by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor

“A Night at the Opera” was either a Marx Brothers movie or an album by Queen before Saturday night at the Rozsa Center. There, we were transported out of Houghton as the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra led us to another world, or two.

A mix of generations was represented by both the orchestra and the large crowd, not bad for a Saturday night.

The pieces chosen were familiar to all, even us rookies, beginning with Suppé’s “Poet and Peasant Overture.” It had a great, western feel to it, sounding somewhat like Copeland. At times, it seemed like the perfect music to a chase scene with a stagecoach racing through the mountains.

Then, it became calliope-like, music for a carousel. After mellowing out, when the entire orchestra played at once, it was sonic bombast, and I straightened up in my chair.

The sound of a German band segued into a waltz feel, and the “Peasant” part of the piece next became jazzed up. The ending was Beethoven-like, powerful.

Music director and conductor Joel Neves then spoke about the theme of the evening and many operas: “husbands killing wives,” which was particularly interesting since his wife, Lara, would be singing this night. He stressed that they would be “going home together and everything would be fine.”

Selections from Verdi’s “Otello, Act IV” were next, and the mourning and sadness were played out nicely by the horns and woodwinds. “Music is what feeling sounds like,” Neves reminded us, and this section proved it.

The sorrow built, then the “Willow Song” brought it home, Lara Neves’ singing over heavy bass tones. It was the perfect death song, if there can be such a thing. The soaring sadness, with flutes being birds, continued until the tympani made us jump: terror taking its place in this death march.

The subtitles allowed us to make sense of the Italian and appreciate the aura of the original music.

We moved from the dark into the light of “Ave Maria,” more spiritual and liberating, when Verdi wrote of prayers for the “innocent” and the “weak oppressed” and for “compassion.”

A pastoral feel was achieved as the instruments kicked in, and Neves’ singing floated above the sound, like a dove.

“Hail Mary . . . and at the hour of our death
Hail! Amen!”

Not a bad way to go.

At intermission, I caught up with another first-timer. “It’s really good, isn’t it?” he confessed in hushed tones.

After the break, Bizet’s “Carmen” included many more familiar tunes: “All the greatest hits in one album,” Neves joked, and it was true. We knew many of melodies.

It also started ominous, and the orchestra moved in and out of pizzicato (picking at the strings), and when they all came together, they really took us to another place.

Then the first “gypsy” feeling: Bohemian, with much counterpoint among the instruments. It all became very modern. Later, the familiar tones sounded like a soundtrack to an old baseball movie or an introduction to springtime (we can hope).

It moved into a near militaristic piece, in both cadence and power. They had our attention.

The march segued into “Habanera,” the song we all know, about love, which you never know, so Bizet tell us.

I felt the subtlety, especially in Lara's voice, until she cut loose. Then, the passion of the piece was hammered home. “If I love you, you best beware!”

Got it.

A needed instrumental break came as “Nocturne," “Chanson du Toréador,” and “La Garde Montante” sounded at times like Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” and at other times, the violins all sounded as one, even more powerful.

Then you realize, “I heard this on a commercial,” for a moment uniting high and pop culture. (Now, I’m a critic!)

Brass takes over with the flutes and piccolos leading the way and the pizzicato resumes, dancing along until “Gypsy Song.”

And the music describes their dancing, “the rhythm of the song, all hot and crazy, fevered, sweating . . . letting the whirlwind carry them along.”

That summed up the evening, too. We were carried along, a long way from Houghton, and the musicians and the Neveses deserved their long and loud standing ovation.

You could say they had the place rocking.