Opera Workshop

School of Music Presents: 

The Opera Workshop

The Opera Workshop was held at the Hockett Family Recital Hall in the School of Music, November 20th. The workshop was about an hour and a half long and contained 16 arias, a long accompanied song for a solo voice, taken from operas such as Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and Faust. At the beginning of the workshop the director, Brian DeMaris, explained to the audience about how students will be portraying these operas. He explained that body language, scenery and costumes was important to understanding the opera because those aspects help with telling the story. Two performers demonstrated what it looked like to use aggressive body language while still being able to beautifully sing the piece. DeMaris also touched on the point that opera singers sometimes use gibberish to get the point across rather than focusing on the words that are being sung. 

The first aria was a piece from Romeo et Juliette, sung by a soprano, Kelly Timko. Accompanied by the pianist, Timko actively used body language to portray the romance between her and Romeo. She sang beautifully. Even though I had no idea what she was singing I knew what it was about from her gestures she made towards Romeo. The second piece was from the opera Don Giovanni, which is a piece I am familiar with because we studied it in class. The singer, Eliodoro Castillo was humorous and seductive. He effectively played the role of Don Giovanni and he represented him well by using licentious gestures. "Ding! Ding! Ding!" performed by Michael Palmer was an aria that stuck with me. The song was fast and aggressive. Palmer had clock numbers drawn on his face that made the piece more interesting to listen to because he was playing a grandfather clock. 

I thought operas were mostly about romances but after watching and listening to the workshop I noticed that there are a variety of different operas. The operas that were performed were all from different time periods that we have studied in class. There were countless arias from the classical time period by Mozart. There was an aria by Maurice Ravel, who is comparable to Claude Debussy, that contributed to impressionist music. There was also an aria from the romantic period by Giacomo Puccini. 

Opera singers are incredible and I don't understand how they can sing that high and that loud with their voice. The piano pieces from Mozart stood out to me because they were fast and his style was recognizable because we studied him in class. I love that the pianist accompanies the opera singer but isn't overlooked. 

Personally I thought I wouldn't be a huge fan of these performances but surprisingly I enjoyed them. The humor that most of the performances contained kept it entertaining. I loved that each aria was set up as a different scene, rather than having the singer stand on stage and sing to the audience. They did a wonderful job with telling the stories of the operas. I probably won't go to an opera in the future because it frustrates me that I can't tell what they are singing but I liked this workshop because it wasn't only focused on one opera. I didn't get bored because each aria was different and told a different story. I like that there was a variety of music and arias performed. I highly recommend this workshop to people who can't just sit through one opera.