The owner of Vernon-based Big Apple Productions is bringing a fan favourite back to the stage in 2025.
Prior to that however, Vernon singer-producer-director-company owner Melina Schein – dubbed the Saucy Soprano, a pandemic-inspired alter ego created to help keep her sanity during two years of non-performing – will grace a Vernon stage herself.
Schein is part of the fall 2024 cast of Vancouver-based Sound The Alarm Music/Theatre production of Music of the Night, a concert celebration of the music of Andrew Llloyd Webber, which has toured to sold-out shows across Canada.
Schein and her colleagues will perform across B.C. in October, including a stop at the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at ticketseller.ca.
The celebrated professional cast, including Schein, will perform selections from 10 of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals, including Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunset Boulevard, and more.
“I love this production and how it’s evolved through the years," said Schein. "It’s a delight to sing this timeless music – especially Phantom of the Opera – in which I get to sing notes so high, only dogs can hear them.”
Schein arrived in Vernon in 1997. Then known as Melina Moore, the Argentine-born, New York-raised coloratura soprano was led to the area by love, as she likes to say, and fell immediately for the region. So much so, she never returned to the Big Apple, where she received her degree in classical voice at the renowned Juilliard School.
She created Valley Vocal Arts and Big Apple Productions, the North Okanagan's first professional theatre company which has been wowing audiences with musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Monty Python's Spamalot, Chicago, Cabaret, The Producers, and Les Miserables.
Big Apple Productions received rave reviews over the last decade for its local presentation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Schein has announced the show will be returning in March 2025 for its 10-year reunion.
During the pandemic, Schein established herself as a cook, baker and writer, gaining tens of thousands of fans to her blog, podcast and social media, and then going on to compete and win the inaugural season of Wall of Bakers on The Food Network Canada. Since then, she has been consulting with television producers to bring an original show combining food and opera to network TV
To follow Schein, Big Apple Productions and Valley Vocal Arts (Schein’s vocal training school she established in 2001), visit www.melinascheinmusic.com.
