About the Author

Gregg Opelka has written music and lyrics for eight musicals produced in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. He has also written new lyrics for seven operettas first produced at Light Opera Works in Evanston, Illinois.

Marrying Terry, a New Year’s Eve comedy is Gregg’s only play without music. In 2006 it had amateur productions in Tipp City Ohio at Tipp City Players and in Chesterton Indiana at Fourth Street Theater. Marrying Terry was inspired in part by the Russian film Irony of Fate and in part by a real occurrence at a New Orleans hotel.
If you would like to order a $10 perusal script for Marrying Terry, simply click the "Order a Script" link to make a Paypal payment, and your script will be mailed to you.

After numerous U.S. productions, his chanson-musical La Vie Ennui opened a one-year run in October 2004 at the Madach Theatre in Budapest, Hungary under the title C’est la Vie. It was produced in December of 2007 at the Vienna English Project and opened in Valencia Spain in February of 2007.

Gregg has penned music and lyrics for 7 other produced musicals which together have had hundreds of productions: Soup du Jour; Monky Business; The Singin’ Cowboy; Monky Business II: Back in the Sandals Again!; Hotel d’Amour; The Three Musketeers and Charlie’s Oasis.

After a 1993 reading at the National Alliance of Music Theater in New York, The Three Musketeers was produced in 1993 and ran for 4 years at the Academic Theater of Musical Comedy in Ekaterinburg (Russia). Charlie’s Oasis also was produced in 1990 in Omsk, Russia, where it was the first joint Soviet-American production of an American musical.

In addition to his original musicals, Gregg has written new English lyrics for seven operettas, all first produced at Light Opera Works in the Chicago area: The Chocolate Soldier, A Waltz Dream, The Duchess of Chicago, Gypsy Love, The Island of Tulipatan, Your Presence Requested, and The Merry Widow. His new (2005) version of The Merry Widow, with dialogue by Jack Helbig, was produced in October 2006 at Mobile Opera (Alabama) and at Concert Operetta (Philadelphia). His version of Kalman’s The Duchess of Chicago was produced at Ohio Light Opera in its 2007 summer season.

Gregg’s newest play, Arms and the Woman, is in development.

Read more about his plays and productions of them at his publisher’s website www.dramaticpublishing.com