Alan Held, the director of Opera Studies at Wichita State, with the Wichita State Opera Theatre, will put on a production of “The Consul” next month.
Held said the piece is incredibly thematic, especially with the current political climate and issues surrounding immigration and documentation.
“It’s great timing to be doing this,” Held said. “I really don’t understand why more companies aren’t doing this piece more often because it’s a masterpiece.”
The opera, written by Gian Carlo Menotti, follows Magda Sorel in an unidentified totalitarian country in the 1950s and her refugee husband who is trying to get the paperwork to legally stay in the country. Most of the show surrounds the consulate and other characters who are trying to get visas and working papers, and the bureaucracy that comes with that process.
Isabel Blakewell, a graduate student studying vocal performance, plays Magda Sorel.
“(Magda’s) husband is involved in some kind of shady business … he’s in her country illegally, so he has to leave because he’s being chased by the police,” Blakewell said. “She has to follow him and she needs to obtain a visa, and (the show) is about the extremely tedious process of getting all the papers and all the documents.”
Logan Tarwater, a graduate student studying opera performance who plays the husband, said that to prepare for his role he’s been reading the current news related to immigration issues.
“It’s interesting that in the context of the ‘50s, when the show originally premiered, essentially the wife is trying to get asylum in another country and for audiences in the ‘50s, they would have probably associated the U.S. with granting asylum and now the situation seems to be more on the other side,” Tarwater said. “(The U.S.) is not the country granting asylum, it’s the country that people may have to leave because of the way (the) political situation is.”
Held said he tries to do socially relevant pieces with the Wichita State Opera Theatre that are easier for students to understand and digest.
“They (the students) know (of) people or situations, and it all just comes together,” Held said.
He said that he thinks that “The Consul” is one of the more recent pieces that students have felt the most connected to since it’s relatable.
“ … Hearing everything on the news and doing this (show) and studying this opera at the same time, it is very heartbreaking to know how relevant even after 70 years of time passing, and how the process still isn’t improved at all,” Blackwell said.
Held compared opera to musical theater, especially since a majority of the operas performed at WSU are easy to understand.
“This is in English, like I said, this is the original music theater,” Held said. “A lot of the music that Menotti wrote will sound like it came out of the New York stage, and sometimes people don’t take (him) seriously because they think his music is too theater.”
The performances will be held on April 4 and 6 in the Duerksen Fine Arts Center. Students can get one free ticket that they can pick up at the box office.
