The Helianthus Contemporary Ensemble is taking a small-scale approach to grand-scale opera with its chamber opera performances this weekend.

Rather than long performances in different languages, the chamber operas are all in English and are each less 30 minutes long.

“It’s a great chance to get a taste of opera if you’ve never gone to one before,” said Matt Elliott, Great Bend sophomore and stage manager.

The ensemble, a KU organization devoted to performing music written in the last 20 years, will present three chamber operas composed, performed and produced by students. The performances will be Saturday in Swarthout Recital Hall.

Although the ensemble has performed chamber music in past semesters, this is the first time for the ensemble to perform chamber operas. A chamber opera is a smaller performance than a full-scale opera because it is shorter and has fewer characters and instrumentalists involved.

More than 30 students are performers, directors, conductors, stage managers, composers and musicians for the production, which has taken more than a year to prepare, said Forrest Pierce, assistant professor of music composition and director of the ensemble.

Stage Director Sylvia Stoner-Hawkins said this was the premiere performance for all three operas, which are based on folk tales and other pieces of literature. This created a challenge for singers, who had no recordings to listen to when preparing for the performances. This was Stoner-Hawkins’ first time staging a work by a living composer.

“You really have to be very sensitive to what they’ve created and try to mold it to a way that is respectable to their intentions,” she said.

Some of the operas also involve puppets, including a Russian horse and a Japanese bamboo spirit, made by Spencer Lott, Lawrence junior. For the three student opera composers — Dan Musselman, Joe Eidson and Andrew Trites — it is the first time all of them have written an opera and had it performed.

“These are operas that you have never heard and that no one has ever heard before,” Pierce said. “This music is very much about now, this very moment in our culture.”

Devkino Road

Composer: Dan Musselman, Burlington, N.J., doctoral student

Genre: Comedy

Setting: Russia

Inspiration for the opera: “Overseasoned, ” a story by Anton Chekhov

Plot summary: A bureaucrat is traveling to a farm and hires a peasant to take him on a horse-drawn cart the remainder of the trip. The bureaucrat gets scared because he is in an unfamiliar land, and tries to intimidate the peasant. The peasant gets scared and runs to the woods, which upsets the bureaucrat, who yells at the peasant to come back. The two men eventually meet up down the road and walk to town together.

The Bamboo Cutter and the Moon

Composer: Joe Eidson, Jefferson City, Mo., doctoral student

Genre: Folk tale

Setting: 9th/10th century Japan

Inspiration for the opera: “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” a 10th century Japanese folk tale.

Plot summary: An older woman, Také, finds a young girl, Kaguya, in her bamboo field and takes her in as a daughter. The girl grows to a beautiful young lady, and all the princes pursue her. She gets annoyed and sends the princes on impossible tasks. Eventually, she falls in love with the Japanese Emperor Mikado, but the moon spirit comes and tells Kaguya that she is from the moon and must return. Kaguya says goodbye to her family and Mikado and gives them items that grant them eternal life.

An opera scene from “The Taming of the Shrew”

Composer: Andrew Trites of Overland Park, December 2008 graduate

Genre: Comedy

Setting: Padua, Italy during the Renaissance

Inspiration for the opera: Act 2 Scene 1 from William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”

Plot summary: This scene takes place after a dinner party where all of the suitors come to the home of sisters Katherine and Bianca. Katherine ties up Bianca’s hand when she refuses to tell her which suitor she liked, and Katherine slaps Bianca’s face. Their father, Baptista, walks in and splits up the two girls. He rebukes Katherine and tries to comfort Bianca.

— — Edited by Sonya English