THREE OAKS — Robert Swan says he couldn’t find a good English translation of “Mephistopheles’ Song of the Flea” by Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, so he decided to do one himself.

One problem: Swan doesn’t speak Russian.

“So how did I do it?” Swan says. “Very, very slowly.”

Armed with an English-Russian dictionary, patience and a “good” version in German – a language he does speak – Swan completed what now may be considered the best English translation of the comedic tune. The bass vocalist will debut the song Saturday during “From Russia with Love,” which opens the fourth season of Swan’s popular opera series at The Acorn Theater in Three Oaks.

“From Russia with Love” features the return of Swan, soprano Christine Steyer, and tenor Darrell Rowader – with piano accompaniment by Philip Morehead, head of music at Chicago’s Lyric Opera House, and Morehead’s wife, Patricia, on oboe – in a program that features compositions by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as well as selections from Sergei Prokofiev and Mikhail Glinka.

“Part of the difficulty in putting together this season is that I’ve really used up a lot of beautiful music in the past three years,” Swan says. “When we started this, we made a commitment to do only the best arias and the best songs. You start running out of those after awhile. But in a way it’s been exciting because I’ve had to really seek out new favorites and music that I still personally love.”

There’s also been the pesky detail of overcoming cancer.

“It’s hard to put a season together when you don’t know if you’re going to be around to see it,” Swan adds.

The Rolling Prairie, Ind., resident, who was diagnosed with lymphoma after discovering a mass in his stomach last September, had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments every three weeks. Three weeks ago he finally got word that he’s cancer free.

The good news continued last week when his Opera at The Acorn series received a $15,000 grant from the Pokagon Fund and another $1,000 commitment from New Buffalo Savings Bank to help continue a program that Swan says has made opera accessible to novice listeners while maintaining the vocal and performance standards opera aficionados expect.

“Finding people who can perform these pieces anywhere in the world for what I can pay is a challenge,” Swan says. “But I’ve got them. Every year, I’ve got them.”

In between his daily 15- to 20-mile bicycle excursions, Swan’s been tirelessly prepping for the 2010 Opera at The Acorn series.

In addition to Saturday’s opener, the fourth season will feature the return of Warren Moulton, Franco Martorana and Simon Kyung Lee, aka The Other 3 Tenors, on July 10 for “A Night in Italy”; Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Isola Jones, who will perform her signature role in “Carmen” on Aug. 7; and a tribute to Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel titled “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Three Oaks!” featuring Swan and Broadway performer Martha Cares on Sept. 11.

After taking a limited role in the fifth-annual Christmas at the Acorn concert last December because of his illness, Swan says choosing a selection of Russian pieces for his return to the stage seemed a natural fit.

“I’ve always had a love for Russian music,” Swan says. “I mean, I’m a bass, and they are very well known for their great basses.”

In addition to “Mephistopheles’ Song of the Flea,” Swan will sing “Gremin’s Aria” from the third act of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.”

Steyer will perform another Tchaikovsky work, “Not a Word, My Friend,” as well as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s aria from “The Tsar’s Bride” and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Five Poems of Anna Akhmatova.”

“We’ve kind of spoiled audiences at The Acorn with all these well-known arias, right? So now they’re graduating to something a little more sophisticated,” Steyer says of the program. “Russian music tends to be very dark and very lush. It has a heaviness to it, but it’s very passionate.”

Other pieces to be performed Saturday include Tchaikovsky’s most famous song, “None But The Lonely Heart”; Rachmaninoff’s “Oh Never Sing To Me Again” and “Vocalise,” a piece that contains no words sung using any one vowel; and the traditional Russian folk tune “Song of the Volga Boatmen,” popularized by Feodor Chaliapin, the most famous Russian opera singer of the 20th century.

In fact, it’s not a coincidence that Chaliapin’s influence can be found throughout the program. He was known to American audiences for performing Russian songs in English. “From Russia With Love,” Swan says, is a program Chaliapin would approve of. It will take a similar approach with half of the program being sung in English with the other half in the original Russian.

“The songs that we’ve chosen, it’s really clear what they mean,” Swan says. “The ones that aren’t clear we’re doing in English.”

Although some of the songs may be more obscure than past Opera at The Acorn openers, Swan says he’s put the concert through a very specific test to ensure that the audience will be on the edge of their seats.

“If I’m sitting in an audience and my butt starts to get sore, I know they’re not doing something right,” Swan says.  “I have a really low tolerance for boredom in performance. And there’s nothing boring here.”

jbonfiglio@TheH-P.com