The double bill of Kurt Weill's and Bertold Brecht's Mahoganny Songspiel with Francis Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias — which you can see this weekend at YBCA — is the brainchild of the Opera Parallele a plucky company devoted to putting together chamber orchestras written in the last hundred years. Opera Parallele has received acclaim as much for its musical performances (led by Maestra Nicole Paiement) as it is for the adventurous and creative stagings by director-in-residence Brian Staufenbiel (also director of the opera program at the UC Santa Cruz, as well as a tenor himself).

I spoke with Staufenbiel recently to find out more about this weekend's two-operas-in-one, dreams of a bigger budget, casting, and more.