The Western Michigan University Opera Workshop will present a double bill of Giacomo Puccini’s miracle opera Sister Angelica combined with Ravel’s rollicking bedroom farce The Spanish Hour on February 16 and 17, 2019. The Saturday performance will begin at 7 p.m. and the Sunday performance at 5 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Dalton Center on the WMU campus.

Sister Angelica concerns the harsh events that rock the life and imperil the soul of a young nun in a convent in 19^th century Italy. Though she was nobly born, her family banished her to the convent after she bore a son out of wedlock. Her aunt comes to ask her to sign over all of her worldly goods to her sister who is getting married. In the course of this encounter, Angelica receives tragic news that shakes her and her faith to the core. Only divine intervention can save her from eternal damnation. As can be expected, Puccini sets this poignant story with haunting melodies and lots of colorful characterizations.

Though composed only a few years earlier than Sister Angelica, The Spanish Hour could not be more different in tone. Concepción, wife of the town clockmaker, eagerly awaits his departure so that she can entertain her lover Gonzalve. Their rendezvous is thwarted not only by her lover’s excessively poetic impulses, but by another more wealthy suitor and a rather cloddish muleteer with a broken watch. As each new admirer arrives, she hides the last one in the large grandfather clocks and persuades the muleteer to transport the clocks up to her bedroom. When the clockmaker returns, the suitors are all persuaded to purchase clocks, since why else would they possibly be there?

The performances, featuring two casts totaling over 25 talented students, will be staged by WMU Director of Opera Carl Ratner and conducted by graduate student Austin McWilliams. They will be accompanied at the piano by Juan Sebastian Avendaño supplemented with harp and percussion.