Madge Owens, left, played by Angie Solomon, and Alan Seymour, played by Lane Johnson, perform a scene from Picnic, a play by Independence native William Inge. KU Opera will stage the piece Thursday, Saturday, and April 8, 10 and 12 at the Baustian Theater in Kansas University's Murphy Hall.

From left, Lauren Henderson, Meaghan Deiter and Sylvia Stoner-Hawkins perform a scene during a dress rehearsal of the opera Picnic. KU Opera's production opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are 0 for adults and 0 for students.

From left, Lauren Henderson, Angie Solomon and Sylvia Stoner-Hawkins rehearse a scene from Picnic. The show opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Sharon Campbell has sung plenty of operas based in 19th-century Europe while wearing ornate dresses.

She never imagined she’d be performing in an opera set on the front porches of two houses in small-town Kansas.

“I feel like I know the other characters better – they’re more like people you know,” says Campbell, a doctoral student in opera at Kansas University. “My mom grew up in the ’50s. There’s an intimacy. It’s less imagination. If we do a 19th-century thing, you have to really imagine what life is like.”

Campbell is one of the singers in the new opera “Picnic,” based on the 1953 play by William Inge, a native of Independence and a 1935 KU graduate.

The opera, written by two KU faculty members, makes its debut Thursday as part of ongoing events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Murphy Hall, where the music and dance department is housed.

The idea for the opera came from a conversation between Tim Ocel, associate professor of music and artistic director of KU’s opera program, and Forrest Pierce, assistant professor of music.

They wanted to write a Kansas-based opera, and Inge seemed like the right playwright. (“William Inge is the playwright of Kansas,” Ocel says.)

From there, it was determining which of Inge’s plays would fit best on the opera stage. The professors decided on “Picnic.”

‘Human beings’

“Picnic,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play later adapted to a 1955 movie, examines the interaction of residents in small-town Kansas. Hal Carter arrives in town on Labor Day to visit Alan Seymour, a friend from college, hoping to get a job working for Alan’s father.

But he becomes attracted to Alan’s fiancee, Madge. Meanwhile, Madge’s sister, Millie, and schoolteacher Rosemary also become attracted to Alan.

“One of the things Inge is great about is creating characters who are great human beings,” Pierce says. “There are no heroes and no villains. All of these are great people and yet messed-up human beings.”

Ocel started working on the opera’s libretto in December 2006, handing it over to Pierce to write music in June 2007. Pierce’s music gives the main characters their own themes, each in his or her own key – characters who get along well have their keys and themes mesh well musically; those who don’t sound more dissonant.

“We were looking for something that’s emotionally based and largely emotion,” Ocel says. “It felt like the meat of the piece was shared fairly equally among the eight major players.”

Regional feel

There are only a handful of other operas set in the Midwest, including “Tender Land” by Aaron Copland and a new opera, “John Brown.”

But Ocel, who grew up in Minneapolis, Minn., and lives most of the time in St. Louis, says he felt comfortable writing an opera based in the Midwest.

“If nothing else,” he says, “I feel more on my home turf.”

This is the first opera version of “Picnic,” though well-known composer Libby Larson also is writing a version commissioned by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

That may be part of the reason why Inge’s estate gave Ocel and Pierce the rights for only this run of performances at KU. But the composers have hopes that there may be opportunities for additional performances.

“I’d love for this opera to have legs to have a home in a lot of different (opera) houses,” Pierce says.

At very least, performer Dustin Peterson says, a new group of Kansans will be introduced to Inge through the opera’s performances. And Peterson, who grew up in Douglass, thinks anyone who knows Kansas can relate to “Picnic.”

“I think ‘Picnic’ is a glimpse into the lives of these individuals who lead very routine lives, even on such a holiday as Labor Day,” Peterson says. “What William Inge says is what if we drop someone unordinary into this group of people. By the end of the play, everyone’s life is different – not necessarily for the better or worse, just changed.”