Baritone Robert Morrissey recently celebrated the end of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s season after finishing his 32nd full season there after beginning his career at the Lyric 41 years ago.
Morrissey and three fellow Lyric performers are part of La Porte Community Concert Association’s “An Afternoon of Enchantment” on March 25 at Kesling Middle School in LaPorte.
“We don’t get to do this very often simply because we’re all busy doing what we do,” said Morrissey about himself, tenor Cameo Humes, soprano Christine Steyer and mezzo-soprano Corinne Wallace-Crane, who performed together for Concert Association of Valparaiso in 2016.
“Lisa Kristina, the pianist, is an extremely busy accompanist. I’m proud to be performing with them because they’re all seasoned, accomplished professionals and very good at what they do.
“We’re offering a really vivid experience of live performance of some really great music that will take people away to a very special place. We’re trying to create our own version of magic.”
“An Afternoon of Enchantment” includes opera and Broadway songs.
“It’s your greatest hits of the operatic repertoire. We’ve got ‘Carmen.’ We’ve got the drinking song from ‘La Traviata.’ We have one of the big tunes from ‘Samson and Delilah.’ We’ve got ‘Vissi d’arte’ by Puccini,” said Morrissey, who also has worked with Chicago Folks Operetta.
“The second half will be some really great hits from American musical theater. We’ll have Rodgers & Hammerstein selections. We’ll have a selection from ‘Oklahoma!’ We’ll have a selection from ‘Show Boat.’ We’ve got some Gershwin.
“We’ll end with a really wonderful piece that a lot of people love by Carole Bayer Sager. She and others wrote a piece called ‘The Prayer,’ which Andrea Bocelli made very famous.”
Unlike singers on TV shows such as “The Voice,” microphones typically are not part of opera.
“Opera singers don’t use mics. Opera singing existed before there were mics,” said Morrissey, who began church choir singing when he was in sixth or seventh grade and is now a soloist for Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Chicago.
“It’s an interesting combination of a physical, almost athletic skill combined with an artistic sensibility. You’re constantly tinkering with and fine-tuning what you do. You have to do your exercises. You have to keep your chops up.
“God or whoever gave each of us a talent, a voice some of us discovered early and others later, but that talent has to be nurtured and developed.”
Morrissey, who has degrees in music theory from DePaul University in Chicago and vocal performance from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gets a chance to shine in “An Afternoon of Enchantment” when performing a piece from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “Carousel.”
“I’m doing the ‘Soliloquy’ from Rodgers & Hammerstein. ‘Carousel’ from 1945 is a very breakthrough musical in terms of the songs and the story being completely integrated rather than a flimsy story that just gave the opportunity for stars to strut their stuff in songs,” Morrissey said.
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“It shows you how quickly popular culture changes and attitudes change. In the ‘Soliloquy’ Billy Bigelow is a carnival barker who’s got a lot of charisma, who’s very cocksure and finds out that he’s going to have this baby.
“This ‘Soliloquy’ is about his fantasizing what it’s going to be like to be a father. He assumes he’s going to have a little boy. Halfway through the piece, he thinks, ‘Wait a minute. What if it’s a girl?'”
Jessi Virtusio is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
‘An Afternoon of Enchantment’
When: 3 p.m. March 25
Where: Kesling Middle School, 306 E. 18th St., LaPorte
Tickets: $15 adults; $5 students
Information: 219-362-8262