Flipside Opera to perform at Steinbach Arts Council in April
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Steinbach Arts Council will bring a little bit of opera and musical theatre to Steinbach audiences in April with the visit of Flipside Opera.
“They’re an opera and art song collective,” said Tara Schellenberg, performing arts coordinator. “So it’s a group that aims to bring opera to unique locations and flip it on its head to make it accessible for all kinds of people. They’ll bring a concert of musical theater along with some opera hits.”
Judy Oatway is one of the singers that will be performing at the concert, which she said will be an intimate gathering much like a house concert.
“So, we will likely be talking a little bit between the songs, giving a bit of context of why we chose the music or something about the music, so that the audience has a little bit more buy in to what we’re performing,” she said.
About 50 percent of the songs that will be sung on April 13 are opera arias with the rest comprising of German lieder songs and musical theatre.
“We know that Steinbach just had a successful run of Fiddler On The Roof, so we wanted to follow up with some more musical theater classics that the audiences would probably also love to hear, knowing how popular that show was,” said Oatway, noting some of the songs will be from Rodgers and Hammerstein and Gershwin.
For songs that are in German or another language, Oatway and her singing partner tenor Aaron Hutton will try to create connections for the audience.
“(We) give a synopsis for each song and try to make it very much 2025 translation of the song so that people can feel like even though these songs are written 100 years ago, or even longer, there are still things they can connect to in the text.”
Oatway is a classically trained soprano and she instructs vocal technique at the Desautels faculty of music at the University of Manitoba. She is also the co-founder of Flipside Opera along with accompanying pianist for the night Lisa Rumpel.
“We want to help them connect with the music. There’s always something to connect to in these stories. Almost all music is universal in the storytelling when we have the luxury of having words. Human emotions are the same no matter where you’re from, what your background is…And we’re pretty fun too, so we hope that we’re going to have a fun night together.”
Flipside Opera will perform on April 13 at the Steinbach Arts Council’s SCU Studio at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by visiting steinbacharts.ca/added-attractions/#flipside or by calling 204-346-1077.