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.
Young Ambassadors for Our Performance of La Traviata
Click on the images above to see larger versions.
Ms. Kelly, I’d like to thank you for such an amazing opportunity to perform. It was an experience I will never forget, and for that I am truly grateful.
Everyone at the Hippodrome was hospitable and friendly, making the night even more enjoyable. Thank you so much for such an amazing night, and I too hope to get the chance to be apart of the opera again.
Hudson Imhoff • Performance of MADAMA BUTTERFLY • Hippodrome Theatre • October 23, 2010
Click on the images at right to see much larger versions.
The cover of our MADAMA BUTTERFLY program was created by Bernadette Little, a senior visual arts arts student at the BALTIMORE SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS. She hopes to study illustration in college after graduation in June 2011. BALTIMORE OPERA THEATRE is thrilled with her illustration and very grateful to her for her outstanding art work.
Click on the image at right to see a much larger version.
Opera for a New Generation: A Need for Education
By Javier Fuentes
The arts are the greatest example of our potential as humans to be creative. We don't give art the importance it was given in the past maybe because we are so used to living in it that we have lost our ability to easily identify it. But almost everything around us was designed and made through a process of human creation. Everything that is man made has an artist or a group of artists behind it. The seat where you're seating, the book you're reading, the pictures on the newspaper, the plate you eat from, the building where you live, the clothes and jewelry you wear, the cake you eat, the haircut you have, the makeup on people's faces, the design of an mp3 player and the music it plays… Even the design of the font used to print what you're reading right now has an artist behind it that visualized it and created it. Artists are like some kind of god that turn ideas into reality. Artists are creators! Thus that old saying when appreciating the work of an artist and people refer to it saying the artist “has been touched by God.”
That being stated brings us to some intellectual or interesting questions: What is art? Why is art made? Where is art made, shown or displayed? When is art made? How is art made? Who is art made for?
Volumes could be written to answer all those questions, but there is no absolute answer for it. A good answer is that art is made for whoever wants to enjoy it. True that some forms of art can only be owned or enjoyed by whoever can pay for them, as artists need to be paid to earn a living, but great artists usually try to reach as wide an audience as possible with the belief that art is for everyone. Of all arts opera is the one that embraces the most and so that is the art form this article is focused on.
Opera was conceived near the end of the sixteenth century by a group of Florentine humanists. An elite circle of literate men that called themselves the “Camerata de' Bardi” that included such illustrious men as Galileo Galilei's dad, Vincenzo Galilei. The cultural ideals of the Renaissance era focused on the reformation and widespread of EDUCATION based and inspired by the great classics of antiquity. Humanism was the great ideal of this era and so the humanist method was employed in study, that included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy to revive an idealized cultural legacy and morality that mirrored classical antiquity with great emphasis in LITERACY.
Greek society used theatre as an important and religious social gathering in which tragedy would lead the hero and the audience out of ignorance and into a state of awareness using pity and fear as a resource to move the audience. The men in the “Camerata” group were convinced, from the same roots of the word “tragedy” (tragos = “goat” and aeidein = “to sing”), that these tragedies were sung prior to the sacrifice of a goat in a ritual dedicated to Dionysius, the god of wine and fertility. Their studies and convictions led to the idea of recreating tragedy by blending all the arts to serve the drama, a concept that two centuries later Richard Wagner called a Gesamtkunstwerk (“integrated work of art”). Music, drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, fashion design, graphic design, dance… Together all the arts would lend an audio and visual experience that would become the first multimedia art form in history.
For centuries a composer's worth was measured by his ability to write opera as that art form was considered the highest and most important of all the art. The peak point of the opera repertoire was reached at the start of the 20th century with Puccini's work. After him the entire century was spent on wars one after the other and all the arts suffered great losses because of it. Some composers like Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Britten, Menotti, Barber and Poulenc made an effort to continue the tradition of opera composition, but movies were much more affordable than the opera for the audience and new works became rare as producing the classics was also less expensive.
Hollywood was the lucky inheritor of a tradition in composition that was brought to the movies after many composers crossed from Europe evading First and Second World Wars. Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and Erich Korngold are some of the composers that gave movies in Hollywood some of the most beautiful and operatic music for in America there was no tradition for opera composition.
A new generation is being exposed to very operatic themes at the movies and they have no idea. Today's cinema brings us mammoth scores comparable to the operas of Richard Wagner like the music for the STAR WARS SAGA, HARRY POTTER and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The theme of the hero is very similar in STAR WARS and BATMAN as it is in LOHENGRIN AND TURANDOT. THE LORD OF THE RINGS is based on the same Nordic stories that Wagner used for his RING OF THE NIBELUNG. The vampire movies have huge similarities with the romantic gothic stories of DER VAMPYR, LA SONNAMBULA, RUSALKA, MEFISTOFELE, FAUST or LA DAMNATION DE FAUST. THE TALES OF HOFFMANN have a doll that pre-dates all the robot movies. Epics like TROY and ALEXANDER had their opera predecessors in LES TROYENS and ALESSANDRO NELL'INDIE. THE MUMMY movies had their Egyptian opera counterparts in AIDA, IL CROCIATO IN EGITTO, SEMIRAMIDE or SAMSON AND DELILAH. And now with CLASH OF THE TITANS we would cover almost all the operas of the baroque with their gods and heroes.
