled up."

— Matt Boresi

Two of those women are Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit. Both believe they are either married or engaged to Macheath, and Polly's parents — crooked and greedy themselves — scheme to get Macheath arrested, condemned and executed so their daughter will inherit his money. "All of the people in the opera have these dirty ways of making money," Prof. Berg said.

When the show debuted in London in 1728, "it turned London on its ear," he continued. "At that time, all of the operas you heard were in Italian, in a very fancy style called opera seria. The characters were always royals or mythical gods and goddesses. There was nothing down-to-earth about opera at all."

The Beggar's Opera showed the world that opera could be something else entirely.

"This opera was incredible because it's a very earthy, gritty story," Prof. Berg explained. A ballad opera, all of the scenes are spoken, and in English. "All of the songs were based on English folk songs, drinking songs and sailor songs that regular people knew. It was the first opera written for the common people to enjoy."

Old show has modern message

The opera's history and "cobbled together" music made it perfect for J-Term, Prof. Berg said. "From its very first performance, it was a thrown-together crazy quilt of different things. Because of that, people feel free to kind of do with it what they want. So we threw in new songs and dropped certain ones we think are boring."

The class gave the 1728 opera a modern look, feel and sound, and added new roles and songs in order to highlight all 31 voices in the cast. They even added modern music, such as Kanye West's "Gold Digger," Jazmine Sullivan's "Bust Your Windows," and Travie McCoy's "Billionaire."

"So far, the students are getting a huge kick out of it," said Mr. Boresi. "It has a really devilish sense of humor that the students have really tuned into. With a little bit of artist massaging, we've made it relevant again for today's audiences, and the piece is flexible enough for us to give opportunities to a large number of students, because there's a lot of talent here."

It also has a message relevant to today's economic times. "It's a piece of comic social satire about greed in society," Mr. Boresi said. "Our piece tries to make that message apropos to modern times and comment on the greed that exists and the financial crisis that the world is in right now."

"For a lot of our students, they would have never guessed that an opera from 1728 would have something to say about all of that," Prof. Berg said. "We hope they come away with an idea that theatre and music can, when you put your mind to it, connect you to the real world, and real life."

An exciting experience

While most of the students in the Opera Production course every year are music, vocal performance or music theatre majors, the course also attracts non-majors. "It's really exciting to see students who, up to this point, haven't been a part of the Music Department walking off the campus into an opera production," Mr. Boresi said.

It's also a good opportunity for students who are used to being on stage to work behind it. Everyone plays every role — crew, costume designers, set designers and more. "They help create the set, which is considered above and beyond the call of duty for a lot of singers," Mr. Boresi said. "But these guys are really game and just interested in creating a piece of lyric theatre."

And by the end of J-Term every year, they're ready for showtime.

"A lot of people come to these operas," Mr. Boresi said. "It's a wonderful turnout for an opera that's on a Friday and Saturday night the first weekend of February when it's freezing. The operas get a remarkable turnout."