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Gregg Opelka has recently written music and lyrics for The Beverly Hillbillies: The Musical??!!. Collaborating with co-author David Rogers to make the Clampetts sing and dance has been one of the greatest joys and high points of his work in musical theatre. In addition to The Beverly Hillbillies: The Musical??!!, Opelka has written music and lyrics for eight other produced musicals: Soup du Jour; Monky Business: The Singin' Cowboy; Monky Business II: Back in the Sandals Again!; Hotel d'Amour; C'est la Vie; The Three Musketeers and Charlie's Oasis. His musicals have won numerous awards and have had hundreds of productions around the U.S., Canada and Europe. Opelka's New Year's Eve romantic comedy, Marrying Terry, premiered at the Greenhouse Theater Center (Chicago) in December 2007 and has been produced frequently. Film rights to the story were recently optioned by a Los Angeles production company. His one-act homicide thriller, The Lavender Necktie, made its New York City debut at the American Globe Theatre in April 2011. Opelka's chanson musical, La Vie Ennui, premiered at the Theatre Building Chicago in 2002. It was named "one of the eight wonders of 2002 Chicago theatre" by the Chicago Reader in its year-end review. The two-woman musical, now called C'est la Vie, has been produced in England, Spain, Hungary (three times), Austria, Germany, and throughout the U.S. After a reading at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York, The Three Musketeers was produced in 1993 and ran for four years at the Sverdlovsk State Academic Musical Comedy Theater in Russia, with Opelka conducting the premier performances. His first musical, Charlie's Oasis, was produced in 1990 at the Omsk Musical Theatre in Russia, where it was the first joint Soviet-American production of an American musical. In 2008, his original song and music video "My Momma's for Obama But My Daddy's for McCain" (available on YouTube) was featured repeatedly on CNN Headline News channel's "Hollywood Tonight" program in connection with the presidential election. Opelka supplied new English lyrics for seven operettas at Light Opera Works: The Chocolate Soldier, A Waltz Dream, The Duchess of Chicago, Gypsy Love, The Island of Tulipatan, Your Presence Requested and The Merry Widow. His operetta translations are frequently produced by opera companies around the world, including Ohio Light Opera, Mobile Opera, Concert Operetta Theater in Philadelphia and Melbourne Opera in Australia. He is currently working on a new musical about Gracie Allen.
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