Private lessons, coaching, & workshops for singers & actors in the Pioneer Valley
Join us on Valley Gives day, May 3rd, for our virtual fundraising event on Facebook! Click here to go to the event, and let our teens tell you what the opera workshop means to them and to the community as a whole! Even if you aren’t able to donate during this year’s event, we warmly welcome you and ask you to share with your family and friends! Every show of support helps us to spread the word and increases our chance of success in this once-a-year fundraising event!
With spring on the way, it’s time for the Act Too Studio Opera Workshop to announce their second annual Opera Scene Night! Join our Opera Workshop teens (13-19) in an evening of opera scenes, including selections from Dido and Aeneas (Purcell), The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), L’enfant et les sortilèges (Ravel), and a sneak preview of this summer’s Monteverdi project, Il sogno d’Arianna!
What’s in it for you? Let our students explain:
Where: Immanuel Lutheran Church, 867 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA
When: Friday, April 1st, 7:30 PM
How: Tickets are $5 for adults, students free! Reserve your tickets at artful.ly!
One thing I’m always encouraging my students to do is to listen to more music, specifically music outside their current comfort zone, and especially to more classical music. Not only does this serve to broaden their tastes and to find more things beautiful in the world, but it also feeds their ambitions, strengthens their ears, and improves their natural musicianship. To that end, I’ve decided to begin making regular music recommendations here at the studio blog, in the hopes that this might inspire not only our students, but their families as well!
But the real draw for me in this album is its small selection of songs by Gabriel Fauré. As a classical voice student, I was introduced to Fauré in the context of beginning French repertoire, sung mostly by underclassmen, pretty, but lacking in substance. That is what I thought at the time. If I was forced to sing French (my worst language as a student–I’m working on it now!), I preferred the unexpected twists of Poulenc or the impressionism of Debussy. What I ignored during those early years of my own musical development was the depth of feeling and delicate perfection of Fauré’s mélodies, many settings of the same texts I loved from Debussy, yet had rolled my eyes over in Fauré’s hands.
Didonato, Joyce: Songs Of Fauré, Hanh & Head; Arias By Rossini And Handel
In this album, Joyce graces us with Fauré’s Cinq mélodies “de Venise”, composed to five poems by Paul Verlaine: “Mandoline” (from Fêtes galantes); “En sourdine” (from Fêtes galantes); “Green” (from Romances sans paroles); “À Clymène” (from Fêtes galantes); “C’est l’extase” (from Romances sans paroles). Each performance is a treasure, but I’m particularly enamored with Joyce’s interpretation of “En sourdine,” probably my favorite piece of the bunch to begin with, I suppose, but absolutely transcendent here. I’ve spent entire commutes listening to just this song on repeat, and I’m sure I’ll do it again.
Also notable on this album is a selection of songs by 20th-century British composer Michael Head, 3 Songs of Venice (you’re seeing the theme here, right?) whose moody sensibility flows beautifully into the melodic relief of Fauré’s cycle.
The album is available digitally at both Amazon
With the new year well underway, we’re kicking preparations for this summer’s teen Opera Workshop production into gear! Before we get to that, however, let’s take a moment to look back at our studio’s first full productions, both of which have been strong forces in the direction of the studio as a whole.
Goblin Market (2014)
Though clearly a musical theater piece, Act Too Studio’s first production, Goblin Market was conceived pretty much alongside the planning of our original Opera Workshop project, and though it was not officially a Workshop production, its sensibility and character was an enormous influence on what the Opera Workshop would become. With its complex (often dark) themes, heavy classical influences, a script (drawn mostly verbatim from Christina Rossetti’s famous poem) entirely in verse, so perfectly suited to its tiny, effervescent cast, Goblin Market left in its wake the terrifying question “What can possibly follow this?” What, indeed.
The Medium (2015)
The answer to that question was The Medium. Written by Gian Carlo Menotti just after World War II, the piece was inspired by a stay in Austria, during which Menotti attended a séance with one of his hosts who believed she could communicate with her deceased 14-year-old daughter. The resulting story, about a scam artist who runs fake séances with the help of her sixteen-year–old daughter and a mute teenage boy, once again presented dark, complex themes—this time with an equally complex score—ideally suited to the Workshop’s older students, particularly its two graduating seniors. Playing to packed houses at Eastworks in Easthampton, the success of The Medium made producing full opera productions in the Pioneer Valley with teen singers seem truly possible. Suddenly, it all seemed possible.
