A group of Kansas Wesleyan University musicians will be singing with the Wichita Grand Opera this weekend in WGO’s performance of “La Fille du Regiment” (“The Daughter of the Regiment”).

Leslie Mangrum, Assistant Professor of Music, and Joshua Tackett, Kanopolis, Kansas, Brittany Ritter, Dresden, Kansas, and Aine Hakamatsuka, Saitama-Shi, Japan, will be singing in the performances scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday (April 29, 2011) and Sunday (May 1, 2011) Century II’s Mary Jane Teall Theater.

Mangrum said the experience has been a wonderful opportunity for the students to see the inner workings of a professional opera company.

“The students have been very inspired by the professional singers doing the lead roles in the show.  They have learned an entire show in French, and have been exposed to a new level of artistic production,” Mangrum said.

ABOUT THE OPERA

The following information is from the Wichita Grand Opera (www.wichitagrandopera.org/)

“You can take the girl out of the barracks, but you can’t take the barracks out of the girl” would be one way to sum up Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment. The story is madly Gilbert-and-Sullivan-esque, with an orphan girl who has been brought up by 1,500 soldiers, all of whom are simultaneously her adopted fathers, and yet also hoping she’ll marry one of them. There is naturally a war going on between these French soldiers and the local Tyrolean villagers, one of whom is in love with Marie and is prepared to be arrested, change allegiance, and even join the enemy army in order to be near her. Meanwhile, a Marquise claims Marie as her own flesh and blood and tries to civilize her, so as to marry her off by proxy to an even snobbier Duchess’s son, who is absent on “obligations Olympiques.”

Single tickets are on sale now for $35, $58, and $85 each. For tickets, call the WGO box office at 316-262-8054 between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. or order online at www.selectaseat.com.