Ethan Kan, Contributing Photographer

The operatic soprano expects to die almost every time she takes the stage. If she does not survive, she utters her final note in tragedy and dies an ignominious death. 

Simply put, the world of opera is a man’s world.

That is the narrative that the Opera Theatre of Yale College, or OTYC, is seeking to challenge with their newest production, “SIX: an Opera Cabaret,” which will run from Oct. 24 to 26 at the Crescent Underground Theater. The show, inspired by “SIX The Musical,” will offer six leading ladies — from iconic operas such as “Carmen,” “Don Giovanni” and “Salome” — the chance to reclaim their individualities, find community and tell their stories on their own terms, beyond the associations of men. 

Acknowledging that opera is a “product of its time” with “horribly antiquated” themes of “race, class, and especially sexuality and gender,” co-director Everett Tolbert-Schwartz ’26 adds that “careful study” and understanding “how attitudes have changed” allows opera singers to “perform operas in good conscience.” To him, OTYC’s new production is precisely “part of our study of how attitudes towards gender have changed.”

“SIX: an Opera Cabaret” is the first show of the OTYC fall lineup and borrows its material from its eponymous musical predecessor, which tells the story of Henry VIII’s six wives. The production is co-directed and co-written by Tolbert-Schwartz and Ava Gaughan ’26.  

The production comes at a time when classical canons, from literature and theater to ballet and art, are being scrutinized for their harmful and regressive archetypes. Scattered throughout the operatic canon are women subject to the whims of masculine insecurity, pride, aggression and manipulation. Nevertheless, the directors are hesitant to dismiss the value of opera. 

“There’s so much in opera that is real, true and interesting, and that’s true even and especially of the stories in which women are systematically harmed,” Gaughan wrote in a message to the News. 

For Gaughan, the experience of being in Calixto Bieito’s production of “Carmen” at the San Francisco Opera in 2016 shaped her approach to directing “SIX: an Opera Cabaret.”

Carmen, composed by Georges Bizet in 1875, is about a Roma woman who seduces a soldier Don José. She later falls for the torero Escamillo, driving Don José to kill her in a jealous rage. To Gaughan, the parallels between “Carmen” and “SIX: an Opera Cabaret” were immediate. 

“A story about a woman with no resources, using the only power she has to survive, but not just that, to have fun, and being murdered for it,” she says of the opera. “Why can’t that exist in the story?”

The idea for the production began as a conversation between both directors in what Tolbert-Schwartz described as a “fun but impossible, hypothetical show.” Then, Gaughan and Tolbert-Schwartz realized that it wouldn’t actually “be so impossible.”

He said that the operatic adaptation of the popular musical “bridged” the gap between opera and popular theater. 

“By taking something distinctly modern that people are very familiar with, and blending it with opera, we make it an easy entry point into the world of opera,” he said. 

Gaughan told the News that she and Tolbert-Schwartz selected six protagonists who represented different archetypes in opera. Desdemona, for instance, is murdered by Otello for “perceived sexual transgression” in his eponymous opera, while Salome is crushed when she “becomes too powerful.” 

According to Tolbert-Schwartz, the vastly different personalities showcased on the stage allows the production to explore different angles of feminist ideas within opera. 

“It was important for us to pick a diverse swath of characters with contrasting storylines so that they could represent the breadth of women’s experiences in opera, and have engaging conversations with one another,” Gaughan said. 

Gaughan and Tolbert-Schwartz drew the music of “SIX: an Opera Cabaret” from the six operas that its protagonists come from, selecting key excerpts from each opera that could function beyond their original contexts to tell the story of “SIX.” 

Tolbert-Schwartz spoke specifically of the famous Letter Duet in “The Marriage of Figaro,” where the character Susanna comes from, which was “very long” in its original form. “To bring [the songs] into a show with a more musical theater-like pacing, we needed to shorten them significantly,” he said. 

“We’re recontextualizing a lot of it — letting the characters use the music to tell their own stories, lending them an agency that isn’t always there in these songs in their native contexts,” Gaughan says. 

The directors have changed very little of the music, except for slight cuts to adjust for pacing and difficulty. This also means that they are sung in their original French, Italian or German, though surtitles will provide an English translation at the performance. 

Choosing music has proven to be one of the biggest challenges of the production. Setting aside the different languages and musical styles across the operas, Tolbert-Schwartz says that the “major contextual differences” of each song makes it “tricky” to find “both characters and songs which could be placed into ‘SIX’ and still hold up”. 

“Making sure we can help each actor understand and learn their song to the best of their ability is a really difficult task,” he says. But it is exactly this challenge that makes it so fulfilling. 

He continued, “It’s incredibly rewarding to see the characters of each of these women emerge, recontextualized, out of these opera songs.” 

This is certainly the case for Alliese Bonner ’27, who plays Carmen in “SIX: an Opera Cabaret. Bonner said that the role allows her to bring a lot of herself into the performance and said that taking on the role of Carmen has fostered a deeper appreciation for the character. 

For how it feels to play a woman in opera who finally gets to tell her story, it is simply “liberating,” said Bonner. 

“To play such a strong character from her unique perspective is a great privilege,” she said.  

ETHAN KAN