Ashley McHugh has a very hard time hitting people.

Even when she’s supposed to.

“She cried yesterday at rehearsal,” said Adam Stich, the director of an opera performance scheduled for 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday at The Theatre in Doudna. “It was sweet.”

“We have fun messing around with it, but it’s like a full-out swing,” McHugh said.

Not only does her character, Rita, slap her husband, Beppo, who is played by Josh Farmer, but she pushes him around and verbally abuses him as well.

Emily Miller doesn’t see a problem with it.

“I slapped him a couple times just to show that it could be done,” she said.

This is something McHugh didn’t expect when she signed up for her Music Theatre and Opera class.

The junior music education major, along with the seven others in her class and five extra people who’ve volunteered to help are taking part in a production that hasn’t been at Eastern for years.

The class is performing three opera scenes that they’ve combined together and named “A Comedic Evening of Overbearing and Manipulative Women and the Men Who Love Them.”

The operas the Music Theatre and Opera class will perform are all comedies and in English.

Rita

The first scene will be from “Rita.” In this opera, Rita’s husband, Beppo, has done something he knows his wife will not like.

As the opera goes on, he’s trying to suck up to Rita so that he won’t get in trouble.

“(But) when she finds out, all hell breaks loose,” McHugh said.

McHugh added that there is an intense part of the opera where the two are debating why they even married each other in the first place.

The scene gives an example of what the more than 400-year-old genre of opera does: It relates to people’s lives.

This is no different for McHugh.

“I’m in a relationship,” she said. “And (my boyfriend’s) seen the bad parts of me come out. It’s fun to relate to that; it’s even more fun to try and magnify such drastic characteristics and extreme behaviors and ideas.”

La Canterina

The plot of “La Canterina,” or “The Songstress,” follows the life of a young singer, named Gasperina, played by Charity Hickox, who has a music teacher that is in love with her.

The singer’s mother, Appolonia, is a manipulative woman who wants the best for her daughter.

Miller, who is a junior music education major, plays Apollonia. She has a lot of fun with her part.

“We have to be really big and over the top and just kind of crazy, so the hardest part was getting out of the box and out of the show and letting the character really jump out,” Miller said. “At one point, I throw myself on the floor because I’m having a fit.”

Joe Amato, who is also a junior music education major, plays Don Pelagio, the music teacher who is trying to woo the singer.

Amato said his character is a rich old man who provides for his student, such as paying for her apartment and living expenses.

Miller thinks the fact that Amato’s character is in love with the singer is comical.

“There are a lot of really funny innuendos,” she said.

Amato said he has enjoyed working with his character.

“It’s a little bit of a stretch getting that real kind of bumbling personality, just floating and fawning after this woman,” he said. “It’s easy to think of on the surface -I’m gonna be stupid, I’m gonna love her, I’m gonna be arrogant – but then to make it really big so that it’s funny, that’s a whole ‘nother ball game.”

Amato and Miller agree that another character played by Amanda Ponkauskas adds to the hilarity of the show, because as designed in the script, she, as a female, will be playing a male role.

Ponkauska’s character is also in love with the young singer, but is only interested in what he can get from her.

Little Harlequinade

Little Harlequinade is the intermezzo of the performance.

An intermezzo is a short opera performance with entertainment of light character.

Stich said they decided to set Little Harlequinade in modern times.

The story is of two grooms and one bride.

The two grooms show up to marry the bride on the same day, and they are fighting over her.

But the bride, who is played by McHugh, tricks them into turning herself into an ugly witch.

The two grooms see that she’s turned into this ugly witch and decide that they both don’t want to marry her anymore.

When McHugh’s character turns back into her normal form, she tells both of the grooms that they are too shallow and she doesn’t want either of them.

“It’s like Aesop’s fables,” McHugh said.

“They come forward and they sing this trio that’s all about the moral and it’s pretty funny,” Stich said.

Farmer, as well as Zach Wcislo are also involved in this opera.

Amato said the 12 people have had a great time practicing with one another.

McHugh said that participating in opera is something totally different than she’s ever done before.

“It’s definitely a struggle because it’s something I’ve never done before, but it’s good to experiment and open up your mind to certain aspects,” she said.

Charity Hickox, who plays Rita, and Emily Miller, who plays Apollonia, act out a scene during Monday’s dress rehearsal at Doudna Fine Arts Center of “A Comedic Evening of Overbearing and Manipulative Women… and the Men who Love Them”. The play is compr

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