Remaining Performances:

Wednesday, July 13, 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 16, 2:30 p.m.
Tuesday, July 19, 6 p.m.

They say: What will Naughty Nurse Lola do when Dr. Gregg propositions her? Will she stay true to her fiance, the patient? Or will she give into her primal lust? Gallantry is a soap opera complete with dancers, nudity, and advertisements.

Rebecca’s Take: Sometimes the images artists use to promote their Fringe shows are more or less false advertising. Just because there’s a biker chick in a bustier on the postcard doesn’t mean there’s one in the show. That’s why Opera Alterna deserves some sort of award for Best Cartoon Depiction of a Fringe Star. The naughty flame-haired nurse on the cover of the program does indeed resemble Emily Casey, the tarted-up soprano making her non-school debut in Gallantry. See the comic one-act opera and you’ll see her in the flesh, complete with tantalizing garters and threatening syringe.

What a promotional photo or cartoon postcard can’t do, of course, is convey whether Casey can sing. She’s all the more alluring if you know that she can. A rising senior at Catholic University, Casey has a bright, glossy tone that’s expressive without devolving into parody, as can easily happen in a comic opera like Douglas Moore’s slight 1958 effort, Gallantry. (Fringe & Purge Factoid! The opera premiered at Columbia University on a double bill with an opera by Dominic Argento, a composer who is now famous, while Moore is long dead.)

Anyway, as Nurse Lola, Casey plays opposite Fringe veteran James Rogers, a pleasant baritone who attempts to seduce her while she prepares anesthesia. Much to Dr. Gregg’s dismay, the patient with a swollen appendix turns out to be Donald (tenor Tad Czyzewski) Lola’s fiancé. The surgeon is just as tempted to let his scalpel slip as slip his hand down Lola’s low-cut white dress. The meta-premise, for the audience, is that we’re not watching an opera, but a soap opera. And this being the Fringe, we’re watching everything in the cavernous (but air-conditioned, thank God) space appropriately called the Warehouse.

The acoustics aren’t kind to mezzo-soprano Rebecca Stugart, a recent Catholic musical theater graduate who has trouble projecting over the upright piano. She’s a classy actress, though, and moves well despite having a flask stowed away in her green sequined strapless dress. As the announcer, Stugart takes a swig before shilling for Lochinvar soap, which sounds to me like the preferred bath product on Valhalla.

There’s an intermission commercial too, this time for Stugart and three dancers hawking floor wax. And at the opera’s close, Dr. Gregg joins the flaking fray, leaving Lola and Donald to sing of their love in the recovery room while he and Stugart fight over the Lochinvar sign. With the right voices and stage, that closing quartet must make for a stunningly funny finale. But the vocals are pretty much a wash here. Gallantry’s not a squeaky clean production, but by Fringe opera standards, it’s got suds to spare.

See it if: You have no qualms about paying more to see a 27-minute Fringe opera than you would for a standing-room Ring Cycle ticket at the Met.

Skip it if: The prospect of scantily clad Catholic coeds doesn’t offset having to listen to opera.

The Girl Who Waters the Basil

Remaining Shows:
July 19th 4:45 pm
July 24th 6 pm

What they say: The tale of a poor shoemaker’s daughter and a lovesick inquisitive prince. Based on Lorca’s play of the same name, this slightly surreal ‘pocket-opera’ features performances by Robert Baker and Rebecca Ocampo.

Llewellyn’s take: One of the great perks of a show with so many credentials is that the playbill is large enough to use as a multi-page fan.  And heady credentials they are.  These are some classically trained maestros slumming it for us heathens who probably wouldn’t make it out to the Kennedy Center on five-cent beer night.  I mean, they have a musical ombudsman listed in the credits for crying out loud.

Even though they list it as a “pocket opera,” it’s still opera in the end, so expect bel cantos, colla voce, and a supernumerary.  Because the story is so short, you don’t get overwhelmed with boredom after three hours of butt-numbing vibrato; these folks keep it to a nimble 40 minutes of well-crafted musicianship.  You’re in, you’re acculturated, and then you’re out.

