Centenary Singers' Workshop presents "Prince Orlovsky's Ball" April 13 and 14
SHREVEPORT, LA — The Singers’ Workshop at Centenary’s Hurley School of Music brings a unique production to the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse (MLP) stage on Friday, April 13 and Saturday, April 14. Prince Orlovsky’s Ball, written and directed by Hurley artist-in-residence Cindy Sadler with music direction by Kristin Roach, is an original concept based on Act II of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus. Both performances begin at 7:30 p.m.
Sadler’s production, a lively pastiche of opera and musical theatre, premiered at Spotlight on Opera in San Marcos, Texas in July 2017. The MLP production features a new script tailored to suit the artists of the Singers’ Workshop, an ensemble opera and musical theatre performance course that gives students many opportunities to perform and improve their stagecraft.
“Each of the numbers in the show was chosen specifically to showcase the particular talents of our young artists, and they really do it justice,” says Sadler. “It’s a great joy to me to see them take ownership of their roles and fully inhabit them; but more importantly, these performers are going to give their audience a great time.”
The action in Prince Orlovsky’s Ball is set in the late 1800s and takes place at the extravagant and exotic Viennese villa of the eccentric Russian Prince Orlovsky. The Prince’s philosophy is “to each his own” and “anything goes,” and his guests – an array of characters from different operas – take full advantage of this permissiveness, to comic effect. The eternally bored Prince has allowed one Dr. Falke to use the ball as the framework for an elaborate prank designed to exact revenge on Falke’s best friend, Gabriel von Eisenstein. Promising Orlovsky a grand entertainment, Falke invites dueling divas, scheming chorus girls, the governor of the jail, a lovelorn French soldier, and even Eisenstein’s own wife and chambermaid (in disguise!), all the while enacting plot to seduce the Prince’s own maid and foil her marriage to the butler. Matters come to a head at the Vienna’s Got Talent Competition, held at the zenith of the ball.
Tickets for Prince Orlovsky’s Ball are available at centenary.edu/orlovsky. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for military and seniors, and $5 for non-Centenary students. All Centenary students, faculty, and staff are free.