Upcoming Shows

Presenting America's First Musical Hit EVANGELINE

JANUARY 26-28, Riverside Arts Center

 

A concert-style performance of America’s first musical

Friday, Jan. 26, 8 pm, Saturday, Jan. 27, 8 pm & Sunday, Jan. 28, 2 pm

Riverside Arts Center Theater, 76 N. Huron, Ypsilanti.

Adults $20, Seniors and Students, $15

General admission tickets: Online at a2tix.com and at the door

ABOUT THE SHOW

an operetta by Edward Rice and J. Cheever Goodwin

The Comic Opera Guild was formed in 1973 for the purpose of promoting, in performance and recording, the genre of comic opera and operetta. The company, which recently celebrated 50 years of continuous performance, will produce two shows in 2024 as part of Ann Arbor's sesquicentenial. The first will be Evangeline, in January.

Thooughout its history, the Guild has been in the business of revivals. For the first 20 years, it performed mainly European operettas by composers such as Lehar, Offenbach, Mozart and Rossini. In 2004, it began to restore early works of Broadway by American composers, such as Victor herbert and Sohn Philip Sousa. Eventually, nearly 70 works from the 1890s though the 1920s were performed and recorded. The latest of these early Broadway revivals, Evangeline, by Edward Rice and J. Cheever Goodwin, will also be the earliest example.

In the first century of the United States, shows were primarily imported from Europe. Remnants of that tradition are the Star Spangled Banner (originally Anacreon in Heaven) and the Marine Hymn (a comic duet from Offenbach's Genevieve de Brabant). There as no copyright law in those days, and many pirated productions did very well in this country.

Legend has it that Edward Rice and J. Cheever Goodwin, after seeing an English musical, decided that they could write one that was not only as good, but better. Shortly thereafter, Evangeline was debuted at Nibio's Garden in July 1874. It ran only 16 performaces, but was revised and had a successful run on Boston the following year. Following that, the show continued to tour the United States, eventually logging over 3,000 performances. Lillian Russell began her career in the chorus of Evangeline in 1880, and the show received a major Broadway revival in 1885, with 262 performances.

The show is a musical parody of the Longfellow poem of the same name. The poem, published in 1847, was well-known to most Americans within two decades, and the tradition of drawing from other works gave the show instant name recognition. The story was similar to the original, in which Evangeline, a young Arcadian girl, is separated from her lover Gabriel, and suffers travails in reuniting with him. In the opera, Evangeline helps two merchant vessel mutineers to hide, is ultimately found out, and sent to prison aboard the same ship. The ship is wrecked in a storm, and Evangeline, along with her supporters, is marooned on the coast of Africa. There, the natives capture them, but an inexplicable twist frees them to return home, also inexplicably, in a balloon.

The show features dialog crafted in verse, something totally unique in musical theater. The music is charming, with choruses of bathing girls, miners, and native police. Solos and duets for Evangeline and Gabriel are interspersed with comic moments for a number of characters. Evangeline will be sung by soprano Roseann Lee, with tenor Dean Joyce as her lover Gabriel. The chorus of 20 is conducted by Comic Opera Guild veteran David Troiano.