Everyone at Knoxville Opera was working hard in dress rehearsals at the Tennessee Theatre Tuesday night preparing for KO’s double bill of Giacomo Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” being presented by the fictional characters in Mozart’s “The Impresario,” a send-up of the people who produce and direct operas.
Never mind that it’s the characters in Mozart’s 1786 hilarious opera doing their best to put on a production of Puccini’s opera that didn’t exist until 132 years later.
KO executive director and conductor Brian Salesky salved this minor inconvenience by writing his own libretto and setting the whole thing in contemporary time.
He helps make sense of it all by staging the Mozart in the first half of the program, with the opera this nutty bunch comes up with presented in the second half of the show.
But then to help stir the pot, the two divas in the first half who audition for roles in the second half of the show play themselves, hoping to become a character in part two.
Sean Anderson plays the general director of Knoxville Opera, the impresario in the title of Mozart’s finger-in-the-eye. Kirk Dougherty sings the role of Cristoforo Cannelloni, artistic director of KO.
Brittany Robinson and Brandle Sutton, two real life UT opera theatre students, play themselves, auditioning for roles in the two administrators’ production. Needless to say, both win parts.
In the staging of “Gianni Schicchi,” Robinson sings the role of Nella, the wife of Gherardo (Wayd Odle), the nephew of Buoso Donati (Gregory Bonneville) a wealthy but dead Florentine aristocrat.
Just how hard can it be to sing the role of a dead man; a clear-thinking person might ask. That’s the catch. You will have to go to either Friday night’s show or on Sunday afternoon to find out.
Based on an incident in Dante Alighieri’s 1320 “Divine Comedy,” the story is about the greedy family of Donati gathering to find out who will get the most treasured items in the estate and who will be left out.
It turns out that none of them make the cut. All of the assets are willed to a monastery. So, the family hatches a scheme to redirect the money to themselves.
They turn to Gianni Schicchi (Scott Bearden) to help them out. But he has a plan of his own. Sutton sings the role of Schicchi’s daughter, Lauretta.
Along with Bearden, the show is loaded with local talent.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 865-524-0795 and at www.knoxvilleopera.com.