Copious Notes

The University of Kentucky Opera theatre’s production of “Les Miserables” will be similar in scale to its production of “Phantom of the Opera” (above) last fall. © Herald-Leader photo by Rich Copley.

Even before the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre opened its blockbuster production of Phantom of the Opera last October, director Everett McCorvey knew there was only one show to do for an encore: Les Miserables.

So, the day after Phantom closed, McCorvey says he wrote a letter to the show’s original Broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh, telling him of the success of Phantom, which sold out 11 performances at the Lexington Opera House, and asking if he could get the rights to Les Miz.

Mackintosh forwarded the request to the show’s rights administrators and UK Opera received permission to stage the  Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil musical Oct. 10 to 20 at the Opera House. Like Phantom, this will be the first time a full production of Les Miserables has been presented in Lexington, as the Opera House is too small to accommodate the stages and sets of the show’s professional touring productions.

The full-Broadway version of Les Miserables just recently became available to colleges. Nashville’s Belmont College was the first to present it, in March.

The School for Creative and Performing Arts did present the school edition of Les Miserables at the Opera House in March, and has presented that version before. The Oscar-winning film version of the musical brought it back into pop-culture consciousness late last year.

McCorvey said the UK production will be similar to the near $400,000 Phantom production and involve many of the same personnel, including stage director and set designer Richard Kagey, music director John Nardolillo and choreographer Susie Thiel. Auditions will be later in April, so cast members can work on their roles through the summer.

There will be more performances of Les Miz than Phantom with 13 public performances and two student previews. Tickets will go on sale in April 25 for the entire UK Opera season, which will also include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni March 6 to 9 and the annual It’s a Grand Night for Singing show-tune revue, June 13 to 22. (This season’s Grand Night is still to come, June 7 to 15 at the Singletary Center for the Arts.) Season tickets will be available only by phone, by calling (859) 233-3535 or at the Lexington Center Ticket Office. Available single tickets will go on sale in the fall.

The Phantom (Jacob Waid) sings “Music of the Night” to Christine (Rebecca Farley). Herald-Leader staff photo by Rich Copley.

The administrators of the rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera have gone to great lengths to make sure the student productions they authorize are student productions.

No faculty appearances, recent grad cameos or guest artist ringers in the top spots. The performers in these shows have to be enrolled students.

And the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of Phantom, which opened Friday night at the Lexington Opera House and runs for 10 more performances through Oct. 14, succeeds because of the students. The chandelier could defy gravity, the boat could not float and there could be nary a spark on the stage, and this still would be a great production because of the student singers and actors that grace the stage.

Lexington has been waiting nearly 25 years for this show, and it got a good one.

A student production was pretty much the only way the Bluegrass was going to see Phantom any time soon. It is still running on Broadway, so producers aren’t granting rights to independent theaters to produce it, pro or otherwise. And none of the national tours of the show have been physically or economically feasible to present at the Lexington Opera House. But a couple years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s group decided to authorize the show for high school and college student performances, in large part as a gesture of support for arts education.

Fortunately for Lexington-area theater fans, the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre got the show, and as is the troupe’s habit, they have done it up right with a $300,000 production that comes with all the frills Phantom fans have come to expect including ginormous set pieces, cool features and pyrotechnics.

But we need look no further than Michael Bay movies to know productions can be big and flashy but have no soul. That’s where Phantom director Richard Kagey and the triple-cast performers come in.

Friday’s opening night cast, scheduled to perform again Saturday night, Thursday night and the Oct. 14 matinee, featured Jacob Waid plumbing the depths of the Phantom’s story for a heartbreaking performance and Rebecca Farley in a stunning turn as Christine. When she sings, “And through his music my soul began to soar,” her voice takes flight. Both nail all of their signature tunes, Think of Me for Christine and Music of the Night for Phantom, along with Elliot Lane who sings a gorgeous All I Ask of You as Raoul, Christine’s true love.

They are supported by a sometimes brilliant ensemble including Arianna Afshari and Evan LeRoy Johnson as the Paris Opera’s buffoonish leading soprano and tenor and Daniel Koehn and Jermaine Brown Jr. as the exhausted company directors, all of who skillfully make the show funnier than we remember it or thought it would be.

Here’s the real striking thing: A lot of the principal cast, including all three Christines (rounded out by Elizabeth Maurey and Monica Dewey) are undergraduates. Waid is a junior. This is in a company that leans so heavily on graduate students it had to establish an annual show specifically designed to give undergraduates a chance to perform. Here, they are shining in UK Opera’s biggest production ever. Some may tut, “Well this is a musical, not a real opera,” but it is a musical with extremely serious singing from the solos to intricate ensembles such as Prima Donna.

Phantom is a big show with lots of moving parts and in this production, they don’t always move great together. Quite a bit of dialogue was lost to blasts of orchestra — which overall sounded splendid under John Nardolillo’s baton — and the microphone system let singers down numerous times, particularly Lane, who frequently sounded like he was singing over a cell phone connection. There were also a number of times performers looked lost, like the doubles for Phantom and Christine crossing the bridge for the first time.

One big thing that worked very well is the dance ensemble with impressive synchronicity under second-year dance instructor Susie Thiel.

If ever there was a critic-proof production in Lexington, this is it. Before opening, this Phantom sold most of the tickets for its 11 show run (a performance at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 14 was added Friday) at the 866-seat Opera House. Those fans can turn out assured they will get their money’s worth.

More coverage:

• UK Opera’s Phantom was a quarter-century in the making
• UK Opera Theatre’s decision to present Phantom took students by surprise
• Photo gallery: UK’s Phantom of the Opera

After 26 years, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera is coming to Lexington in a production by the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

The iconic Broadway musical is still playing in New York and on national and international tours, usually circumstances that keep producers from licensing shows for other theaters to produce. But Monday morning, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey said that Kentucky has joined a short list of colleges, including Brigham Young University and Elon College, that have been authorized to produce the show. The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which administers rights to the show, began licensing Phantom to colleges and high schools in 2009.

National tours of Phantom have played Louisville and Cincinnati, but they have never come to Lexington because the Lexington Opera House’s stage house is too small to accommodate the touring show’s massive set, including the chandelier that crashes to the stage at the end of Act 1.

“The chandelier will fall, the boat will go, it will be a full production,” said UK Opera program director Joan Rue.

UK had to meet some stringent requirements get rights from Rodgers and Hammerstein, including that it be an all-student cast and orchestra. McCorvey says the production’s leading actors have been triple cast to accommodate a marathon of  10 performances Oct. 5 to 14.

Tickets to Phantom go on sale Monday to people who subscribe to the rest of the UK Opera season: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro March 1-3 and It’s a Grand Night for Singing June 7-9 and 13-15. Per the rights agreement, tickets will only be available in person at the Lexington Center Ticket Office or by phone at (859) 233-3535. There are no online sales of Phantom tickets.