'Transformations' juxtaposes fairy tales, opera

Friday night promises to be bittersweet and poignant for singers and audiences of the IU Department of Opera Studies, as it stages a production of Conrad Susa's "Transformations," a thoughtful and reflective opera composed of a collection of fairy tales adapted from author Anne Sexton's poems.\nTransformations is at 8 p.m. Friday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. Admission is free and open to all.\nThroughout her life, Anne Sexton battled a number of psychological and emotional issues, including depression, conflicting feelings concerning her own sexuality and pressures to live out the American dream, according to an e-mail from Scott Voyles, the production's conductor. As she fought her personal demons, Sexton found refuge in writing, and from her literary endeavors emerged "Transformations," a collection of fairy-tale poems in which she strove to come to terms with the events of her life and to reach a state of mental peace and contentment with the lifetime memories that haunted her, he said. \nThe performance has especially meaningful undertones, as one of the students in the plane crash that occurred last week and killed five music students, Robert Samels, had been slated to appear as Character No. 7. Last week, the original singer who was to perform this role was forced to drop out of the show because of personal conflicts with the schedule. When Samels heard of this dilemma, he volunteered to fill the role, despite the daunting task of learning it in less than two weeks. Of Samels, Mihaela Bogdan, the opera's stage director, said he was "so willing to jump into it ... he loved it; we loved him." \n"Transformations" is composed of nine of these familiar fairy tales, which Sexton took from the original works by the Brothers Grimm. The stories of Snow White, Rumplestiltskin and Briar Rose each relate to some life experience or memory of the author. \nThe cast of "Transformations" includes eight singers, each of whom plays several roles during the production and is therefore on stage for most of the hour and a half performance. \n"It's a marathon," Bogdan said. In some cases, she said, a singer takes on multiple roles in the same fairy tale, necessitating a significant amount of stylistic versatility on the part of each performer. \nApart from the unconventional take on familiar fairy tales, the interplay between music and subject material is also somewhat unusual. Voyles noted that in "Transformations" a grand spectrum of musical styles is utilized, ranging from jazz to classical to popular music, and is often juxtaposed with a seemingly opposite event. This technique provides the audience an opportunity to think about these events with new perspectives and to glean new insights into them. \n"It's quite shocking to sing of death and rape while listening to a samba or a beautiful melody," Voyles said. "It's a bit unconventional." \nIn addition to its unique subject matter and versatile musical styles, "Transformations" promises to showcase a tight character interplay between cast members, whom Bogdan noted have immediately "assembled and united," particularly with the shadow of the tragic events of last week cast on the music school. \nIU's performance of "Transformations" is dedicated to Samels' memory and to the other music students lost in the plane crash. Samels' role will be sung by baritone David Hale, who had previously been the stage manager for the production, yet offered to step in and thus allowed the program to proceed as planned. \nIn an e-mail, Voyles summed up the introspective content of the opera, as well as the tragic circumstances that surround its performance. \n"So often we create, work or strive to do something great in order to advance ourselves or to please others (critics, teachers, etc.), but the truth is none of this matters. What matters is that as musicians, we make music to honor the things that deserve praise such as friendship, pain and even transformation"