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By Roberta Kent for the Mail Tribune March 04. 2015 10:45AM Brava! Opera presents classic Mozart and Poulenc Who says opera doesn’t have a sense of humor? Baritone Jose Rubio, left, and soprano Lindsay Ohse appear in Brava! Opera's productions of "The Impresario" and "The Breasts of Tiresias." Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Who says opera doesn’t have a sense of humor? Two short comic operas will show off classic opera’s sense of the ridiculous when Brava! Opera Theater and the James M. Collier Young Artist Program present Mozart’s “The Impresario” and Francois Poulenc’s “The Breasts of Tiresias” for three performances at Camelot Theatre in Talent. The one-act operas, one about dueling divas and the other about the eternal battle of the sexes, will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 6-7, and 3 p.m. Sunday, March 8, at the community theater, 101 Talent Ave. Tickets cost $30, $15 for students, and can be purchased at Camelot’s box office, corner of Talent Avenue and Main Street, online at camelottheatre.org or by calling 541-535-5250. Brava! Opera Theater Artistic Director Willene Gunn directs the works. “These two operas are little masterpieces,” Gunn says. “They are not performed often because they are so small. They get lost in a big opera house. Camelot Theatre is the perfect size for them.” “The Impresario,” written in 1786, portrays a hapless opera producer signing two temperamental sopranos for his company. The women proceed to argue — via competing arias — about who will get top billing and the larger salary. Gunn has set this three-character production in present-day New York, with a down-at-the heels impresario dealing with an older, conservative diva and a hip younger one. Poulenc based his surrealistic “The Breasts of Tiresias” on a 1903 Guillaume Apollinaire play. Apollinaire inverted the original Tiresias myth of a man becoming a woman by having a woman, Therese, become a man and reject motherhood. Her husband then takes on her reproductive role and “overproduces” progeny — 40,049 of them born in one day — prompting gender role reversals yet again. Poulenc’s opera premiered in 1947 in post-World War II Paris. “The Poulenc work is very off-the-wall, very dreamlike,” Gunn says. “We’ve approached it from a humorous aspect, but it also has important things to say about the force of life.” “The Impresario” and “The Breasts of Tiresias” will be fully staged and presented in English. Both operas will use two-piano adaptations of their scores. British composer Benjamin Britten in wrote the adaptation of “The Breasts of Tiresias in 1956 in collaboration with Poulenc. The Brava! production features four internationally recognized singers. Sopranos Lindsay Ohse and Caitlin Cisler and baritone José Rubio star in “The Impresario” and join baritone Ryan Thorne for “The Breasts of Tiresias.” Eight local singers appear in supporting roles and in the ensemble.  Brava! Opera Theater conductor, pianist and vocal coach Laurie Anne Hunter conducts local pianists Jodi French and Jessica Hall for the production. Camelot's resident scenic designer Don Zastoupil will create the set, and video projections will be by Camelot visual designer Brian O’Connor. “Visually, this production will be quite striking,” Gunn says. “We are using images from the surrealistic art of the period for the Poulenc and the set for the New York impresario will be appropriately sleazy.” Gunn was director of the Conservatory Opera Program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for 30 years. Hunter was previously an assistant conductor and vocal coach at the New York City Opera. Roberta Kent is a freelance writer living in Ashland. Reach her at [email protected].       http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20150304/ENTERTAINMENT/150309836 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->