Prior to Light Opera Works's production of "C'est la vie" (which opened on our Second Stage on October 9), the show had a run at the Oxford Fringe Festival in England.  I asked the show's creator, Gregg Opelka, to give us some insight into that production.
 
Here are his comments:
 

I am very sorry to share news of the death of mezzo soprano Veronica McHale.  Veronica passed away the morning of Wednesday, August 26, 2009.
 
Veronica brilliantly portrayed our Fairy Queen in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe in August 2008.  This is a loss for Light Opera Works and indeed to the opera and operetta stage.
 
A photo of Veronica as the Fairy Queen can be seen here on our website.
 

Apropos our current production at Light Opera Works, Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music," here's a delightful clip of the composer himself coaching a voice student through the show's popular hit, "Send in the Clowns."

I was thrilled to hear NPR’s essay on Broadway orchestrations this morning, and wanted to share it with you.
 
Orchestrators like Robert Russell Bennett, Sid Ramin, Jonathan Tunick, Don Walker, and Ralph Burns created the lush sounds of Broadway’s golden age. Yet these  American Masters are being lost to budget constraints and disappearing orchestra pits.  Modern audiences seldom hear the full, live orchestrations, which were the foundation of every major musical of the Golden Age of Broadway.
 
In its 29 years, Light Opera Works has never wavered in its commitment to presenting their Main Stage shows with full orchestra, making these wonderful scores a central part of a great theater experience. We're proud of our commitment to presenting the genre in its full original glory.

With our first Main Stage Sondheim in many years coming up in just a couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about the difference made by our musical approach here at Light Opera Works.
We’re a theater, yes, but we perform theatrical works where music is the central artistic approach—musicals, operettas, revues.
Because every high school in the country produces musicals, it’s easy to forget the brilliance of this repertoire, its unique American flowering and its working class European roots.  Even new blockbuster Broadway musicals focus mostly on the spectacle, forgetting that the heart and soul of a musical is the music. With the first Broadway revival of South Pacific right now burning up Broadway, audiences are discovering what Light Opera Works has known all along—this music is important, relevant, and stands up among the nation’s best art.