Music students to share the art and accessibility of opera with ‘Figaro’s Wedding’

Liberty University’s School of Music invites audiences to enjoy modernized Mozart with “Figaro’s Wedding,” an adapted production of the famed composer’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro,” to be performed in the Tower Theater from Jan. 26-29.

Dr. Wayne Kompelien, a professor of voice, founded Liberty’s opera program in 1987 and began directing student operas annually in 1988, including productions of “La Bohème,” “The Magic Flute,” and “Cosi fan tutte.” The School of Music has staged its own version of The Marriage of Figaro three times with the adaptation that Kompelien and Dr. John Hugo, chair of the Department of Music Theory and History, created to both shorten and modernize the performance. Instead of an 18th century palace in Spain, the story plays out in a modern-day restaurant in New York City run by a member of the Mafia, and includes added dialogue instead of the traditional recitative, an opera term that refers to the moments when the singer adopts the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech.

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