The history of Memphis art, it has been said, is the story of turning popular art into fine art. Think W. C. Handy, Elvis, Eggleston.

Opera Memphis, under the guidance of director Ned Canty, is attempting to do the opposite: To liberate opera from the rarefied realm of critics and scholars and make it entertaining, moving, and even—believe it or not—fun.

For many years the Metropolitan Opera had Memphis as a regular stop on its tours. And while this brought many of the greatest singers of the twentieth century to town, Canty says it also fostered the impression “that all quality opera needed to look a certain way, be performed in a particular type of space, etc.”

Canty has a different view. “Anytime you have a story told with words and music combined, you have an operatic experience, and they can come in many shapes and sizes,” he says, but “the longer the history of any organization, the more painful change— even necessary change—can be.”  Canty isn’t about to let fusty old preconceptions about what opera is, or should be, get in the way of promoting the art form he loves. He has done presentations at TED-X and elsewhere called “Opera Doesn’t Suck,” and instituted Opera Memphis’s New Audience Initiative, which gives newcomers the opportunity to see shows for free.

In addition to his organizational and administrative duties, Canty directed the recent production of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”), a comic opera of mistaken identities, sexual peccadilloes, and hidden motives, with enough devious plot twists for a Restoration comedy.

The show itself is a raucous, bawdy good time, and Canty’s directorial additions had me laughing and often astounded. 

Example: In Act I, an Italian fellow is attempting to seduce Eisenstein’s wife. Resisting, she begs him not to speak Italian, because it apparently inflames her passions.  Taking this as his cue, he draws out the words:  “Fettucine....  Spa-GHET-ti....”  She is melting at this point, and he brings out the big guns: “GRISANTI’S!.....” You can imagine how this brought the house down.

The show was full of these terrific, spellbinding touches. At one point, Prince Orlofsky (played by a woman for some reason) walked out into the audience while singing. “Can they DO that?”

The show was performed in English (the supertitles projected above the stage during the songs were nonetheless welcome), but much of the dialogue was spoken, not sung; I thought that in an opera everything had to be sung, and this was one of many times I wondered, “Can they DO that in an opera?” 

Note that in opera, unlike much contemporary musical theater, the performers don’t wear microphones. When opera singers sing, they’re not doing what you and I do when we “sing.” Singing opera is an entirely different technique, one which uses the entire chest and head as an amplifying chamber, and it produces an astonishingly powerful sound. Years ago I lived upstairs from an opera singer, and when he practiced, he would nearly shake the rafters.  When Opera Memphis’s singers really let loose, one voice can completely fill The Orpheum or GPAC , where Die Fledermaus was performed.

Perhaps the most surprising moment of the show came during Act II. At a costume party, a woman had been posing as a Hungarian countess, and in order to prove she was Hungarian (which she wasn’t), someone asked her to sing a Hungarian song. She sang a beautiful aria about her love of Hungary. Once she finished, another character broke the fourth wall and addressed the audience directly, saying, “OK, we’ve heard some music from Hungary. Now we’re going to hear the indigenous music of another land, a magical place far across the Atlantic Ocean: This is the music of Tennessee.”

And out of nowhere, about twenty kids from the Stax Academy dressed in formalwear took the stage. They ranged in age from eight to eighteen, and for ten or fifteen minutes they performed a cappella, singing “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” and then—again, a cappella—“The Theme from Shaft”! If there’s a better way to break boundaries in an opera, I can’t imagine it. The kids pulled it off with total aplomb.

This was a truly inspired idea, accomplishing two things: (1) It established a firm, even defiant stand for opera as entertainment, and (2) it made the audience feel intimately connected to the material in a way that I honestly wouldn’t have thought possible. This opera is Memphis, we said to ourselves.

As a final local touch, the role of Frosch the jailer (which had been offered unsuccessfully to Justin Timberlake) was played by local theater veteran Ann Marie Hall, who brought a perfect touch of physical comedy to the part and was roundly applauded.

If there was a downside to the show, I must admit that it ran a bit long for me. My attention span has been formed by watching thousands of movies over the years, and with three one-hour acts, my mind did begin to wander by the end. Still, it’s hard to fault a show for providing me with an embarrassment of riches, and I can say with certainty that I have become a convert. Now that I’ve seen the patina of elitism stripped from the medium, I’ll go see any Opera Memphis production I can get to in the future.