FIRST MOMENTS PHOTOGRAPHY
The chamber musicians create secondary characters.
Sound plays a big part in the story of Ebenezer Scrooge. Hence its title, A Christmas Carol. In the warm past, there is music. In his dark future, the spirit is eerily silent.
This season Oakwood Chamber Players brings sound to the fore in its production of The Passion of Scrooge at Oakwood Village.
Composer Jon Deak’s score creates the entire tale and all of its characters using only a solo singer and a dozen musicians, some of them guest artists.
“The harp plays the Ghost of Christmas Past. The horn is Christmas Present,” says actor and baritone Robert A. Goderich. “Whenever Marley is introduced, the chains come out. Whenever Marley gets upset, the chains come out.” The ensemble is called upon to imitate the sounds of wind, and even a kiss.
In addition to performing with Capital City Theatre, Children’s Theater of Madison, Four Seasons Theatre and Madison Opera, Goderich is a veteran of San Francisco Opera and Milwaukee’s Skylight Music Theatre.
He previously played Scrooge in Oakwood Chamber Players’ 2016 production. “Our audiences absolutely loved it, and have been asking if we would reprise it,” says Anne Aley, the ensemble’s French horn player. “Popular demand! It takes a bucket of work to prep, but so worth it.”
Goderich begins as a narrator, easing the audience into the sonic atmosphere. “With help of instrumentation, some of the musicians actually help to create some secondary characters that I have conversations with,” he says. “It’s very, very interesting, and it’s a fun challenge to discern where the next conversation is coming from.”
The old saying is that acting is mostly reacting, and that’s especially true in Passion of Scrooge. “We’re always bouncing off each other, responding,” says Goderich. “It’s very much a team atmosphere.”
Percussionist Michael Koszewski is one of the busiest musicians, being called upon to create all sorts of sound effects. “I would definitely describe the piece as chamber music first,” he says, “but with an operatic element in the vocalist, and also a sound effects element in the percussionist. It is indeed unique in this way.”
Deak composed The Passion of Scrooge in 1997-98. It was adapted to film in 2018.
The opera, conducted by Kyle Knox, will be performed at Oakwood Village University Woods Auditorium (6209 Mineral Point Road) on Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 8 at 2 p.m.