Most young people have no idea of how exiting the experience of opera can be. But it's not entirely their fault. Millions of dollars are spent every year on advertisements for new pop artists and music, and the industry has convinced the consumer of what's new as being the best and what's “in” and the old as being boring and out of date. Our political culture is more interested in votes and power than in educating people maybe because educated people usually make smart decisions. It would be a smart move to keep people uneducated if you want to easily convince them of what you want them to do. The feeling of discomfort among educators has come to such a level that many teachers have begun to believe in conspiracy theories about the constantly changing programs, systems, methods and texts to promote confusion and the wealth of some publishers through the help of the public system. Another factor is that at present the economy is in very delicate conditions and the constant budget cuts that the education system is enacting result in less teachers, job freezes, pink slips, overcrowded classrooms, unemployed people that have to pay for the rest of their lives for an education they cannot use and principals that are stressed and take advantage of assumed and out of control positions of power to ruin teacher's careers so that they can blame someone for the problems they cannot solve (an example is the use of “in” words like “accountability” to justify this abuse of power). To shift the emphasis from real education everyone is kept mentally entertained worrying about state test scores and the chaos is such that everyone is always angry, upset, frustrated and/or depressed. And let's not get into the closing schools or charter schools themes because the constant reduction of space in public schools to phase in charter schools and phase out public schools is an additional stress on the educators' minds that needs a whole article for itself. Being stressed with problems like this everyday, how can educators clearly focus on higher levels of education to achieve a level of knowledge and awareness in their students that is far reaching and more significant?
The bottom line is that a culture of people who are highly educated should create better and more civilized citizens. Like with everything else that forms part of an education, opera is something that needs to be exposed to the younger generations in a way they can relate it to their lives while making connections with prior knowledge to be able to appreciate it. People in positions of power should not expect parents to have their kids exposed to the arts, because in many cases even the parents are ignorant about it. New works are urgently needed, more performances for students should be offered during school time for schools to attend maybe even using young artists and college students to give them opportunities to develop their skills, casual exposure to this specific art should be planned so that the art form is seen as something familiar; and competitions for promotional art, librettos and compositions might be used to incorporate as many forms of expression as possible in order to reach a wider audience of young people that need to learn to appreciate an art form they will inherit.
Broadway has come up with dramatic pieces that have very complex musical structures and that now are sometimes presented in opera theatres such as WEST SIDE STORY, SWEENEY TODD, EVITA OR THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. And some musicals like JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, LES MISÉRABLES, RENT and IN THE HEIGHTS use very operatic structures with the use of rock, pop or contemporary music. Integrating the developments of cinematic music into traditional operatic structures with the inclusion of modern music styles might give us some hope in the creation of a new and successful operatic style that might capture the interest of a wider audience with the argument that even new generations enjoy the use of music to enhance drama. The best example to sustain this argument is the success of the HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL series.
At the moment we need to show the younger generation all the drama, exitement and beauty that makes us so passionate about this art form. Once they learn how enjoyable it is and how similar it is in so many ways to the pop culture they follow, we will have given them a precious gift that will be treasured for a lifetime and that hopefully they embrace and want to share with the following generations. The keyword is EDUCATION.
Javier Fuentes was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His training as an artist began at the Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico Conservatory were he studied with a scholarship and performed with the corps de ballet workshop in productions of SWAN LAKE, DON QUIXOTE, GISELLE, THE NUTCRACKER, CIPOLLINO and THE AWAKENING OF FLORA. Some of his teachers were Lolita San Miguel, Vladimir Issaev, Carlota Carrera, María Carrera, Carlos Cabrera, JosÉ Pares and Alberto Mendez. In 1988 he received an honors diploma in the children's examinations from London's Royal Academy of Dancing. After several years of dancing with Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico Mr. Fuentes decided to continue his training as a singer receiving his bachelor's degree in Humanities with a concentration in Music from the University of Puerto Rico in 1999. His voice teachers in that institution were Zoraida Lopez and Enid Gonzalez (a former student of Virginia Zeani). Javier also received acting classes and workshops with Carola García and Luis Oliva (a former student of Marcel Marceau), and voice master classes with Jesus Quiñones Ledesma (a former student of Apollo Granforte), Justino Díaz, Daniel Ferro, William Hicks and Charles Riecker. Being the only male soprano in Puerto Rico's music history, Javier Fuentes received the 'Amigos de Alejandro Vazquez' Award at the district of Puerto Rico Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1998. His work with Taller de Teatro Lírico de la Universidad de Puerto Rico includes work as a soloist, stage director and choreographer. In March of 2001 he worked as choreographer for the world premiere of the opera EL ESPEJO DE LA REINA, an opera commissioned to composer Roberto Milano by the Taller Lírico de Puerto Rico. Also in March of 2001 Mr. Fuentes was named one of Puerto Rico's most distinguished youths of the year 2000 (Joven más destacado de Puerto Rico 2000) by the Puerto Rico Youth Commission (Comisi—n Puertorriqueña de la Juventud), Banco Popular de Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Association of UNESCO. He's performed Shubert's MASS IN G; Mozart's BASTIAN UND BASTIENNE, GREAT MASS IN C MINOR, EXULTATE JUBILATE and Menotti's AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS as well as a varied repertoire of arias, opera scenes and art songs that range from the 17th Century to the present. Mr. Fuentes' specialty is the bel canto ‘arias di bravura’. In 2002 he sang as a guest artist for “La Peña del Museo”, a bohemian presentation of poetry and song given at the Art Museum of Puerto Rico (MAP). Mr. Fuentes received his Master's degree from CUNY's Lehman College in 2008 and has worked as a vocal music teacher with the New York City Department of Education since 2004.
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
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…
