Opera Humor: Aria Kidding?

B.J. Ward loves opera. No, really.

She just likes to goose it every now and then. With all those melodramatic plots stuffed with suffering heroines, what’s not to tease?

Her “Stand-Up Opera” gives little noogies to the works of Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, Bizet, Dvorak and Korngold. But there’s a method to her madcap: Through humor, Ward believes she can make opera more accessible.

“Going to the opera can be a dead thing for many people,” said Ward, who brings “Stand-Up Opera” to the Curtis Theatre in Brea on Friday and Saturday. “But when it’s good, it can take you to another plane.

“It certainly helps when you understand more of what’s going on. I try to do that by having some fun. There’s a lot of humor in opera, it doesn’t take much to see that.”

In her show, Ward introduces famous (and not-so-famous) arias (that she sings straight) with a bit of history, always lubricated by winking irreverence. She thinks of “La Boheme” and sees a tabloid headline: “Seamstress Coughs to Death Before Horrified Onlookers!” And what about Dvorak’s “Rusalka,” based on a Czech fairy tale of a tragic water nymph who longs to marry a landlubber prince?

“Basically, it’s Disney’s “Little Mermaid” . . . with a Quentin Tarantino ending,” she cracked. “ ‘Pulp Mermaid,’ ‘Reservoir Nymph.’ ”

The quips go on and on, often with the help of her pianist, Joseph Thalken, who’s been performing with her for two years. They talk about relevant stuff--like why only 1% of all the operas written in the last 400 years are actually staged today--but mostly get silly.

“I give him a singing lesson, that sort of thing,” Ward said. “He can be very funny, believe me.”

When it comes to the singing, however, both are serious.

“The jokes, they’re in between,” she said. “If people laugh when I’m singing, there’s something very wrong with what I’m doing.”

The soprano has performed variations of “Stand-Up Opera” since the early ‘90s, not too long after taking time from her busy schedule doing voice-overs for cartoons and commercials to study opera. She made a good living playing everything from a bug in Raid ads to Betty Rubble in the new “Flintstones” TV show to Velma in “Scooby-Doo” videos, but knew something was missing.

Even her singing at the time--Ward has been in musicals and a backup for Burt Bacharach in Las Vegas, among other gigs--wasn’t satisfying enough. She wanted a bigger challenge, and opera was it. Besides, Ward’s classical training had started more than 30 years ago, when she was first taught opera in high school in Wilmington, Del.

But it wasn’t until she began her opera instruction in Los Angeles in 1989 that her interest fully blossomed. Soon, it became a family affair.

“After about four or five months of study, my teacher said I should share this with people,” Ward recalled. “I’d have friends over [to her home in Sherman Oaks] and my husband [television producer and director Gordon Hunt, father of actress Helen Hunt] would make omelets.

“I’d say something funny about an aria like, ‘This is like a country-and-western song except there isn’t a truck involved,’ and people seemed to like it. But mainly I think they came for the omelets.”

Her husband, though, “grew tired of making them” and Ward had to look for another venue. A friend who ran a Hollywood nightclub stepped in, saying he’d even serve omelets to anyone who showed up.

They called it “Opera and Omelets,” which was later changed to “Stand-Up Opera” when Ward began touring. She’s since performed in cabarets and larger theaters, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.

Not only has Ward expanded her singing range over the years, but she’s learned quite a bit about opera history.

Today, of course, most people don’t go to the opera. If it’s not the expensive ticket prices, it’s the high-brow aura. Ward said she can relate to the feeling of not fitting in.

“Even though I always loved the singing, it would have been harder 15 years ago to get me to go to opera. If someone said they had tickets, I would have probably rather watched TV or done my hair.

“It just seemed like such a private club, with only eggheads in it. But then [after she started studying it] a light went off in my head. I could hear that something special was going on, I could feel it. I would love if other people could feel that, too, and get close to it.”

SHOW TIMES

B.J. Ward performs “Stand-Up Opera,” Curtis Theatre in the Brea Civic and Cultural Center, 1 Civic Center Circle. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m. $17 to $27. A free wine tasting starts at 7 p.m. (714) 990-7722.