CROpera piles on the comedy with ‘Too Many Sopranos’

Sometimes you have to go to Hell to find Heaven.

That’s the dilemma for the divas in “Too Many Sopranos,” a comic work Cedar Rapids Opera is staging June 20 and 22 at CSPS Hall in Cedar Rapids.

When four operatic sopranos reach the Pearly Gates, St. Peter says he only has room for one of them in the Heavenly Choir, because too many tenors and basses are in Hell. If the ladies want to make room for more sopranos in the choir, they’ll have to go to Hell and do a selfless deed in order to bring back as many tenors and basses as they’d like.

High diva drama ensues, playing out through soprano stereotypes, stock operatic plots and traditional stagings turned upside down. The characters include woeful Dame Doleful (Deirdre Lahiff), Germanic Madame Pompous (Alexandra Wiebe), coloratura Miss Titmouse (Alicia Woodberry), innocent Just Jeanette (Brittany Graham) and St. Peter (Isaac Pendley), as well as the Unnamed Bass (Andrew Boisvert) and Enrico Carouser (Jason Pandelidis) and a few others.

Cedar Rapids Opera commissioned the piece in 2000, and Daniel Kleinknecht, the company’s founder and artistic director, conducted its debut that June at Theatre Cedar Rapids. He also conducted the New York premiere in the spring of 2009.

It has become as popular as any other opera written in the 21st century, Kleinknecht said, and has a local tie, with composer Edwin Penhorwood and librettist Miki Lynn being University of Iowa graduates.

The piece also was popular with Cedar Rapids Opera’s audiences, board members and backers, so Kleinknecht decided the time was right to bring it back, after nearly 25 years. With its small cast of 10 young artists — those in their 20s embarking on their professional careers — it provides a nice balance both financially and artistically to the “100 bodies onstage” in the winter production of “Tosca” at the Paramount Theatre, Kleinknecht said.

Wiebe, 25, and a recent master’s degree graduate of Boston’s New England Conservatory, was in the ensemble for “Tosca,” and was “unbelievably excited” when asked if she’d like to return for this summer show, saying “the company was so lovely to work with in January.”

“It was just such an amazing community of supportive artists and administrators, and I felt like all of the work we did together was so fulfilling and fantastic,” she said. “Of course, I wanted to come back and hang out with them in the summer. Your winter was quite cold.”

But as a Toronto native who grew up near Cleveland, Ohio, she’s used to the cold “so the Midwest feels right at home for me,” she said.

And with her family’s Germanic roots, she’s also right at home with Madame Pompous.

“She is such a hilarious character and is a character that I was so excited to dive into, because she is so clearly a caricature of the stereotypical Wagnerian soprano,” she said. “When non-opera goers think of an opera singer, they usually think of the stereotypical horned Viking lady. … This is this character, which I think is absolutely hilarious.

“I, at a young age, was steered towards the Germanic operatic repertoire and absolutely fell in love with it. My last name is ‘Wiebe’ but I'm sure my ancestors pronounced it ‘Viva.’ I say that my German heritage has so spoken that I will sing the German repertoire.

“These stereotypes are ones that I encountered in my own study, and I’m very excited to bring to this character,” she said. “One of my favorite performances that I have ever done is the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ with a full Wagnerian orchestra, and it was so much fun — every tuba you could imagine.”

“Too Many Sopranos” may seem light and humorous, but it gives the performers plenty to chew on.

“I think it straddles a very accessible range of both having just funny characters that are amusing to watch and see interact with each other, and also a very on-the-nose sense of humor for those of us who are in the opera industry,” Wiebe said.

Cedar Rapids Opera has been performing more musical theater pieces in recent summers, from “South Pacific” to “Brigadoon.” The operatic “Too Many Sopranos” is not so far removed.

“It sort of butts up against both,” Kleinknecht said. “As far as the technical requirement of singers, the musicianship, it’s tough. It’s more operatic for sure, but the humor and sprightliness of the music, and the imagination and the framing of everything about it, is more like a musical comedy. It just scampers away.”

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