Preview: OperaHub's Spanish Sirens

Poetry. (C. Fernsebner)

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Spanish Sirens: Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole & Excerpts from Carmen
The Factory Theatre, 791 Tremont St.
January 23-24 (8 pm), 25 (2 pm & 4 pm)
Free!

The other night, we dropped in at the wee Factory Theatre to spy on a dress rehearsal of Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole. Bostonist suspects that the title is French for "Trapped In The Clock Case": most of its characters spend the opera's one act hiding each other and hiding from each other inside clocks, when they're not cuckolding the clockmaker. (Unlike R. Kelly's magnum opus, this farce has more than one song and, sadly, no one rhymes dresser with beretta.) Brittany Duncan sings the role of Concepción, frolicking with a poet (Daniel Erbe), a banker (Jonathan Nussman, with spats), and a sturdy muleteer (Jeffrey McEvoy) in a thicket of cardboard gears and hour hands. And she's married to a conveniently busy horloger (played with Hodgmanly aplomb by Christopher Aaron Smith).

Opening tonight, OperaHub's Spanish Sirens program will also include another Frenchman's take on the fickleness of Spanish ladies: Bizet's considerably better known (and slightly more lethal) Carmen. Tickets are free and can be reserved through OperaHub. (Tonight and Saturday night's performances are all reserved-out.)