1526 Broadway, Detroit; 313-237-7464; michiganopera.org
There's one more set of performances in this year's Michigan Opera Theatre season — Ruggero Leoncavallo's 1892 classic I Pagliacci, running May 12-20. It's also the last chance of the season for the uninitiated to be ushered into the art form of opera by Wallace Peace, aka Dr. Opera. The good doctor operates via pre-show talks that come with the price of admission and start an hour before curtain time. Peace delivers the important musicological context and previews snippets of the music to come, for sure. But, moreover, he makes sure you understand, as only a natural raconteur can, that opera's over-the-top yarns of love, lust, longing, loss, treachery, betrayal, adultery, greed and mayhem are rollicking good fun, not to mention the precondition for shamelessly ravishing music. His crowd is mostly staunch opera fans, but for the curious and newbies, there's no better welcome to the circle of devotees.
