"Red Death" at the 2014 Kansas City Fringe Festival

The Mummer Opera Company will produce a new opera, Red Death, at the 2014 Kansas City Fringe Festival. Written by Bryan Colley with music by Daniel Doss, the opera is adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. Tara Varney directs her seventh collaboration with Colley at the Fringe, which includes  Khaaaaan! the Musical, Hexing Hitler/Sexing Hitler, and Chicken Heart.

Poe's famous 1842 short story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a deadly plague known as the Red Death by locking himself and other wealthy nobles in his abbey. There, they indulge in a fantastic masquerade ball to flaunt their defiance of death. The opera uses additional text from Lucretius, Ecclesiastes, and Montaigne to explore classic philosophical issues of the meaning of life and inevitablity of death.

Red Death will star operatic tenor Nathan Granner as Prince Prospero and Devon Barnes as a servant of the castle. It will feature choreography by Amy Hurrelbrink, who will join dancers Chelsea Anglemyer, Josh Atkins, Tyler Parsons, and Tiffany Powell on stage. Hurrelbrink appeared in the previous Colley/Varney Fringe productions Lingerie Shop, Khaaaaan! the Musical, Sexing Hitler and Chicken Heart.

Granner is a founding member of the Sony Masterworks recording group The American Tenors and has been featured in lead roles in L'Elisir D'amore, Cosi fan Tuta, Falstaff, and Die Zauberflote. He has received critical acclaim from The Boston Globe, The London Times, The New York Times, Opera News, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Kansas City Star, and KCMetropolis.org. A graduate of the UMKC Conservatory, he has appeared with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and performs regularly with Ben Gulley, Beau Bledsoe, Jesse Lynch and Mark Lowrey. He was also artistic director of Homecoming, an Evening with Virgil T at the Kauffman Center.

The Kansas City Fringe Festival runs July 17-27, 2014. Tickets are $10 with a $5 Fringe button. Performance dates, times, and location will be announced at kcfringe.org and jupiterkansas.com/red.