By Dana Casadei
Tom Petiet is the founder and managing director of Ann Arbor-based Comic Opera Guild.
Opening your own theater can be scary. For Tom Petiet having an art form he loves not get the attention it deserves is worse.
The Comic Opera Guild, formed in 1973, was born from Petiet's love of operettas, opera's funnier cousin. While part of the University of Michigan's Gilbert and Sullivan Society was where his interest began, it soon took off like a rocket.
After being part of the group for three years, having some "post-grad" life experience, then coming back to Ann Arbor, he found himself wanting to do more than Gilbert and Sullivan. He had done all of them, at least all the shows that the society had produced at the time.
"I had known about other operettas but I hadn't really done or seen any," says Petiet, the company's founder and managing director. "I thought we should do some of these. Of course no one else wanted to."
"I said, 'fine, we'll start our own company'," he continues. "And that's really how it began."
Now, over 40 years later, the Comic Opera Guild is still going. But how it started is only a tiny part of what makes it so special.
Petiet credits three factors to the Comic Opera Guild's uniqueness. The first would be that they used to tour Michigan with a complete show. But then, due to the economy, they had to stop touring statewide. They still do some touring shows, but not as many as before.
The second is that they hire professional and amateur talent, which leads to their "hybrid-style" shows.
The third point is their biggest selling point: They stage operettas that aren't often performed in the U.S. It's as simple as that. Doing these shows has led to recordings that otherwise wouldn't have been done.
After falling on harder times in the '90s, the troupe began staging shows in 2003 that were "very rare and had never been recorded," Petiet says. They were doing those shows as concerts, and then found people wanted to have recordings of them. Now, after recording over 40 shows, they sell all over the "English-speaking world," including Australia, England and Germany. Petiet says that's become the company's niche, as well as doing European operettas with original English translations.
"It's sort of like protecting an endangered species," Petiet says. "We do it so it doesn't disappear."
That also means doing original work, such as April's "Her Highness, The Prince," for which Petiet wrote the book. After researching European shows, Petiet came across Jacques Offenbach's one-act, "L'Ile de Tulipatan." He then decided to expand on the show's idea. This was in 1990.
To say the show has had a long shelf life is an understatement. But now, thanks to the Guild's recording business' success, they've found themselves financially able to do the original work.
"It's never been performed before," Petiet says. "The inspiration for it is from an existing show, but other than that the music comes from about six or seven different shows."
Offenbach's "L'Ile de Tulipatan" is about a prince who is actually a girl. Her mother had concealed her sex so that the girl's father, the King, would have a male heir. Petiet's expansion kept that, and added another plot line. This time with a Grand Duke and Duchess who raise their son as their daughter. This way the son wouldn't be sent away as a tribute to the Pasha of Palookastan.
"So we have two families raising children at the same time that they claim to be the opposite sex," Petiet says. "Once you've set that scenario up, now the fun starts."
The fun includes watching these two as teenagers, being pressured to find a mate. After that, Petiet says, is when shit hits the fan.
While this may sound like a story from a daytime soap, Petiet wants people to know that this show is more light-hearted than it sounds.
"It's basically a satire on gender expectations," Petiet says. "That's what I like to call it, because that's the one thing that we can all poke some fun at."
For those worried that characters are being stereotyped, Petiet has that covered. He created a new character named Obnoxia. She's a tomboy who is the daughter's BFF. Both are girls, but one is actually a boy, and the other is a girl that acts like a boy, Petiet said.
The show will be at Washtenaw Community College, where the Comic Opera Guild has recently become a sponsored company. This means that WCC students, faculty and staff, will be able to get in for free, while the company gets to use the theater for free. This idea has now expanded, with hopes to do this at other colleges across Southeastern Michigan. Doing shows at colleges also helps Petiet's determination to keep this art form alive.
"We're trying to get new, young audiences to see these shows and get interested in it," Petiet says. "It's important for people to know that this isn't intended for elite audiences that supposedly have all this information and knowledge of classical music.
"This is for everybody," Petiet says.
PREVIEW:
'Her Highness, The Prince'
Comic Opera Guild at Towsley Auditorium inside the Morris Lawrence Building on the campus of Washtenaw Community College, 4800 E. Huron River Dr., Ann Arbor. 8 p.m. Saturday, April 5 and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 6. $17-20. 734-973-3264. http://www.comicoperaguild.org
