Opera Entertains Mississippi College Audiences
Die Fledermaus made its debut at a theater in Vienna, Austria in 1874 and reached New York audiences the same year. The lively opera arrives on a Mississippi College stage in early 2015.
The Department of Music production is set for February 19-22 at the Jean Pittman Williams Recital Hall. The show features a talented cast of MC students and faculty artists. The opera will be sung in German, but the dialogue will be in English.
“Students, faculty and community members should attend this opera to have many laughs and enjoy beautiful music and dance-like rhythms,” says MC voice professor Kristen Johnson Gunn, the opera’s musical director.
“Die Fledermaus (or The Bat) is a story of disguise, trickery, and hilarity and ends with everyone being happy,” Gunn said. “This is not the opera where you go and experience death and tragedy. It lifts the spirits and will put a smile on your face.”
Faculty artists with key roles in the opera on the Clinton campus are stage director Chris Roebuck and music professor Ed Dacus. Featured as a guest artist is Daniel Gerdes, a Florida-based lyric tenor with experience performing at America’s top opera houses – from San Francisco to Santa Fe.
Music lovers will remember Gunn as the stage director of musicals in recent years at Mississippi College, including “The Sound of Music” along with “Little Women” and “Ragtime.”
She’s delighted to return as the “Die Fledermaus” musical director. “I love the combination of the dance music which is light-hearted and comic with the beautiful, romantic sweeping lines that Strauss provides in some of the ensemble pieces.”
Cast members include Thulani Mnisi, an international exchange student from South Africa, and several MC students from metro Jackson. They are: Hollyn White of Madison, Cherita Robinson of Clinton, Sarah Nicole Blackwell of Ridgeland, and, Kismyu Griffith, Andrew Fehrenbacher, Yasmin Bradshaw, and Hosea Griffith, all of Jackson.
Performances are set for 7 p.m. February 19-21 and 2 p.m. on February 22. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for Mississippi College faculty, staff and senior citizens, and $10 for students from any school with an ID card.
For more information, contact Dottie Serio of the MC Music Department at 601-925-3440 or Serio@mc.edu
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