After impressing audiences last year with its world-premiere opera, The Philadelphia Opera Collective is back to push the boundaries of the genre with its second original production, “By You That Made Me, Frankenstein.”
The Philadelphia Opera Collective producer, Michael A. Lienhard, said the company wants to elevate opera in the minds of the masses to the same level of popularity and appeal of Broadway musicals.
“A lot of problems opera faces is that it is surrounded by a lot more of an air of pretension, or at least there is a perceived air of pretension,” Lienhard said. “The average person feels like they can go see a Broadway play, it would be accessible to them. Unfortunately, when people think about opera, they assume it’s about fat people or really, really rich people and the stories are often about kings and things that are not attainable to the average person. And that is not true. The fact of the matter is, American opera focuses on the common man. It usually uses folk themes and dance rhythms and church music. A lot of the problems with opera in America is the average person doesn’t know that it can speak to the average person. So we are hoping to break down those barriers and start a dialogue about where opera exists in 2014.”
Last year’s show focused on the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and this year’s opera explores the complex relationships of the artists living at Lord Byron’s estate during the summer of 1816 and the competition that would give the world “Frankenstein.”
While the action took place nearly two centuries ago, the story is quite relatable to modern audiences, Lienhard said.
“We focused on the summer in which Mary Shelly wrote ‘Frankenstein,’” he said. “She was living in a house with Lord Byron, her sister-in-law, Clair Clairmont, and John Polidori, who was Lord Byron’s lover. It’s about five artists living together who were doing a lot of drugs, drinking constantly and they were all in love with each other. It’s timeless: a bunch of people who are falling in love, breaking each other’s hearts and eventually unhinging. Even though it takes place in 1816, it is something that happens all too often. People spend the summer together and get wrapped up in themselves as a group. So we’re tackling this story in a very humanistic approach.”
Lienhard said that, besides the rather gothic leaning of the subject matter, the company is trying to make opera more accessible by enlisting a broader range of vocal talent.
“Half of our cast are opera singers and half are musical-theater singers,” he said. “By doing this, we are hoping we can meet the average person on their level and help them enter into our world and not be put off by the operatic voice, and then they can enjoy the voice as an instrument when the opera singers start singing. This subject matter, with music we’ve written ourselves, is something that really speaks to us and, if it really speaks to us, it should speak to a modern audience.”
Lienhard added that the company is hoping to make opera more inclusive to LGBT characters and performers, which traditionally hasn’t been done much.
“Theater can play around with all-female or all-male casts,” he said. “With opera, just in the nature of the beast because of the vocal writing, a man is constantly played by a man and very often there are not characters who are in the gay community. We’re lucky because Mary Shelly’s mother was one of the biggest proponents of the free-love movement. It was very open and it was something that was done without judgment. One of our composers is a gay man and he really sunk his teeth into the working of this group. And that is something that is simply not done in opera — a man is a straight man and a woman is a straight woman. It’s silly and, because of that, there is no accessibility, at least for the LGBT community. We are trying to be accessible to everybody. So we’re hoping, in writing these characters and being true to who they were, we can open up some doors.”
The Philadelphia Opera Collective presents “By You That Made Me, Frankenstein” Sept. 12-21 at The Franklin Inn Club, 205 S. Camac St. For more information, visit www.phillyoperacollective.com.