For opera lovers who pine for drama and beautiful music and the majesty of theater, a Broadway musical is an inspired choice for the Toledo Opera to stage. For people who fear or disdain opera, musical theater and drama — all sung in English — will appeal to them.

Opera is a musical on steroids, which is why it’s not unthinkable for the Toledo Opera to schedule a musical to end its 2023-2024 season.

James Norman, the co-artistic director, and director — Kevin Bylsma is co-artistic director and the head of music preparation — remembers that the only question was which musical would be musically meaty enough to warrant a full operatic treatment with first-class voices, a full 25-piece orchestra, and the creative power of the TOA. 

Ragtime, the popular, award-winning musical, based on the best-selling, award-winning book by E.L. Doctorow, was at the top of his list. Norman, who saw the original Broadway production in 1998 — and many times since — had a hunch this one would meet all of the qualifications.

“When Kevin [Bylsma] and I were looking to expand our audience and move into the Broadway musical genre like a lot of opera companies have done in the past few years, I immediately thought of Ragtime because I knew that the creative team had truly written a musical of operatic scale,” Norman said. “This show is written for highly trained voices, which is what Toledo Opera excels at.”

It’s now up for Toledo audiences to decide. The performance kicks off Friday night at 7:30 p.m., to be repeated on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Valentine Theatre, 410 Adams St. Tickets are from $39 to $129.

Norman has high hopes. 

“The ticket sales have already surpassed Romeo & Juliet,” he said, about February’s opera, written by Charles Gounod and starring soprano Kathryn Lewek and her husband tenor Zach Borichevsky.

Collision course 

Romeo & Juliet is a grand opera with the requisite tragedies that musicals and operas tell so powerfully. Ragtime’s story and music are no less powerful and tragic. Set in early 1900s America, Ragtime tells the story of three groups who moved through life without interacting thanks to societal rules and prejudices. Eventually, those groups collide.

There is Mother and Father, the wealthy white couple who live a quiet life within the roles dictated by the age with their family; Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a pianist who is delighting the generation with the new ragtime craze and yearns for the American dream, and his love, Sarah; and immigrant Tateh who assures his young daughter that life will be better in America. Those barriers break in a grand operatic way.

Soprano Raquel Suarez Groen is Mother, her first time in the role; former Toledo Opera resident tenor Brendan Boyle is Father; baritone Derrick Davis is Coalhouse Walker, Jr.; resident artist mezzo-soprano Imara Miles is Sarah; and tenor Joshua Jeremiah is Tateh.

Woven through the play are historical figures: anarchist Emma Goldman; magician Harry Houdini, sung by resident artist baritone Evan Fleming; industrial titans of the day like Henry Ford, sung by resident artist tenor Jon Suek, and J.P. Morgan; the notorious Evelyn Nesbit, sung by resident artist soprano Sara Mortensen; and the early civil rights leader Booker T. Washington.

True to its title, the music is based on the ragtime popular from the end of the 19th century into the 1920s, which morphed into jazz.

Ragtime employed “ragged” or syncopated dance beats of African-American banjo styles and Western European music. Dancers turkey trotted, duck waddled, kangaroo hopped, and cake walked to piano “rags” by Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Eubie Blake, and May Aufderheide. The character Coalhouse Walker, Jr., is loosely based on Joplin, the king of the rags, although Joplin did not meet his end in such a violent way.

Conductor J. Ernest Green returns to Toledo to conduct the musical for the first time. Of course, the music, the soaring, melodic score composed by Stephen Flaherty, that draws the listener into the story, also drew Green to take on the piece. 

“Much of the music incorporates syncopation (emphasizing weak beats or pulses as opposed to strong beats),” Green said. “This gives the music a jazzy feel that captures the character of the early 20th century.”

As in opera, each character “has its own music track,” he said. 

“The composers ... juxtapose the syncopated sections with more ‘squared off’ sections for some of the leads which delineate the gap between the different groups represented in the show.

“This show is a true melding of the worlds of opera and musical theater.”

It isn’t a big stretch to go from opera to Broadway and back again, but Joshua Jeremiah, playing Tateh for the first time, said that he does have to adjust.

“For musicals, the emphasis is on the story,” he said.

