Art students take on unconventional opera
By Amy Crocker
May 15, 2008 9:40 p.m.
Downtown, in the vault of a converted bank building, UCLA music and theater students will be performing the uncensored version of Brecht and Weill’s 1928 “Die Dreigroschenoper,” translated as “3pennyopera.”
In a 1950s revival, the words to the most popular song from the show, “Mack the Knife,” were changed for the cast recording, toning down the violence. The song introduces the character of Mack the Knife by listing the crimes he’s committed, including setting a house on fire and killing seven children.
“The first time we really listened to the words it was like, “˜oh my god, this is a really terrible song,'” Elyse Marchant, a third-year music education student said.
“3pennyopera” had been watered down in previous translations from the German original about a criminal, Mack the Knife, on the run from the law.
“This show was originally meant to be extremely coarse and in your face. We’re trying to the best of our ability to carry out the spirit of the original production,” said Marchant, who plays Mack the Knife’s wife.
The show is produced by Opera UCLA and directed by Peter Kazaras, the director of Opera Studio. The production features both music and theater students.
Performing downtown at the Los Angeles Theater Center lends the show a rawer, more authentic feel than would a performance in Macgowan or Schoenberg Hall.
“There is something edgier and grittier to doing this show downtown,” said Brendon Fox, a first-year theater directing student and one of two assistant directors for the show. “It’s very appropriate to do this in the heart of the city rather than on campus.”
As its name suggests, “3pennyopera” will not be a traditional grandiose opera.
“It’s called an opera, but I don’t think many people would (call) many of the music as opera if they heard it for the first time out of context. There’s a military march, there’s a tango ballad. … There’s a waltz. The singing style in the performance practice is really anything goes,” said Leslie Cook, a third-year vocal performance student who plays Jenny, a prostitute.
“3pennyopera” is also not comprised entirely of music, as operas generally are. The show leans more toward musical theater in that it has scenes which are entirely conversational. However, that classification does not fit entirely either, as the songs do not come organically out of a scene, nor are they key to developing a character, as is traditional in musical theater. The songs in “3pennyopera” are separate from the action.
“Right in the middle of a scene or end of the scene the characters will turn out to the audience and suddenly sing a song,” Fox said. “They are expressing ideas about the world or about society to the audience that they couldn’t do in that scene.”
Adjusting to the new style of “3pennyopera” has been a particular challenge for the music students, who are used to acting through song.
“The music provides you your acting task, you follow what the music tells you to feel but in this case there’s so many opportunities where you can take the dialogue in a different direction or the character in a different direction,” Marchant said.
“It provides a pathway for us to certain extent, if you’re singing a song to a very sad accompaniment about a child dying, there’s not a whole lot that you can or should change about that.”
The production marks a rare collaboration of the theater and music departments, as students from both schools perform, each bringing their own specialities.
“It’s been nice for me, observing (theater actors). I constantly see (them) changing line readings from one night to the next to enhance emotion. I feel afraid to do that. I find something good and I really latch onto it,” Marchant said.
While acting is not considered secondary, the music students spend the majority of their rehearsal time on the difficult songs.
“(Singing is) deceptively simple. It can take a lot of training and a lot of technique to make it musical and expressive,” Cook said. “You can’t really separate the singing from the emotion because the singing is fueled by the emotion.”
