Opera Western Reserve is inviting patrons to a wedding.

The opera company’s spring gala will become an immersive setting for the short one-act opera “Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night” in Stambaugh Auditorium’s Anne K. Christman Memorial Hall.

OWR Production Director Scott Skiba said it’s a somewhat different approach than they have taken with past spring events.

“We talked about doing maybe something a little more contemporary, something a little smaller, a little more avant garde in the spring,” Skiba said.

“Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night,” composed by Dominick Argento with a libretto by John Olon-Scrymgeour, first was performed by Minnesota Opera in 1981. It is a solo, 30-minute piece built around the character of Aurelia Havisham from Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations.”

She relives the moment of her wedding day, when she was informed in a note from her fiance that there would be no wedding, and she imagines the life she could have had with him.

“I pitched the idea of the Christman Ballroom or the Powers Auditorium lobby,” Skiba said. “They’re both very elegant spaces that would work for something like this. And it could be a little immersive, you know, in terms of how it comes together.”

Playing the role of Miss Havisham will be Kate Tiemens, an OWR Emerging Artist and a spring graduate from Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory, where she studied with Skiba.

“She’s got a great voice, and it’s well suited to the repertoire,” he said. “That’s first when it comes to opera … It sits fairly high. It’s got a lot of high notes. You need somebody who can comfortably sustain that, what’s called the tessitura. It goes pretty high, it goes pretty low, but it sits rather high, so Kate’s able to do that. That checked off that very pragmatic box.

“And then along the lines of needing an individual artist to carry the evening, it’s got to be a really strong actor, and she’s a very good actress on stage and is very, very committed, very intense. I thought she had a nice balance of not only what the vocal part needs to be, but also the actress intensity to carry it off.”

With opera companies of all sizes looking to expand their audiences and attract new patrons, immersive productions have become more popular. Skiba said he hopes OWR’s event has that effect, and it also should be beneficial to Tiemans as she pursues a professional singing career.

“You’ve also got this new breed of (opera) company where it’s a little more site specific, it’s a little more immersive, it’s a little more alternative venue,” he said. “It’s not really even new anymore. That’s something that all singers coming up need to learn. It’s no longer just to learn how to perform in a proscenium. It’s, ‘Well, how do you perform if you’re in a warehouse?’

“We’re taking a site specific approach to it, because it’ll be set up as if it’s her wedding reception, her stage is essentially going to be her head table, the bride and groom table. And so I think learning how to perform in this mode is helpful, because it prepares you … You’ve had this experience in this alternative venue, so you understand how this works.”

The evening will start with a cocktail hour at 5:30 p.m. May 29, followed by a buffet dinner with cash bar at 6:15 p.m. and the performance at 7:15 p.m. Tickets start at $100 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.

If you go …

WHAT: Opera Western Reserve Spring Dinner and performance of “Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night”

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. May 29

WHERE: Anne K. Christman Memorial Hall, Stambaugh Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Ave., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets start at $100 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-259-9651.