Tuning in to a silent performance

Harpo was the mute Marx Brother, Ringo was the Beatle who seldom sang, and in Pacific Chorale’s new production, Eve Himmelheber will remain silent while the stage’s other inhabitants harmonize around her.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Himmelheber has a secondary role. In fact, she plays the lead.

“The Radio Hour,” which will conclude Sunday’s program at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, takes the form of a “choral opera” — a term coined by artistic director John Alexander for a piece that combines mass singing with choreography. In this case, the chorale members replicate the sounds of a radio, vocalize the thoughts inside a woman’s head and even contort their bodies to pose as pieces of furniture in her apartment.

That left the matter of casting the woman. So Alexander turned to Himmelheber, a professor of musical theater at Cal State Fullerton, to provide the visual center for his genre-fusing production.

“If you remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoons with the angel and the devil sitting on Daffy Duck’s shoulders, and they’re sort of arguing in his head, telling him ‘No! Yes! No! Yes!’, that’s what the chorus does at many points,” Himmelheber said. “It’s not only what the character is feeling, but also the demons in her mind, the things that are making her depressed. So all I have to do is really stay available to what they are singing, both in terms of conflict and in terms of desire, and just live in the moment.”

Himmelheber has sung leads in musical theater before, but “The Radio Hour” will mark her debut as a silent actress. For that matter, it won’t be the only about-face Sunday. The chorale members will break from their usual practice of standing still during a performance.

Stage director James R. Taulli took on the task of assigning choreography to the choir, which splits into two groups for the show — one half representing the thoughts in Himmelheber’s head, the other half providing the voices for the radio that she controls with her dial. In addition to clapping, stomping and other moves, the singers occasionally dance as well, even if Himmelheber gets the major solo.

When Alexander contacted composer Jake Heggie about writing a choral opera, he envisioned a piece that would combine the sonic power of a choir with a dramatic narrative. Heggie, who debuted his 2006 work “Seeking Higher Ground: Bruce Springsteen Rocks New Orleans, April 30, 2006” with Pacific Chorale, found himself stuck on the concept.

“The big question was, what is a choral opera?” he said. “You know, choruses, they stand in one place and make beautiful sounds and do a wide range of composition, but in opera, things have to happen. There has to be action. There has to be response. There has to be a story. There has to be some kind of transformation based on the action that is moving things forward.

“And so the question was, what are we going to do with all these people on the stage? Who are they? Why are they there? What is their function?”

Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer eventually hit on a story in the vein of “Alice in Wonderland”: Nora, the protagonist, is an unhappy middle-aged woman who discovers a mystical portal into her radio, where she can rediscover her joy of living. When Nora shifts the dial, the singers change modes from choral to big band, rap, swing and even commercial jingles and static.

Has there been a choral opera before? It may be impossible to prove that there hasn’t, but Alexander and Heggie both said they can’t think of another.

“I think it’s definitely a new form that we’re creating, and I think it’s going to have a major impact on the choral world and on our canon of repertoire, because it shows it can be done,” Alexander said.

As a radio announcer might put it, stay tuned.

If You Go

What: “The Radio Hour” and other works by Pacific Chorale

Where: Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 5:30 p.m. Sunday

Cost: $19 to $129

Information: (714) 556-2787 or https://www.scfta.org