Marla Forbes grew up steeped in the operas that her mother, a trained singer, played at home. But for practical reasons, Anne Forbes discouraged her daughter from pursuing a career as a vocalist. Instead, with a Kellogg MBA in hand, Forbes spent five years at Towers Perrin, an international management consulting firm. Then came marriage, two babies, and a move to Highland Park, where she opted to be a stay-at-home mom. She continued to take voice lessons, sang in the chorus for a Light Opera Works production, and represented a few opera singers. Then, in 1995, she got an idea that wed her passion to her business expertise. It occurred to her that Highland Park might appreciate some hometown opera: not the interminable, $140-a-seat extravaganzas they put on at the Lyric, but something shorter, more affordable, and audience friendly.
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So the former management consultant diligently conducted market research and developed a detailed business plan, right? Wrong. Winging it, Forbes marched into the neighborhood bank, a local real estate agency, and the grocery store where she bought her kids’ diapers, wangling enough money–$2,500–to start Opera Theatre Highland Park. In November 1996 her fledgling company opened its first minimally staged opera concert, Puccini’s La boheme, for an audience of about 100 after just two nights of rehearsal. Sporting a neck scarf to signify the fourth bohemian–a part axed to hold down costs–Lawrence Rapchak, then music director of the Chicago Opera Theater, accompanied five professional singers from a piano on the Highland Park Community House’s small stage. “We couldn’t even afford to move the piano off the stage,” recalls Forbes. “Whatever money we had went to the singers.” The vocalists, wearing homemade costumes, pitched in between scenes to move the few tables and chairs that comprised the scenery. While they schlepped, Rapchak strode through the audience offering information about the composer and opera and filling in the plot between arias.
North Shore–a state-of-the-art theater with a large stage, an orchestra pit, and raked seating for 870 people–is a far cry from the intimate, wood-floored Highland Park ballroom, which can squeeze in 300 people on padded folding chairs. Opera Theatre’s music director, Francesco Milioto, has been thinking about how to accommodate the dramatic acoustic differences between the venues. At the first rehearsal he cautioned the singers, “The only way for a chorus of eight to be heard and understood in Skokie is if you are absolutely locked together. You won’t be able to count on 50 other voices backing you up. So you’ve got to make yourselves sound like there’s 50 of you.” Filling the North Shore’s cavernous stage poses yet another hurdle. Director Anne Marie Lewis has suggested leaving all the set pieces onstage and lighting up portions of the stage only as they’re used. The vertical space on the new stage also looms large. Lewis and the company’s costume designer, Elizabeth Powell Shaffer, contemplate filling it with large swaths of rented fabric, or purchasing rolls of gauze to dye.
Along the way Forbes has relinquished her directorial responsibilities. Lewis, a soprano who debuted at Opera Theatre as Mimi in La boheme and who directed last year’s Madame Butterfly, says that Opera Theatre is still an “everybody helps out” kind of place, where as director she pitches in to figure out where to find costumes and how to fill the space of a larger theater. She also wrote the dramatic script that will set up each scene’s action by turning the story into a flashback. She says, “For the narrator I chose Violetta’s housekeeper Annina, who, years after Violetta’s death, looks back in her diary to recall the events of the opera.” In mid-April, when Lewis donned her performing hat to make her Carnegie Hall debut, singing the soprano solo parts of several choral works, Forbes pinch-hit as dramatic director for a few rehearsals.
