It’s the most popular classical composition of the 20th century; it’s also one of the most eccentric. Carmina Burana, the “scenic cantata” by Carl Orff that will be presented at the Granada Theatre on Saturday-Sunday, October 17-18, defies categorization even as it goes from triumph to triumph in the spheres of advertising, popular music, and film scoring. Relentless excerpting and recontextualizing has seen Orff’s work, and in particular the big opening number, “O fortuna imperatrix mundi,” turn up in such unlikely places as raps by P. Diddy and Nas, and even as the opening sequence of Jackass: The Movie.
What’s happening at the Granada, however, represents a turn in the other direction, away from fragmenting the piece and toward rendering it whole. This weekend’s production is nothing less than a full-scale Carmina Burana as its composer intended it, with a huge orchestra, multiple vocal soloists, a 100-voice-strong chorus, and a dozen trained dancers performing an original full-length ballet. To pull off this spectacular feat of theatrical production, four organizations have come together. Through pooling resources, the Santa Barbara Symphony, State Street Ballet, the Santa Barbara Choral Society, and the Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts have met every challenge faced by such an unusual and ambitious event.
To give an idea of just how complicated this show is logistically, consider this: The orchestra will perform for the first half of the concert onstage as they ordinarily do, and then during intermission, they will move into the pit for Carmina so that risers can be installed to accommodate the Santa Barbara Choral Society and the rest of the stage can be left open for the dancers of the State Street Ballet to perform William Soleau’s choreography. And that has to happen in half an hour or less. Thanks to the sophisticated lift installed when the theater was remodeled, the Granada is one of the only theaters in the country where this kind of scene change is even possible.