My experience as an extra in the opera Rigoletto was amazing. I was exposed to the many aspects of professional opera theatre as well as the overwhelming talent of the performers. I had an easygoing experience with all of the staff and a positive performance as well. The cast and crew made the show very relaxing. Even being my first time onstage, I was at ease as I took the stage. The opera itself was absolutely breathtaking and the vocals of the cast were superb. The audience was highly responsive, which added to the uplifting atmosphere throughout the theatre, onstage, in the audience, and backstage. I thank you so much for letting me participate in this! I hope that you will keep offering my school and me this wonderful opportunity.
Grace Kathryn Chandler, student, Hereford High School's Hereford Theatre
Baltimore Opera Theatre will conduct a student outreach program that will focus on a different Baltimore area school at each performance. 200 students and their parents will receive free tickets to each opera. A free lecture will be provided to students before each performance that will explore the stories of the operas, explain their deeper meanings and talk about the composers. The students will have an opportunity learn how an opera is put together from both artistic and technical standpoints. Baltimore Opera Theatre will also provide lectures for performing arts students that will deal with starting a career in opera as a singer, set designer or technician. Local performing arts school students will have an opportunity to participate in the actual productions by acting as extras onstage, dancing in productions that require dancers and singing roles designated for children. Students will also be given the opportunity to create artwork that will serve as a cover for the opera programs and write program notes that will appear inside a special student section in the programs.
Baltimore Opera Theatre believes in bringing the world of opera alive for students by helping them to understand the value and meaning of this art form and how focus and involvement in the arts is a natural deterrent to violence and self-destructive behaviours.
My experience with Rigoletto has been some of the best I have ever had in my theatre career. I met some many nice people and immediately felt at home with the company. Bravo!
Patrick Kearns, student, Hereford High School's Hereford Theatre
Theatre and Music students from the Carver Center for the Arts and Technology participated as extras in Rossini's Barber of Seville - October 2009.
Being an extra in “The Barber of Seville” was such a positive theatrical experience! I consider myself very fortunate to have been a part of it. Over the past few years, I’ve been interested in opera while studying voice. But to be able to see it from behind the stage was unreal. It was so cool to go in the back stage entrance, get escorted by security, have several costume changes and of course being on stage in a few scenes! It was real interesting to see all the flurry of activity behind stage prior to the start of the show and it was also interesting to see how things seemed to move so smoothly without effort once the show started. The performers were so talented and such an inspiration. The cast was very supportive and kind. They all wished me well in pursuing my talent. This experience was so positive that it has only made my interest and love of opera grow and I hope that I can pursue it one day.
Patricia Rezac
The creation of language was one of the first and greatest artistic achievements, each word originally being a focus of energies in which reality was transformed into the vibrations of the human voice…
