By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Amarillo Opera is jumping back into the Dating pool in its celebration of National Opera Week.
The company will stage Speed Dating Tonight! 2 by composer Michael Ching at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 7:30 and 10 p.m. Saturday in the Fibonacci Space, 3306 S.W. Sixth Ave. Tickets are $20, plus fees.
The one-act comic opera, to be directed by Ching and Andrew Lewis, is set in a contemporary club and follows several hopefuls in a speed-dating session.
A rotating cast of 26 will perform in a production that will boast several new songs added since the production's 2013 premiere. The middle section, which depicts the speed dates themselves, was written to be interchangeable, based on the varied singers' voices, so each performance will be different.
"As the director, Michael has allowed me to choose the order of the songs," Lewis said. "It is really fun to see how these daters interact with each other in different pairings. The humor of one song can be greatly increased when that singer is placed next other songs. It has been great to experiment with how these characters interact and the overall flow of the show."
The music will vary from contemporary opera to pop ballads, jazz to musical theater.
National Opera Week, which runs through Nov. 6, will feature flash mobs and other community performances around the country.
"This is a rather big offering to celebrate National Opera Week," said David O'Dell, the Opera's general director. "It’s more ambitious than most companies do, but it’s still done very very quickly."
Rotating cast members include Daniel Hill, Candace Carpenter, Abby Price, Tabitha Conner, Ian Avila, Lauren Nevarez, Brandon Aguajar, Caitlin Izard, Caleb Aguajar, Nakita Harris, Blake Farr, A’Dreonna Armstrong, Kendra Dukatnik, Abby Price, Lyndi Williams Krause, Bryson Johnson, Paige Brown, Colton Eder, Zach Perrin, Julio Gonzalez, Kristina Ferguson, Patrick Swindell, Laurel Smalley and Olivia Rios.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
