By Janelle Gelfand
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The audience will be in on the making of an opera, when Sorg Opera presents A Stranger's Tale, by composer and Sorg Opera general director Curtis Tucker and author Nelson Sheeley, this weekend in Sorg Opera House, Middletown.

IF YOU GO

What: Sorg Opera's I Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo and A Stranger's Tale, by Curtis Tucker and Nelson Sheeley (the latter is a workshop production); with singers Ravil Atlas, Laura Pfortmiller, Galen Scott Bower, Paris Cheffer, Richard Furmon, Greg Procaccino When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Where: Sorg Opera House, Middletown Tickets: $29-$48; students $14.50-$24. 425-0180 or Web site

"This is unique, because the public will be a part of it, which I think is as it should be," says Sheeley, a playwright and stage director who wrote the libretto. "When push comes to shove, it's not the experts - the composers and musicians - who will be paying for the tickets."

The workshop will follow a complete staging of Leoncavallo's classic opera, I Pagliacci. The four-member cast will perform with scores, accompanied by piano. Local experts will moderate the audience "talk-back" sessions: Cincinnati Opera's Nicholas Muni and Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati's D. Lynn Meyers on Friday; freelance critic Charles Parsons and Marcus Kuchle, of the Cincinnati Opera, on Saturday.

"One usually gets the skeleton of how the piece moves dramaturgically and a sense of how the composer writes for the voice," says Cincinnati Opera artistic director Muni. Since a workshop is basically a "sketch," the opera could sound quite different when it is premiered next season with a seven-piece orchestra, he adds.

Sandra Bernhard, chair of the Opera Department of the University of Cincinnati College- Conservatory of Music, says that a workshop provides valuable information for the composer and librettist. "These kinds of experiences are good to listen to, because this is how your audience will react to your piece," she says.

Indeed, it's still a work in progress - the composer finished one scene just last week. Sorg's board of trustees commissioned the chamber opera a year ago.

"When we got the commission, Curt and I both looked at each other and said, 'What do we do now?' Neither of us had ever worked on a project like this," admits Sheeley, 62, a New York resident who has directed opera for 15 years. But their collaboration clicked.

"I wrote an aria, and (Tucker) liked it and set it to music, and it went from there," says Sheeley, who has written six plays but never an opera libretto.

"It was give-and-take."

The two collaborated on the plot, too. The company will mount the world premiere of A Stranger's Tale, as a companion to Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale in April 2005. Where the latter is a Faustian story about a soldier who makes a deal with devil, A Stranger's Tale tells of a homeless man who brings healing and hope to those he encounters.

"He may be a divine figure - or maybe a homeless man," says Sheeley. "It's up to the audience to decide that."

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com