The "damsel in distress" motif is commonplace in opera, providing an opportunity for the soprano to show off her soaring voice.

This year’s Hawaii Opera Theatre season is no different, with Gounod’s "Faust," Donizetti’s "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Verdi’s "La Traviata" on the bill, all featuring major tragic roles for sopranos.

But HOT directors Henry Akina and Karen Tiller see other common threads. "All three operas are actually historic," said Akina, who will direct "Faust" and "La Traviata." "These people all existed somehow. Whether Faust actually met the devil or not, that’s, of course, fictional. But Faust was a real person, Lucia was based on a Scottish lady, and ‘La Traviata’ was based on Marguerite Gautier, whose history is really easy to trace."

Tiller, who will direct "Lucia," said the true-life underpinning of each story enhanced its dramatic effect. "In each of these operas, there’s a legend or a reality, and then there’s multiple stories about them, and then there’s an opera based on all those stories," she said. "So it actually makes for great drama because you’re pulling out the most interesting things."

Apparently, what all three composers pulled out of history is that things were a bit crazy in the past — another common thread to the season.

"I think that might be our opera season — mass hysteria," Tiller said. "(It’s) the season of madness, definitely."

"Lucia," in fact, is famous for its Mad Scene in which the title character dementedly declares love for one man after murdering her groom. But even Faust, which opens this weekend, has crowd scenes that, while not quite attaining pitchfork-and-torch-carrying status, are nonetheless frenzied.

"What we’re finding in rehearsal is the way the village becomes possessed and the way the village reacts to Faust and Marguerite," Akina said.

"Faust" tells the story of a frustrated, aging scholar who sells his soul to Satan to be with a young woman. While Faust is the title role, the chief protagonists are the young woman, Marguerite, portrayed by soprano Melody Moore, and Mephistopheles, a demon doing the work of Satan who manipulates Faust into debauching Marguerite.

Hawaii native and island favorite Jamie Offenbach is "super excited" to be playing Mephistopheles for the first time in his career. "Faust was always something I wanted to do," he said. "For me, vocally, it just sits in the great part of my voice."

"The scope of the character, I think, the way I’m playing him, I find it more of a challenge that he doesn’t have to be such a ‘devil’ all the time, not the bad guy all the time," Offenbach said. "He’s more playful. There are moments when you can see the evilness of it, but it’s not like I’m playing it like Bela Lugosi."

Offenbach is on stage for the entire show, requiring him to stay in character at all times. The opera is in French (with subtitles), adding to the challenge. "In the olden days, it was just stand and sing," he said. "Now, you have to know what you’re saying or you get called on it, not only by the director but by the audience, who really want to see some believability."

SINGING IN FRENCH posed some challenges for soprano Moore, though this will be her second time portraying Marguerite. She recently sang the role, in English, with the English National Opera, which led her to say things like "my God" in rehearsal instead of the French equivalent, "mon Dieu."

Her character’s featured aria is the "Jewel Song," sung when Marguerite finds a box of jewels that Mephistopheles has mischievously planted in her garden.

"There’s a reason it’s the showcase song," Moore said. "It’s hard to sing. It’s out of step, I think, vocally with the rest of the role. The ‘Jewel Song’ is bright, it’s lighter. It’s got fineness to it, like silvery filaments of string. It’s coloratura, it’s fast, it moves everywhere."

While Marguerite, at the beginning of the opera, is a teenager who falls victim to Mephistopheles, Moore’s view is that she isn’t as innocent as she seems.

"She definitely makes some choices, some decisions that lead her down a certain path," Moore said.

THE SECOND OPERA of HOT’s season, "Lucia di Lammermoor," on the other hand, features a woman who is very much the victim of circumstances. Born into an aristocratic family where marriage is seen as a path to family aggrandizement, Lucia is betrothed to one man by her family while in love with another.

"It’s kind of like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in the Scottish Highlands," said Tiller, the director. "But it’s not that honorable … (Lucia) is just a pawn, basically for financial reasons."

Donizetti’s score seems to embrace the false pretense of the situation with sprightly, happy-sounding arias. "For me, the challenge of Lucia is to bring the darkness of the drama and the real sickness of not just her character, but in a sense all of the characters, to the stage in this sort of very ornamented and musical language," Tiller said.

The pressure on Lucia eventually causes her to have a mental breakdown, as portrayed in the Mad Scene — a scene most closely associated with Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, and one of the most famous in all of opera. Soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, who last performed for HOT in "Rigoletto" in 2006, will be performing the role for the first time in her career.

"It’s a role I’ve been dying to do," she said. "I’ve known this piece for so long and adored it."

She has been studying the score to see where and how she can add some vocal ornamentation into the work, a characteristic of the "bel canto" opera style for which Donizetti is known. But Lundy said she will be using Callas and Sutherland’s approach in the Mad Scene’s most famous section, a duet with a solo flute. "It’s like the voices in her head are answering her, and she’s at this point absolutely nuts," she said.

She said she has a "fountain of ideas" for the role, a consequence perhaps of spending the last few years working with Chinese composer Tan Dun on a modern opera. "It was extremely liberating," she said.

LIBERATION IS ALSO a theme in "La Traviata," although its main character, Violetta, experiences it only briefly. When she sings her featured aria "Sempre Libera" ("Always Free"), it is one of the few times you "see the real Violetta," said Luz Del Alba, who returns to HOT to perform the role.

"She is an actress," she said in a phone interview from her native Uruguay. "Her role is to be a lady, to go around to the best theaters, the best parties with the gentleman who is ‘helping’ her at that time in her life."

But Violetta meets Alfredo, who impresses her with his genuine love for her, prompting the soliloquy-like aria. It is a moment of reflection to which Luz Del Alba relates. "Several times, after I get out of a big opera house, you are alone, away from your family," she said. "And then you ask yourself, ‘Why do I keep this kind of life?’"

Luz Del Alba has performed Violetta in venues from Europe to China and considers it a role that "you earn" as an opera singer because it requires the soprano to sing in different operatic styles in each of its three acts and display great acting skills.

With its story of the fallen woman with a good heart, "La Traviata" was the basis for the Julia Roberts film "Pretty Woman." In the film, Richard Gere’s rich businessman takes a hired escort to see the opera and tells her that if people love opera upon first hearing, "they will always love it. If they don’t, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul."

It is a sentiment that Luz Del Alba shares. As a teenager, she saw the 1986 film "Othello," starring the great Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, and immediately fell in love with opera. Domingo would later become a major supporter in her career.

"I said I want to be an actress who sings opera on stage," she said.