folksinger Pop Wagner
Since pushing back from the anchor’s desk at WCCO in 2010, Don Shelby has gone to college, built a house, grown his hair out, cut it off, written columns, studied playwriting, and launched a new career: actor.
Wearing fishnets and heels, he was the narrator in “The Rocky Horror Show” at the Lab Theater. He wrote an original Sherlock Holmes radio play, “The Barrington Ransom,” for the Lakes Area Theatre in Alexandria and starred as Holmes. He performed the one-man show “Mark Twain: Life in the Mississippi” at the Pioneer Place Theater in St. Cloud.
With Sally Wingert, Linda Kelsey, Tod Peterson and other local theater luminaries, Shelby took part in a staged reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play “8,” about California’s Proposition 8 trial. He recently finished a one-night stint as C. Walton Lillehei, who invented open-heart surgery, at a benefit for the U’s Lillehei Heart Institute. And he’s currently in talks with the History Theater to create a play about Lillehei and Earl Bakken, founder of Medtronic and inventor of the pacemaker. (Shelby had surgery in 2004 to repair a hole in his heart.)
But first, he’ll play the title role in the tallest tale of all.
You can see – make that hear – Shelby this weekend in the VocalEssence production of “Paul Bunyan,” an operetta by Benjamin Britten with libretto by W.H. Auden. Directed by Vern Sutton, conducted by Philip Brunelle, it features Shelby as the voice of Bunyan. He never appears on stage. When he speaks, the other characters look up, way up, because Bunyan is as tall as the Empire State Building.
We asked Shelby, “Do you feel as tall as the Empire State Building?” He said, “I do. Actually, taller. Whatever that building is in Malaysia. We have to adjust for the modern age. A few years ago, I would have felt as tall as the Sears Tower.”
'People know that voice'
We asked Brunelle, “Why cast Don Shelby?” He said, “Because of his voice. I thought – who in the Twin Cities has a really beautiful voice? A voice that people would recognize? People know that voice. And Don has taken to the part. He’s a big-time environmentalist, and ‘Paul Bunyan’ is about saving the Earth.”
The operetta has a clear environmental message. It’s not only about chopping down trees, but also about reforestation and responsible stewardship. And life in a lumber camp, birth, death, love, beans, Swedes, bookkeeping, philosophical musings, and a fight with a foregone conclusion.
How did an English composer and poet end up creating a musical drama about an American folk hero? Both were in America at the time. Auden left England for New York in January 1939 and spent most of the rest of his life here, becoming an American citizen in 1946. Britten and his life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, followed Auden and remained in the States until April 1942.
Britten's first opera
Composed in 1941, Britten’s score pays homage to American music. “He was living in New York, and he loved Broadway and the musicals,” Brunelle said. “If you didn’t know this piece was by Britten, you might hear it and think, ‘Who’s the composer?’ Parts sound like Gershwin, parts like Kurt Weill, parts like Rodgers and Hammerstein. He wanted to salute all the styles of America … This was Britten’s first opera. It's very different from the ‘War Requiem’ and some of the grand operas he wrote. It has hallmarks of Britten, but a much lighter touch.”
We asked Shelby, “Did you know this work before Brunelle tapped you for the part?” He said, “I did. I attended the music conservatory at the University of Cincinnati, which at that time was rated above Juilliard. I know how to say ‘libretto.’ I also know a little about a double-bit axe.”
What is it like to play a character who’s never on stage? “You’re not physically limited. I use the Stanislavski approach; I inhabit the character. I feel that I can be as large as I want to be. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t put on stilts. My voice comes out of the third balcony, basically. It comes out of the sky.”
VocalEssence (then known as the Plymouth Music Series) first performed “Paul Bunyan” at the Ordway in 1987 and was invited to bring it to England’s Aldeburgh Music Festival (founded by Britten) in 1988. A call came in from the newly formed record label Virgin Classics; could they feature “Paul Bunyan” as one of their 1988 launch CDs? The CD won a Gramophone Award (England’s Grammy) for Best Opera Recording.
100th anniversary of Britten's birth
We asked Brunelle, “Why reprise it now?” He explained, “This year being the 100th anniversary of Britten’s birth, it was time to bring it back. It’s basically an all-new cast. The young lovers in the earlier version aren’t young now. Only a few of us from the old cast are repeating. Vern Sutton is still staging it. Pop Wagner is returning as the ballad singer, and Jim Bohn as the logging camp foreman, Hel Helson; he can be any age. And the conductor! Don’t forget him.”
We asked Shelby about the publicity photo. Is that really him holding a tiny Pop Wagner? “It is,” he said. “And we’re both actual size.”
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“Paul Bunyan” is a semi-staged production with a full cast, the VocalEssence Chorus & Ensemble Singers, and a live 41-piece orchestra. Two nights only: Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27. Both performances are at 8 p.m. at the Ted Mann Concert Hall. Saturday’s is preceded by a Concert Conversation with John Birge and Vern Sutton at 7 p.m. FMI and tickets ($40-$20).