I also update the plot in other ways. For instance, I created the characters of two gay ghosts who weren't in the original myth. I was trying to come up with an example of two people who are in the underworld and who are being punished even though they didn't do anything wrong. Persephone sees that they shouldn't be there, and wonders what to do about it.
FOR THE FRINGE The full opera will be two and a half hours, including intermission. For the Fringe Festival, we're just going to do the last two scenes of Act One, which will total about 45 minutes. One takes place when Persephone first comes to the underworld, and the other takes place on Olympus.
There are 14 performers in the cast, which makes it HUGE by Fringe Festival standards. I play Persephone, Keith Irby plays Hades, and Sara Stewart of the Baltimore Opera is Demeter. She has a rage aria that brings down the curtain.
Music aficionados should listen for the quote from the Dies Irae in the finale. It's an old Gregorian chant that translates to "day of wrath." When you're talking about the Apocalypse, this is a good one to pull out.
OPERA OR MUSICAL? It's actually an opera, because there is no dialogue. Part of the reason why rock operas aren't done very often is that it's a hard format to write in. You don't have dialogue between songs, so you have to get exposition in somehow, and that makes the songs longer than you would see in a standard musical.
The two rock operas that everyone knows are Tommy and Jesus Christ, Superstar, but The Passion of Persephone is nothing like them.
POTENTIAL FOR PARODY The plots of many operas come close to camp. But, The Passion of Persephone is a very serious work. It has some funny passages, but it isn't Jerry Springer - The Opera, which also is being done at the Capital Fringe.
TARGET AUDIENCE We think of the rock opera as being rated PG-13. There's a lot of innuendo, but nothing graphic. Put it this way: When The Baltimore Opera did Dead Man Walking a few years ago, that was a lot more explicit than anything we do.
mary.mccauley@baltsun.com
"The Passion of Persephone" will be staged through July 26 at the Warehouse, 1021 7th St. N.W., Washington. Show times vary. Tickets cost $15. The rock opera is part of the Capital Fringe Festival, a nonjuried collection of stage shows running through July 27. The 2008 Fringe consists of more than 200 companies mounting more than 600 performances at 30 venues in the District of Columbia. Call 866-811-4111 or go to www.capfringe.org.
