Dorchester is turning into quite the resource for the Boston Lyric Opera (BLO), New England’s largest opera company.
This February the BLO used the Kennedy Library performance space with its ocean views as the setting for its Annex production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ “The Lighthouse,” a haunting chamber piece about πmysterious disappearances in the waters off Scotland.
Now for the final production of its 35th season, the BLO has tapped soprano Meredith Hansen, who has lived in Dorchester for 10 years, to play the young romantic lead in “The Inspector,” a savagely funny tale of bribery, fraud, and corruption in 1930s Sicily.
The Ashmont resident has sung and been honored across the US and Europe, shining in some of the most popular soprano roles in the standard repertory.
But her performances closest to home came last year, when Hansen played Gretel at the Strand in a one-hour version of Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,”as part of BLO Opera for Young Audiences. During the post performance Q &A sessions, she remembers local schoolchildren as being “very well-behaved and asking very good questions.”
But tackling the still-evolving role of Beatrice in “The Inspector” is a far cry from doing the familiar part of Gretel.
“This is my first experience working on a brand-new opera,” Hansen says. “It’s the most challenging thing I’ve ever done.”
Loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s 19th century Russian satire “The Government Inspector,” the opera is set in Mussolini-era Sicily. This lively comedy revolves around the domineering mayor and the citizens of Santa Schifezza, who are thrown into a tizzy when they hear rumors that a government inspector, traveling from Rome in disguise, is coming to town.
This commissioned piece premiered at Wolf Trap in Vienna, VA in 2011. DC critics hailed the show’s political humor and pop music references. “The Washington Post,” for example, praised composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell for having “discovered a formula for creating small, approachable, appealing, high quality American operas finally capable of reaching the broader audience this genre needs to survive and prosper.”
This weekend BLO premieres the creators’ latest revisions in a new adaptation crafted specifically for the Shubert Theatre. Hansen notes that based on audience reaction to the original effort the composer and librettist “took out and replaced some things that didn’t work and switched other things around. Going forward, there will be no further revisions. This is almost like a second premiere because this is considered the final version.”
Hansen describes her character as something of a straight woman to the other farcical residents of Santa Schifezza. “Beatrice is a contrast to everyone else in town. She’s educated, refined and well-read. At the end she uses some quick thinking and manipulation to get herself a ticket out of there. While her character is very serious, she has interactions with her parents and other members of the town that are very funny.”
Hansen is sure Boston audiences will receive the show as enthusiastically as Washington ones did. “It’s short, it’s funny and it’s sung in English.”
For details on performances which run April 21-29 at the Shubert Theatre, go to blo.org.
