Claire Wineman
Staff Writer
While no one has ever definitively decided whether the chicken or the egg came first, Laura Neill, the executive director of the Ohio Light Opera (OLO), knows one thing for sure: light opera, or operetta, was the predecessor to the modern American musical.
“Light opera was a genre created in response to grand opera,” Neill said. “The idea behind an operetta is that it combines dialogue and music, rather than just music. Operetta is what came before the American musical comedy, which is everything we know now. The great part about operetta is that it’s usually funny, it doesn’t have the big dramatic endings like grand opera from the 18th and 19th centuries and it’s a place of fun. But we would not have “Oklahoma!” or “Sound of Music” — none of those — if we hadn’t had operetta.”
The OLO celebrated its 40th festival season this summer at The College of Wooster, where it has called Freedlander Theatre home since 1979. In that time, the OLO has presented over 140 different shows, both from the light opera genre and selections from early American musical comedies. The company produces seven to nine productions every summer over the course of a seven-week period, during which 20,000 patrons come to visit and 150 staff members work hard to keep the OLO’s summer season running smoothly — including a few College of Wooster students.
“It gave me a greater appreciation for musical theatre — seeing all the people who work on it, and how much effort they put into it really helped me understand,” said Brendan Lemkin ’19, who worked as a front-of-house manager for the OLO this summer. “There are so many facets of these productions that I hadn’t really thought about before.”
This year, the OLO presented seven shows: musical comedies from “The Pajama Game,” “Babes in Arms” and “Fifty Million Frenchmen,” more traditional light operas such as “Iolanthe,” “La Périchole,” as well as “Cloclo” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” which defies definition in either of those categories.
“‘Candide,’ more than anything, made me interested in musical theatre,” said Lemkin. “It conveys some emotion, and because light operas are supposed to be funny, trying to include something serious is difficult. ‘Candide,’ because it’s a satire, has a way of being funny and not serious, but also the music is so good that it can’t not be emotional.”
The OLO, though one of the most reputable and prominent light opera companies in North America, isn’t widely known among Wooster’s student body, simply because its season occurs over the summer when many students are off-campus. Neill is looking to change that. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without being based at the College,” they added, “I would love to have more students interested in working with the OLO — this campus is beautiful in the summer, and you get to meet people from all over the world when you participate.”
When asked to reflect on their experiences, Lemkin said, “It was so cool to be involved in a company like that, and I met so many incredible people. I am amazed there aren’t more students who work for OLO. I think people should know about it. No one does light opera like we do it.”