Follen Church Society

For over 40 years, the Youth and Junior Choirs of Follen Community Church have been performing Gilbert and Sullivan operettas every June. This tradition, begun by former Music Director Louise Curtis and the Follen Players’ director Marilu Nowlin, is now in the hands of the present Director of Music, Thomas Stumpf. He is ably assisted by Production Manager Holly Stumpf, who conducts the Junior Choir and is best known in Lexington as Harrington School’s music specialist; by lighting designers Tom Christman and Gordon Hardy, set designer Steve Ervin and pianist Eric Mazonson; and by a large number of enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers – the parents of the choir members! This year’s production will be “The Yeomen of the Guard – or, The Merryman and his Maid.” This opera is unusual in that Gilbert and Sullivan actually would have liked to write a serious grand opera, and the work represents their compromise: the usual topsy-turvy world of mistaken identities, of arrogant heroes and “feather-brained lasses,” of matches and mismatches, is charged with moments of true pathos and an ending that is unhappy for at least three of the characters, one of whom actually dies of a broken heart….