By Natalie Mahlum
The opera is steadily approaching, and this year Concordia is putting on a classic. This year’s production is of cult classic Cinderella, featuring a cast of 20 students.
Svea Hagen, 5th year flex student is playing Cinderella.
The history of the opera at Concordia is an interesting one.
Robin Griffeath, vocal professor and director of the opera said, “For about 10 years before I arrived, they had started off with a scenes program. Doing smaller little parts of operas with no props and no costumes. And they had worked their way up to doing very small, maybe half an hour operas, and they had the last two years collaborated with the orchestra.”
Now performing on the Mainstage at the Frances Frazier Comstock Theatre, the opera is moving onto bigger and brighter things with, larger casts, costume design, built sets, and over an hour of music.
Attracting an audience is a challenge for the school.
“In these first two years I have tried to show people that there’s nothing to be scared of, and that the same part of them that might like a musical is going to like an opera” said Griffeath.
One of the ways that Dr. Griffeath has attempted to make opera more accessible has been selecting works that can be performed in English. This year’s show is translated mostly from French to English, but it still holds some of its original French text.
By choosing an opera that is originally in French and still contains a bit of French, Griffeath said, that the Opera Program is “Dipping its toe in the water towards some of the operas they may take on in the future that might be in a foreign language”.
He chose the Cinderella story in hopes to draw attention from people who may not necessarily see an opera that they don’t know the story of. Ultimately working towards curating a community of opera enjoyers in the Fargo-Moorhead area.
“Everybody knows the Cinderella story. So they are going to love the story, even though it’s a different version than the Rogers and Hammerstein” said Griffeath.
The Concordia Opera production is by French composer Pauline Viardot and is a bit different than the story that most people are familiar with.
“There’s a couple of discrepancies from the original story, and I think it makes it a little more interesting” said Hagen, who plays Cinderella.
“It is a magical and comedic romance” said Griffeath.
The opera will be showing the weekend of Valentine’s Day with shows February 12th – 14th at 8:00 pm as well as a performance on February 15th at 2:00 pm. All these performances will take place at the Frances Frazier Comstock Theatre on the Mainstage. Tickets are available currently on the Concordia College website.
