Venue: Ohio Light Opera (College of Wooster)
Director: Steven Daigle
Conductor: Steven Byess
Performance dates: 25 June – 8 August 2015 (8 performances in repertory)
Event page

For over thirty years, Ohio Light Opera has performed a full slate of musicals and operettas every summer. The 2015 program includes Kurt Weill for the first time since 1999, with a production of the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus (lyrics by Ogden Nash, book by Nash and S.J. Perelman), one of the works most frequently requested by OLO fans. Venus was Weill’s biggest hit on Broadway, and it was also Mary Martin’s first big hit, after which her career took a decisive and highly successful turn toward the theater. The last time the OLO tackled Weill, the company offered the first revival of his Broadway operetta The Firebrand of Florence since the original production closed in 1945.

In addition to the performances, theater historian Peter Filichia will highlight Venus during his talk on “The First Decade of the Golden Age of Broadway Musicals” on 30 July, during a symposium featuring several commentators on this season’s repertoire. Filichia contributed a report on a sixty-fifth anniversary concert in honor of Venus to the Fall 2013 issue of the Kurt Weill Newsletter.

Features

Press release on Ohio Light Opera’s season

Learn more about One Touch of Venus