The story confines itself to a basic he-said/she-said romantic battle, and the tone remains playful throughout the show—even when they’re crying on the floor.  The comedy is goofy and maybe strained at points, but it provides a good counterpoint to the music. Rebecca Ocampo and James Shaffran have amazing voices, and the mini-orchestra keeps up with them.  Here’s hoping they do a 40-minute Ring Cycle next.

See it if: You’re an opera fan on a tight schedule or a cultural heathen feeling guilty.

Skip it if: You don’t have the attention span for opera in cartoons

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 12 at 4:15 p.m.
Thursday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m.Saturday, July 18 at 2 p.m.
Saturday, July 25 at 8:30 p.m.

They say: “Robert, a struggling playwright, undertakes a Faustian bargain of inspiration in return for his sanity. Driven by his desire to please his wife Claire and succeed as a writer, he risks his life in return for his Magnum Opus.”

Brian’s take: When he was a kid, my little brother refused to eat eggs. And I remember one morning when, despite his protestations, my mother kept on cajoling him to take a bite — just one bite — until finally he explained, “I like eggs, I just don’t like the taste!”

That’s pretty much how I’d describe my feelings about Magnum Opus, a new opera by the Alterna Opera company. It’s a predictably well-made tragedy: You’ve got your struggling playwright, his casually flirtatious wife, the composer charming her into casual flirtation, and a pair of muses (though they behave more like sirens) whispering some nefarious solutions in the playwright’s ear.

The real playwright should’ve summoned a few siren-muses for himself, because while the show does contain plenty of your daily vitamins and minerals, it leaves you wanting some flavor. Likewise with the performers, who belt a respectable original score but enlist the rest of their bodies — i.e. limbs and facial muscles — with much less vigor than they do their diaphragms.

Not that Magnum Opus doesn’t manage to be pleasing. The cast is invested enough — in its own laconic way — the orchestra tight enough, the production polished enough to make for an enjoyable time. Does it live up to its namesake? Not quite. Maybe if they retitled it “A Highly Palatable 60 Minutes.” But as one specter of a character realizes, after his own maddening brush with the muses, notes on a sheet of composition might resemble raindrops on a window or, depending on your state of mind, flies on a carcass.  Magnum Opus manages to do both.

See it if: That last metaphor does it for ya.

Skip it if: You really should be at home writing instead.

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 5:30 PM
Saturday, July 19 @ midnight (canceled)
Saturday, July 26 @ 9 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 6:30 PM

They say: “Presenting Opera Alterna, a new DC opera company dedicated to creating dynamic, provocative opera performances, brings two contemporary mini-operas exploring classic themes of love, relationships and miscommunication. Signor Deluso is a comedy based on Moliere’s Sganarelle & The Women, a surrealist look at the problems between mother, son, and his wife.”

Trey’s take: Good for Opera Alterna, a gaggle of young D.C.-area singers who take their stuff — but not themselves — too seriously. And bravo for whoever picked the repertoire: two brisk little shorts from a New York composer who was all the rage until the ’70s, then suddenly fell out of favor — and moved to Hollywood, where he helped score American Beauty and The Road to Perdition, among other films.

The first mini-opera is the more challenging — not atonal, but dissonant, it’s set in the afterlife and concerned with a mother and a wife warring eternally over the man who’s all they have in common. But it clocks in at a skinny 10 minutes or so, and its heavily Freudian overtones are familiar enough that it needn’t frighten any but the most hardened operaphobes.

Signor Deluso, a slightly more substantial one-act based on an early Moliere comedy, is decidedly more accessible: a jealous wife, an outraged but cowardly husband, a dopey ingénue who (like the husband) leaps to dubious conclusions, and a saucy maid to set everyone straight at last — you know the genre.

It’s all creditably sung and amusingly staged, and everyone’s doing their best — down to the projected surtitles, even though it’s all sung in English — to make it as unthreatening as a Friday night at the multiplex. And at $15, it’s a fair sight cheaper than a night out with the WNO.

See it if: You think it’s good that this year’s Fringe lineup seems a little more diverse, discipline-wise.

Skip it if: You sprout hives at the sound of young lovers warbling — however sweetly — about their passion.