A group of local singers is presenting the 20th-century opera “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Portland next week, and they are hoping it will be the first of a series that changes the way Mainers look at the classic form of musical theater.
“It sort of does bust a lot of those myths about opera,” said Lauren Yokabaskas, one of the show’s producers.
Yokabaskas, 33, grew up in Cape Elizabeth, and together with fellow Mainers and opera singers Sable Strout and Aaren Rivard have founded a local opera company, Opera in the Pines. She said she views the company as one way to help rebuild the state’s artistic community post-pandemic.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t have this connection to opera,” she said.
Yokabaskas has a passion for singing as a storytelling vehicle. She grew up singing in choir, and while attending State University of New York’s Purchase College in White Plains, N.Y., she saw a performance of Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” in 2009. She said seeing a person on stage producing such a powerful sound was a life-changing moment.
“It just seemed like a superpower to me. I was just instantly excited by it,” she said.
Yokabaskas was living in New York City, but came back to Maine when the pandemic hit. She said she met Strout and Rivard in 2011 while singing together at Opera Maine, and their fast friendship quickly became a partnership with Opera in the Pines.
“It grew out of performing on a local level, and recognizing the need for something different,” Yokabaskas said.
But the upcoming production, scheduled for Thursday and Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Maine Jewish Museum, will not have the grandness and ceremony one normally associates with an opera production and that, Yokabaskas said, is by design. The entire piece will last only 90 minutes, and will feature a single singer, Rachel Policar, a Jewish soprano from New York City. Rather than a sweeping orchestra, Policar will be accompanied by one musician, pianist Tina Davis.
“It’s going to be a really intimate experience,” Yokabaskas said.
Yokabaskas said the company believes The Diary of Anne Frank will be more accessible to a general audience than, say, an Italian work. It was written by Gregory Frid in English in 1968, and is based on the famous diary Frank kept while hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic in the 1940s. Even people who have not read the diary, Yokabaskas said, are sure to be familiar with it and will be able to follow the opera easily.
“You don’t have to do quite so much homework,” she said.
Ticket prices are $35, with $25 student tickets and other student discounts available, much less expensive than opera tickets in New York City might cost. Yokabaskas said she hopes to entice more people in Maine to come to the company’s productions, especially those who have not thought of themselves as opera fans before now. She said many of her friends asked what to wear, thinking that they needed to dress in fancy, expensive evening clothes.
“(I told them) you can wear a ball gown, you can wear your Bean boots. I don’t care. I just want you to come,” she said.
For more information, or to buy tickets, visit Operainthepines.com.