A True Opera by All Accounts

Two years ago, composer John Biggs, one of Ventura’s illustrious musical residents, put on what could reasonably be called the musical event of the summer, a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Ernest” called “Ernest Worthing.”

Especially in Ventura, where opera is still a medium in search of an outlet, the production, put on by the Ventura College Opera Workshop, made news and drew plenty of avid fans.

Talking this week about his new effort “Hobson’s Choice,” opening tonight at Ventura College, Biggs conceded that, although “Ernest Worthing” was a success, he has downgraded it in his mind to a musical play. Songs were woven around a sizable amount of dialogue.

The news of the day, then, is that his new project is Biggs’ first official opera, to be presented with a chamber ensemble.

“This one is an opera by all accounts,” Biggs said.

“It’s sung throughout, with some spoken dialogue, but very little.”

Having taken “13 months and six days” to complete the writing and working out the score on computer, Biggs reports that “it’s the biggest project I’ve ever done, and I’m really at the point of exhaustion. Last night, I just handed [the orchestra] the overture, the last thing out of the computer.”

As it turns out, the subject for Biggs’ latest effort might have been something altogether different from Harold Brighouse’s stage play.

Biggs had his sights set on an opera based on “Tarzan,” but ran into a brick wall of legal obstacles from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and Disney, which has secured the rights to musical treatments of “Tarzan.”

While looking around for a new subject to tackle, he came upon the title “Hobson’s Choice,” a stage play by British playwright Brighouse that premiered in 1916 and was brought to the screen in a 1954 version. “It’s one of my favorite all-time films,” Biggs said.

“It was David Lean’s first directorial job. Charles Laughton was in the lead. I just said, ‘That’s it.’

“It’s got the three daughters, it’s got the blustery father, it’s got the two suitors, the old boot maker. The story is the star, as far as I’m concerned. I remember, in detail, that film and its characters. It’s the story of a transformation of a lowly boot maker into a man who owns his own shop.”

Returning from the “Ernest Worthing” project are director Vicki Harrop and producer Linda Ottsen, and the cast includes Gene Brundage in the starring role, as the boot maker.

Biggs and Ottsen first scouted Brundage when he sang in “Sweeney Todd” in Thousand Oaks. Biggs discovered that Brundage, based in Granada Hills, had sung in the Catholic boy’s choir run by Biggs’ father in Los Angeles and had gone to school with Biggs’ sister.

“Sixty years later,” Biggs said, “he’s singing the lead in my opera, and he went to grammar school with me. We went on this annual picnic to Brookside Park in Pasadena, and he was diving off the same diving boards and swimming in the same pool that I was. It’s quite a serendipitous story.”

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As for the work’s musical language, Biggs said, “I think of myself as a neo-classical. The harmonies are very palatable for an audience. They’re not stringent. It’s just a kind of a flowing harmonic style. I use keys, which I hadn’t done in a long time. It’s a very tonal piece. If you look at just the overture, it’s like Scarlatti. It’s very classical, and I think the rest of the score is somewhat that way, too. I don’t know how to liken it to anything else.”

Biggs soon will begin work on a chamber music commission from the Los Angeles-based “Pacific Serenades” concert series, to be premiered in February.

But writing music is far from his mind at the moment.

“I’m completely exhausted and am taking November off to just germinate,” he said. “It’s been the most arduous task in my entire life.”

It’s been a project, in other words, of operatic proportions.

DETAILS

“Hobson’s Choice,” a comic opera by John Biggs, based on the play by Harold Brighouse. At Ventura College Circus Theater, 4667 Telegraph Road in Ventura, from tonight through Oct. 29. Performances are Friday and Saturday (and next Thursday) at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets are $12-18; 654-6459.

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Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.