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Orpheus comes to town

Submitted Photo Alexie Kindy, Leticia Vieira, Alaina Gochanour, Houston Head, Heili Burgardt, Madalyn Meagher, Hadley Geigle.

On Friday and Sunday, dancers from Rinat Mouzafarov’s Institution of Dance and Ballet Theater will pair with the Western Plains Opera to perform Orpheus in the Underworld.

Mouzafarov has worked with Western Plains Opera for 24 years and considers it a great honor. His dancers have worked hard in the last few weeks to prepare for this performance. They will add a huge element to the operetta.

“It’s a beautiful art. This operetta is very famous all around the world. You go to London, Moscow, Paris, Italy – they all know it and it is very famous,” Mouzafarov said about the chosen piece.

“Orpheus in the Underworld” is the first of Offenbach’s outrageously funny parodies of Greek mythology. It is a comic version of the classic legend of Orpheus’ pursuit of his wife, Eurydice, who is carried off to Hades by Pluto – much to the annoyance of Jupiter. It involves nymphs, shepherds, gods and goddesses, with the fun reaching its climax in the riotous and well-known “Can-Can.”

This performance is described as a good family operetta, with humor and story for almost all ages to enjoy.

“Ours is Minot’s biggest and most expensive production every year with professional guest singers and a full orchestra, fantastic sets and lighting and the full use of all the stage technology that Anne Nicole Nelson Hall has to offer,” said Eric Furuseth, Minot State professor and member of the opera company.

The many guest artists this year are Carlos Feliciano, a tenor who is a native of Puerto Rico, Minot State Choir Director Carlos Vieira, Clara Rottsolk, tenor singer David Guzman, and soprano singer Julie Wright-Costa.

The conductor for Orpheus in the Underworld is Efrain Amaya, music director of the Minot Symphony Orchestra and assistant professor at MSU. Julie Wright-Costa will be the stage director.

“Operettas involve dance, dialogue, and singing. You have to be, in today’s terms of musical theater, a triple threat except the music is much more of a classical approach, but I love this art form for that reason because it allows us all to come together with our different skills to create a beautiful and expressive performance,” Wright-Costa said.

During the interview, Mouzafarov and Wright-Costa talked very highly of each other and showed how well and how closely everyone works to prepare and put together a production here in Minot.

“His dancers are so disciplined. Their skill is world-class level,” Wright-Costa said when talking about the dancers.

The performance will take place two nights, Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Minot State’s Ann Nicole Nelson Hall.

Tickets are available online, by phone, or at the door and cost $15 to $25 depending on seating. Sales at the door will begin one hour before the show.

For more information on Rinat Mouzafarav’s Institution of Dance and Ballet Theater, call 857-0239 or visit the Facebook page.

For more information on the production or to purchase tickets, call 858-3185 or visit www.wpopera.org.

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