Preview: Opera on the Cheap in the Lizard Lounge

Opera Boston Underground "Quickies"
Tonight, doors at 7:00 p.m. (Bostonist suggests getting in line early), show at 7:30 p.m.
Lizard Lounge (1667 Mass. Ave., Cambridge)
$8 cover, 21+

Opera Boston Underground is the casual, subterranean branch of Opera Boston (whose smart, cute Semele we enjoyed earlier this month) and tonight they return to the Lizard Lounge for a handful of semi-staged mini-operas, with three libretti (and one score) by the late Gian Carlo Menotti. A fistful of young Opera Boston singers—Glorivy Arroyo, Christian Figueroa, Angela Gooch, Sol Kim Bentley, Dan KKamalic, and Sepp Hammer— are scheduled to perform four works written in the 20th and 21st centuries. One of these premiered as recently as 2005: Daron Hagen's Broken Pieces is a love story told in a 20-minute scene of bathroom tile mosaic construction.

The Lizard Lounge is the Cambridge Common Restaurant's basement—there's no stage (hence the setless "semi-staged" presentation) and it's no Symphony Hall acoustically either (hence the microphones). On the other hand, the venue shares the drink menu from upstairs, where they tap a new cask-conditioned beer every Wednesday night. And nowhere else will you get to take in live opera and consume tater tots simultaneously.

Christian Figueroa photographed by Mike Ritter.