NAU Opera will present four short operas at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 and 2 p.m. Oct. 31 in Ashurst Hall.
There will be a pre-performance lecture 45 minutes before each presentation. Tickets are available at $15 for adults, $12 for faculty and staff and $6 for students. Call the Central Ticket Office at (928) 523-8656.
“I’m very impressed by how dedicated the singers are to do these pieces,” said Nando Schellen, director of NAU Opera.
The evening will start with a drama, La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice) by French composer Francis Poulenc and text by Jean Cocteau. The story, set in the 1950s, involves a woman who has a very intense phone conversation with her ex-lover. It is sung in French with English supertitles.
The second opera, A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber, is an American comedy set in the 1960s about two jaded couples who meet for their weekly bridge game.
Paul Hindemith’s Hin und Zurück (There and Back) is an absurdist German opera performed in German with English supertitles. Set in the 1950s, this unusual format focuses on a couple that enters into a deadly fight over an adulterous affair, only to have their actions illogically replayed backward until they end up in the same place they started.
The Telephone, by Gian-Carlo Menotti, is a comedy set in 2000 in which a lover’s attempts to propose to his girlfriend are foiled by the incessant ring of the telephone.
Eighteen vocal performance majors will be featured in the productions.