Still Flying

Skylark Opera is the little company that refuses to die. Last season, it lost its shirt on a production of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, and eventually laid off its executive director.

But Skylark is back with a new idea: This year, the company is going to condense its entire season into a summer festival featuring two vastly different works—Victor Herbert’s operetta Naughty Marietta and the Midwest premiere of Ned Rorem’s opera Our Town—both running in repertory.

Of the cutbacks, artistic director Steve Stucki says, “Last season, we expanded too much. Ticket sales were not what we expected. We had to keep the budget in line.” The company had a goal of covering 50 percent of production costs in ticket sales, and it didn’t even come close.

“Our core audience didn’t come (to Lost in the Stars), but half of the audience was new. We see that as a positive. Attracting new audiences while maintaining our core is the key,” he says—and that is why Skylark decided to pair these two diverse works.

But the company is not skimping on talent. Robert Neu, general manager of the Minnesota Orchestra, familiar to many for his semistaged opera productions with the orchestra, is directing Naughty Marietta. William Graham, who is directing Our Town, worked at Minnesota Opera in the 1980s and returns after directing at San Francisco Opera and serving as head of the opera program at Boston University. Skylark regular Norah Long will play the title character of Naughty Marietta, and noted singer and actor Gary Briggle will be the stage manager in Our Town.

Both productions will share very simple sets. “It’s the kind of spare look that one associates with Our Town,” says Graham—and it will save money.

“I like simplicity that is not overly literal,” says Neu. “That’s my personal taste, especially with something so tied to a specific period. It makes the story more timeless.”

That’s an odd description of so silly a story as Naughty Marietta, in which a young countess runs away from Paris and has a series of romantic adventures in the French colony of New Orleans. Though it’s an audience favorite, Neu admits that he didn’t like Naughty Marietta at first. “I’ve come to appreciate it,” he says. “The music is gorgeous. We won’t be playing it for camp, but in a way that is amusing and touching as well.”

Graham recognizes that Our Town is a harder sell with Skylark audiences, but insists that the contemporary opera is quite accessible. “It is a very tonal piece. Anyone who loves the play will be quite taken with the opera.”

“The operas complement each other in my mind,” says Stucki. “The time period of Our Town is the time period when Naughty Marietta was written. They have widely different styles, but are both very American.” Our Town: June 13, 15, 19, 21; Naughty Marietta: June 14, 18, 20, 22. E. M. Pearson Theatre, Concordia University, 312 N. Hamline St., St. Paul, 651-292-4309