By Elliot Boswell
After winning KDUP's Second Annual Battle of the Bands in a hail of slashing guitars and Italian tenor, the Electric Opera Company, or EOC, will take the stage again for an extended performance of the rock adaptation of "The Barber of Seville."
Formerly known as the Electric Opera Guitarmy, the EOC will be presenting Rossini's most well known composition in its near-entirety on Sunday, April 26, and Thursday, April 30, in Mago Hunt Theatre. Tickets cost a minimum of $1 and donations are accepted.
"We only played parts of a couple of songs (at Battle of the Bands)," said senior Bobby Ray, founder and de facto leader of the group. "But we're performing the complete first and second acts this time."
According to Ray, the project had its genesis in the fall of 2008, when he had to put on a scene from the opera in a workshop class.
"I fell in love with it," he said. "So a friend of mine and I recorded one track on guitars and realized that yes, this works!"
The full rock adaptation, however, didn't come into fruition until this past New Year's Eve in a pub in Prague, Ray said, as part of the University Singers's tour of Europe.
After picking up the score in Leipzig, Germany, Ray and others went to work on transposing the score from orchestral instrumentation to a more rock-oriented form.
"It was an arranging nightmare," Ray said. "We spent hours upon hours getting the music into tablature so that everyone could read it."
The primary roadblock in the process was the vast array of instruments that each required a guitar part: First violin, second violin, viola, and so on.
According to bassist Zach Faltersack, junior, a secondary cause of problems was the technical demands of the score, especially for non-classical instruments.
"It's so challenging," Faltersack said. "We've sped everything up - the finale ends up being taken at about 230 beats per second or so, and I've always been a musician more concerned with accuracy and creating interesting harmonies."
Guitarist Jon "Chops" Worley, junior, agreed with the difficulty of the piece, but noted the facility with which Ray transposed much of the music.
"The way the songs have been tabbed out makes it seem like it was written for a guitar part," Worley said. "It feels right, as lame as that might sound."
True to the original spirit of Rossini's vision, the EOC's incarnation of "The Barber of Seville" will be performed in full costume, commedia dell'arte style, all of which was designed in conjunction with the Portland Organic Theatre, UP's student-founded theatre group.
There are over 30 members in the production - 13 musicians, 11 crew and eight others working backstage - most of whom heard about it via word of mouth.
"It was all drawn from the talent we have on campus, and the people I've met over the last four years," Ray said. "I wanted to make it a University-only show, so everybody involved is either a student or faculty member."
Both Faltersack and Worley corroborated Ray's account: Faltersack said he heard about it through the grapevine, and the group's drummer informed Worley.
"I was interested, so I jumped at the chance," Faltersack said. "It's been a ton of sheer practice, but I've gotten so much better just over the last two months of rehearsals."
Based on a play of the same name by French dramatist Pierre Beaumarchais, "The Barber of Seville" tells the story of the two men, Doctor Bartolo and Count Almaviva, and their dueling love for the beautiful Rosina. It was first performed in Rome in 1816, and has since become a mainstay of the comedic opera repertoire.