There’s a noticeable difference between singing Flaherty’s music and covering Alberich, a character in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which he will sing after Jewish immigrant Tateh. 

“I think what most attracted me to Tateh is his overwhelming love and care for his daughter,” Jeremiah said. “As a relatively new father myself, and someone that gets to spend most of my days with my son when I'm not on the road, having that relationship be his guiding star was an easy way into the role.” 

“[Tateh] really is such a positive force in what otherwise is a very emotionally heavy and complex show,” he added.

After singing Alberich, Jeremiah said, he is set to sing selections from Giacomo Puccini’s operas in Portland.

Both genres prize music and storylines.

“I think storytelling should always be at the forefront of both opera and musical theater, however, I think opera has a tendency to drift toward admiring the beauty of the voice, while musical theater tends to drift toward unrelenting spectacle,” Jeremiah said. “There is a wonderful sweet spot that I try to achieve where the singing is lovely — when it is supposed to be — the decisions that the characters make are justified by truthful acting choices, and the emotional journey of the character is clear to the audience.”

Challenging norms 

Raquel Suarez Groen is noted for her role as Carlotta Giudicelli in the Phantom of the Opera, but she is no stranger to opera, singing in Carmen, L’Elisir d’Amore, and The Marriage of Figaro to name a few. 

The role of Mother is new but familiar all the same. She makes a critical decision on her own in her husband’s absence that sets the wheels in motion: She discovers an infant child and takes the infant, who is Black, and the child’s mother, into her home. Father would have been the one to make the decision. He would have said no, Suarez Groen said.

“[Mother] undergoes the most significant transformation in the show, standing up for her beliefs and making choices that go against societal norms,” Suarez Groen said. “This decision was particularly significant during the Gilded Age when women had limited freedom to make decisions for their families.”

Though the Gilded Age was dying in the early 1900s, the roles of women and others had been rigidly in place for many generations, making Mother’s decision all the more daring.

“As someone from an immigrant family, this story holds a special place in my heart, Suarez Groen said. “Ragtime's narrative remains relevant today, highlighting both the progress we've made as a society and the work that still needs to be done.”

The role is juicy musically as well, she said.

 “The music in Ragtime is also breathtaking. Mother has two songs, one of which is a powerful ballad.” 

Derrick Davis sings Coalhouse Walker, Jr., the pianist who thinks that his version of the American Dream is within his grasp. By the end, he has lost everything to racism, and he has nothing left to lose but his life thanks to racism, said Davis, who is playing the character for the second time.

“[Coalhouse] exemplifies the deeply human desire to be the most successful version of oneself, but because his humanity is housed in black skin, there is a repeated onslaught against him that ultimately leads him to fight back with the utmost morale,” Davis said by email. “When that fight is proven futile, he is left no choice but to fight more aggressively.

“Though set in the early 1900s, this fight still exists today and is what draws me back to telling this story, holding up a mirror to my country.”

Though classically trained, Davis says he’s more at home on the musical theater stage, though he says he loves them both.

“For me, opera celebrates the near perfection of vocal technique and performance in an artist,” he said. “My gift shines most when conveying the emotion of the character pushes those boundaries a bit and allows for the imperfection of life to be shown through the vocal moments without sacrificing technique. I simply have found that I am better suited to musical theater.”

While opera might have some dance, some ballet, in a scene or two, the focus is not on anyone’s feet. In musicals, dance is as necessary as songs, and in Ragtime, that’s especially true, says Domonique Glover, who returns to the Toledo Opera after his exhilarating choreography in 2022’s Merry Widow. He’s choreographed Ragtime once before.

Don’t look for any dances called the Turkey Trot or the Bear.

“I did not include the popular dances of that time. I more so went with the feeling I got from the music,” he said. “For instance, the Getting Ready Rag is all feel-good music, a group of familiar people having a fun time. I threw in jazz and tap elements because those movements are often lively.”

Lively, yes, but Ragtime is also heavy with tragedy. The musical has its share of humor, “feel-good” music and dancing as well. There’s enough operatic elements for opera lovers, and enough musical theater — and English — for those who don’t care for opera.

It’s a win-win for everybody.

First Published April 18, 2024, 12:00 p.m.