The artistic graveyards of Chicago are filled with promising start-up companies that didn’t make it. Evanston’s Light Opera Works has survived by being crowd pleasers, performing a wide range of operettas, from Gilbert and Sullivan to Johann Strauss. Operettas are generally romantic comedies, with hummable music and fluffy plot lines that dont invite much pondering of the greater significance of it all.
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“Our basic reason to start another opera company in Chicago was that we had a very distinct, limited repertory in mind,” says Kraus. “There were no previous [professional] light opera companies in Chicago–it was all done by community groups, on an amateur level. . . . We are probably one of the most misunderstood companies, intellectually, in the city. A lot of serious musicians just don’t know what to make of the genre of light opera,” Kraus explains. “One camp thinks of it as musical comedy for longhairs, and thinks it should have the same kind of production values as a Harold Prince musical; the other camp thinks it’s an offshoot of opera buffa, and should be treated with more quiet reverence, if you will.”
When Light Opera Works presented Jacques Offenbach’s uproarious send up Orpheus in the Underworld, it was the first time it had been performed here since the late 1800s. “We did the American premiere of the original version of The Chocolate Soldier, and pretty much resuscitated that operetta from total obscurity–it was very popular in the early years of this century, and has pretty much vanished from the stage. We did the Chicago premiere of The Beautiful Galatea, by Suppe. And we were the first company in Chicago to do a new performing version of Victor Herbert’s operetta Naughty Marietta. There’s been something like that almost every season–dredging up something new.”
He defends these practices further by citing LOW’s success. “The same year Light Opera Works was founded, the Orchestra of Illinois was founded–and the Orchestra of Illinois is gone. We’re still here because of very conservative budgeting of money by our managing director. We’re the only professional company in Chicago giving local singers the chance to do leading roles onstage in a 1,200-seat house with a full orchestra.”
