Ohio Light Opera's 38th season continues this summer with two more openings.
Check out Part 1 of Jacqueline Gerber's conversation with director Steven Daigle.
Have a Heart
Opening July 7
(1917)
Music by Jerome Kern
Book and Lyrics by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse
Following on the heels of The Cabaret Girl and Oh, Lady! Lady!!, the Ohio Light Opera continues its survey of Jerome Kern's early groundbreaking musicals with his 1917 Have a Heart. In addition to its predictably enchanting Kern score - one of his most tuneful - the show features book and lyrics by Guy Bolton and master British humorist P. G. Wodehouse (whose wit won over audiences last season in Gershwin's Oh, Kay!), marking his Broadway full-score debut. The story centers on department store owner Ruddy Schoonmaker and his estranged wife Peggy, who try to salvage their marriage by spending a night at a Rhode Island beach resort. Their reconciliation efforts seem doomed by the appearance there of Ruddy's recent paramour, movie actress Dolly Brabazon, and of Peggy's recent wooer, the counterfeiter Capt. Charles Owen. Only at the intervention of elevator boy Henry - whose lines throughout the show, according to Wodehouse and Bolton, had the customers rolling in the aisles - do the romantic entanglements get resolved. Hit songs include the irresistibly catchy "You Said Something," Henry's comical "Napoleon," and the sublime "And I Am All Alone."
La Vie Parisienne
Opening July 13
(1866)
Music by Jacques Offenbach
Original French Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy
English Translation by Richard Traubner
Few artists stand as tall above their field as does Jacques Offenbach above French operetta. Following his ground-breaking Orpheus in the Underworld in 1858, he teamed in the mid-1860s with librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy to produce six shows - La belle Helene, Bluebeard, The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, La vie Parisienne, La Perichole, and The Brigands - that remain among the greatest of all French operettas. La vie Parisienne, featuring Offenbach at his most effervescent, is the zany tale of a pair of Parisian wannabe bon vivants Gardefeu and Bobinet, who, having failed in their attempts to woo the cocotte Metella, turn their attentions to the visiting Swedish Baroness de Gondremarck. Her husband, the Baron, seeking a fun Parisian holiday, arrives with a letter of introduction to Metella. All wind up at a jolly party at Gardefeu's home, which the naive visiting royalty have been led to believe is a hotel. Offenbach's first attempt at a full-length domestic operetta comedy, the score teems with waltzes, patter songs, ensembles, and a most recognizable can-can.