:Costume designer Janie Westendorf of Keota watches as Austin Kness and Laura Pedersen check out how Pedersen’s dress flows while dancing, a crucial element for the lead players in the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre’s upcoming production of “The Merry Widow.” They were gathered for costume fittings Dec. 27, 2011, in the choir room at Washington High School in Cedar Rapids. (Cliff Jette/SourceMedia Group)

By Diana Nollen/ SourceMedia Group

“The Merry Widow” is just as merry — and conflicted — as she was when Austrian audiences first embraced her in 1905.

Her look will be Victorian but her themes will resonate with Eastern Iowa audiences when she springs to the Theatre Cedar Rapids stage this week via the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre. (1/13 and 1/15/2012)

It’s all about love, money and love for money at the turn of the 20th century. The richest woman in the pretend principality of Pontevedro is off to see Paris, where her countrymen fear she will be seduced by the merry lifestyle and merry men, marry one and move her merry money with her. Thus begins a plot to have her marry someone from her homeland, keeping her fortune where it just might pull the tiny country back from the brink of economic collapse.

“The financial condition of the country and what it’s going through with bankruptcy sounds pretty current to me,” says director Marciem Bazell, assistant professor and director of opera at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. “What makes it completely current are two really beautiful but complicated love stories and a country going bankrupt.”

Wig and make up supervisor Sarah Fried of Mount Vernon (left) shows possible period hairstyles to the female and male leads, Laura Pedersen and Austin Kness, during costume fittings for "The Merry Widow." (Cliff Jette/SourceMedia Group)

The central love story involves the widow, Hanna Glawari, played by Laura Pedersen of Cleveland, Ohio, and the man Baron Zeta has chosen for her, Count Danilo Danilovitsch. He’s played by Cedar Rapids native Austin Kness, 31, who is moving from San Francisco to the New York area. (The vivacious Pedersen won’t reveal her age, but says everyone in opera is 29.)

Unbeknown to the plotters, Hanna and Danilo were in love in their youth.

“Hanna and Danilo grew up together, fell in love and wanted to get married, but he was rich and she was poor, and their families wouldn’t let them marry,” Bazell says. “She went off and married a very, very rich banker. A week after they were married, he died.”

Laura Pedersen, title role

“I love Hanna because she’s smart,” says Pedersen, a lyric soprano who grew up in Sioux City, went to Iowa State University, did her graduate work at the Cleveland Institute of Music and lived for a while in Germany.

“(Hanna) is very quick-witted and gives Danilo a run for his money,” Pedersen says. “She antagonizes him. They’re a fair and equal match, which thrills and aggravates both of them. They make each other so angry, but they love that sparring. Without that sparring, there wouldn’t be that attraction. It’s really beautiful because they both get to be their best, but of course, it’s a double-edged sword. Because they’re like that, it’s hard for them to get together.”

Cedar Rapids native Austin Kness

Kness, a lyric baritone, graduated from Cedar Rapids Washington in 1998, then went on to the University of Northern Iowa and Indiana University, with an Adler Fellowship in San Francisco in between.

“Danilo is kind of a bored, rich upper-echelon person who thinks he’s done and seen everything worth seeing and doing. He’s reunites with Hanna, then his life regains meaning. He’s a little bit standoffish — he’s been hurt before, turned down by Hanna. … He runs to Maxim’s and does all this cavorting with all the flirtatious dancers and likes to have this dream fantasy fulfilled. He seems to be a straight shooter. He’s open and honest about everything.”

The other love story involves ambassador Baron Zeta’s wife, Valencienne.

“She’s a consulate wife in France, madly in love with a Frenchman who is not her husband,” Bazell says. “But she decides as much as she loves him, she will remain a respectful and faithful wife. It’s a lovely little subplot.”

The operetta, sung in English, has many light and lively moments woven through music, dialogue and dance, including the well-known “Merry Widow Waltz.” Spoken dialogue makes the piece an operetta, rather than an opera, where all the dialogue is sung, Bazell explains.

“It’s not a tragedy, it’s a light operetta,” says Daniel Kleinknecht, 51, of Coralville, the opera theater’s conductor and an associate professor at Mount Mercy University. “The last time we did a main stage operetta was about 10 years ago with ‘Die Fledermaus.’ It’s about time.”

Costume designer Janie Westendorf of Keota searches through the clothing racks set up in a hallway at Washington High School on Dec. 27, during costume fittings for “The Merry Widow.” The operetta is set at the turn of the 20th century, at the end of the fashionable Victorian era. (Cliff Jette/SourceMedia Group)

The production has a large cast, with about 48 people onstage, 32 Orchestra Iowa musicians and numerous people behind the scenes designing, creating and facilitating the $100,000 production. The chorus includes singers from Cedar Rapids Washington and Xavier high schools, as well as young artists and local adults.

“It’s a little gem,” Kleinknecht says. “It’s one of those special pieces orchestral players appreciate and connoisseurs appreciate. It’s beautiful — a cute story with lots of dancing showgirl legs. It has something for everybody.”

“It’s a very dancy operetta, with beautiful waltz sequences,” Bazell says, “and a hysterical scene the men do. The men should look like a Busby Berkeley (dance), complete with kick lines.”

She has directed the piece before, staging it with Pedersen last year in Delaware, and enjoys the merry romp.

“It flows very well dramatically,” Bazell says. “It has really beautiful music. I do try to find a comedic style that goes with the turn of the century — a little broader than 21st century comedy. It has scenes of beautiful love and passion and hysterical comedy. It’s dramatically structured very well that way.”

Kness is thrilled to be back on his home stage, where he performed in “Carmen” and “The Barber of Seville” with the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre.

:Costume designer Janie Westendorf of Keota fits the female lead, Laura Pedersen of Cleveland, Ohio, in one of her costumes for “The Merry Widow. (Jette/SourceMedia Group)

“It’s amazing,” he says. “This is my home theater — the theater where I first sang anything operatic ever.”

At the start of the three-week rehearsal period, he also was looking forward to seeing Theatre Cedar Rapids’ post-flood renovations, working with Kleinknecht again and doing his first operetta.

“Adding dialogue into what you do as an opera singer is always an experiment,” Kness says. “It’s sort of an adventure, trying to get everything figured out. You get to do some straight acting as opposed to just singing and following what’s in the score. That’s really exciting to me.”

ARTS EXTRA

What: Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre presents “The Merry Widow”

When: 8 p.m. Jan. 13 and 2 p.m. Jan. 15, 2012

Where: Theatre Cedar Rapids, 102 Third St. SE

Tickets: $20 to $55 at Theatre Cedar Rapids Box Office, (319) 366-8591 or www.theatrecr.org

Also: Free curtain talks one hour before each performance; live broadcast on Iowa Public Radio at 2 p.m. Jan. 15, 2012 

Information: www.cr-opera.org