Whose libretto is it, anyway? Chicago opera company takes on improv

Chicago Tribune

09-06-2025

We're at a pizza parlor, listening to 'The Perversity of Captain Morgan.' This opera has everything: drunk pirates, 'horny fish,' a preteen stowaway from Colorado, and a character referred to only as Peasant Susan.
Musically, 'Captain Morgan' sounds a bit like Mozart's handiwork — and it's highly possible the potty-mouthed composer himself might have snickered at the absurd plot. It has an overture, with a lighthearted onstage pantomime. It boasts a mix of aria and recitativo secco, or recitative accompanied by the harpsichord (in this case, an electric keyboard playing with a patch). It even ends with a Mozartean, all-cast finale.
But this opera isn't from the 18th century. It's very contemporary — as in, it's being made up on the spot.
Welcome to Chicago Fringe Opera's 'Op*erratic.' Every Wednesday night at Borelli's Pizzeria in Lincoln Square, cycling troupes of singers improvise a half-hour-long opera based on audience suggestions.
George Cederquist, the company's producing artistic director, says he's long used improv as a teaching tool in North Park University's theater department. After honing his skills further through a summer intensive at Annoyance Theatre, he wondered what it might look like to apply what he learned to opera.
'Improv is essentially putting on your own mask before assisting others,' Cederquist told me between sets at Borelli's. 'When you go into a scene making a really strong choice, that allows everybody else in the scene to know what's going on.'
After two preliminary improv classes at North Park University earlier this year, 18 singers rehearsed together from March through mid-May to prepare for this summer run of shows. A few participants — like mezzo-soprano Molly Clementz, the matriarch of last week's brood of 'horny fish' — had improv experience. Others didn't.
All, however, were fusing opera and improv comedy for the first time. For some cast members, the experience scratched a secret itch. Mezzo-soprano Evita Trembley tried out for her high school improv team but didn't make the cut. (She got some of the evening's biggest laughs as a misbegotten shark-slash-mermaid.) Soprano Allison Mann says she used to play a DIY version of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' in her childhood living room.
'So, of course, I jumped on this opportunity,' Mann says.
Though Chicago Fringe runs on a tiny budget, it offered the classes to participants for free — an important tenet for Cederquist, who sees the company as counteracting industry 'gatekeepers.' That alone made the risk worth taking for singers like Trembley.
'They made it really accessible to singers — especially now, when everyone's having a hard time financially,' she says. 'In opera, we're all just gigging it out here.'
'Op*erratic' was originally billed as an hour-long improvised opera. That proved to be a lift, so the final version — presented now through July 2 — presents popular short-form improv games, like 'Freeze,' 'Park Bench' and 'Sex with me is like …,' before launching into the main event.
Through it all, Brian Rasmussen mans the keys with quick-thinking brilliance. During a 'Freeze' set that involved a giant crab, he breezily plunked out the hook to 'Under the Sea.' Later, as the fish improvised an aria with a falling two-note refrain ('… very , he echoed the same motif in his accompaniment.
Rasmussen is already an experienced improviser, mostly in the musical theater world. Improvising like Mozart, though? That was new.
'A lot of times when I'm improvising, it's either a lot of pastiche, or it's just what I would do as a composer. Here, we're imitating a certain style,' says Rasmussen, himself an operatic tenor. 'I'm doing, like, music theory analysis in my head while I'm playing.'
Once the cast gained confidence — whether in the idiom, or in improv itself — the next challenge was, ironically, holding back. Singers had to listen closely to make sure they weren't stepping on each other's toes.
'It's just in our nature,' Trembley says. 'We all want to sing, and we want to sing big.'
The cast throws all hesitation to the wind by show's end. Like so many great Mozart finales, the finale to last week's show teemed with vocal polyphony. Lines danced in fugue, or interlaced in duos and trios.
The central refrain of that grand chorus, by the way? 'She secreted.' Depending on what night you go to 'Op*erratic,' the bodily fluids invoked may vary. But the laughs? Sempre forte.
'Op*erratic' runs 7:30 p.m. every Wednesday through July 2 at Borelli's Pizzeria, 2124 W. Lawrence Ave.; $15 suggested donation, chicagofringeopera.com
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.