Il sogno d’Arianna (2016)
This summer’s project, Il sogno d’Arianna, is especially ambitious on a number of fronts, beginning with the material itself. Delving into the works of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), we’ll be using the framework of “Lamento d’Arianna“—the sole surviving fragment of Monteverdi’s opera L’Arianna, based on the tale of Ariadne, princess of Crete, and her abandonment by Athenian hero Theseus on the island of Naxos—to tell the stories of women drawn from both Greek myth and Torquato Tasso’s epic 16th-century poem La Gerusalemme liberate (Jerusalem Delivered).
In addition to L’Arianna, our piece includes excerpts from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, as well as pieces from his 8th book of madrigals (“Lamento della ninfa,” “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda” and more) and selected Scherzi Musicali (“Quel sguardo sdegnosetto,” “Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti” and more). With guidance from early music expert James David Jacobs, we’ll be presenting our own new editions of these works including new English translations adapted specifically for our singers. The piece will also utilize ballet to tell its story, which will be the perfect companion to Monteverdi’s sublime score.
This production’s flexibility allows us to safely include our Workshop singers at its full range of ages (13-19) without fear of vocal stress, and we’re thrilled to have our newest members joining older alumni on stage this year.
Casting of our singing characters is complete as follows (additional dancers TBA):
Arianna: Eliza Carson
Euridice: Tess Mathewson
Erminia: Callie Damouras
Clorinda: Anna Plummer
Storytellers (and all other roles in the piece): McKenna Troy, Caroline Lee, Sylvia Simmons, Daaé Ransom, Sydney Scott, Carina Gravante-Gunnells, Milena Gravante Gunnells
Studio alumni Anna Plummer (Goblin Market) and Caroline Lee (The Medium) return to this production as both cast and as part of the creative team, bringing their ongoing training and experience back home to the Workshop. Alumna Alexa King (The Medium) will be returning in a production role as well! Stepping out of their creative/tech roles from last summer’s The Medium, original Opera Workshop members Tess Mathewson and Eliza Carson and new Workshop recruit Sylvia Simmons happily join us this year on stage. We’re excited as well to have McKenna Troy, once the youngest member of the original Workshop, as well as new Workshop members Sydney Scott, Daaé Ransom, and (new youngest members) Carina and Milena Gravante-Gunnells on board for their first full ATS production.
The students in this project are unique, not only in their willingness to pursue classical singing as teenagers, but their outright thirst for it. The studio’s policy is to invite students into the Opera Workshop when their voices are ready, but it bears repeating that, while vocal development is certainly beholden to age and time, it is hard work and dedication that ultimately brings these students’ voices to the fore. As our program continues, we hope that it will not only enrich the lives and artistry of the students involved, but also help to create an interest in classical singing both within the studio and in the community as a whole.
That said, we need your help! This year’s production will be presented at the Academy of Music in Northampton—a huge step up for the Workshop and its young singers. With that comes additional expense, not only for the use of the Academy itself, but also to ensure that the quality of the work lives up to the gloriousness of its venue!
Thanks to our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, helping out is as easy as a click and a couple of bucks.
 You can donate by credit card online here:Act Too Studio Opera Workshop If you prefer, you can also donate by check. Checks should be made payable to Fractured Atlas, with “Act Too Studio Opera Workshop” in the memo line. Please contact us for our mailing address. |
Act Too Studio Opera Workshop is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Act Too Studio Opera Workshop must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Whether you’re able to contribute or not, we hope you’ll join us at the Academy of Music on August 5th & 6th to see our latest creation! More news to come as the spring continues!
Act Too Studio Opera Workshop’s production of Il sogno d’Arianna is made possible in part by a grant from the South Hadley Local Cultural Council.
What a whirlwind yesterday was for us! We began with pure elation, thanks to the kindness and generosity of the luminous Joyce DiDonato, whose Monday evening pep talk for our teens sent us to the moon and back, ready to launch our campaign with verve. That was followed up by a spectacular day of giving, in which we raised a total of $3160.00, the single biggest fundraising day in our tiny workshop’s history.
We would like to express our most sincere and humble gratitude to Joyce, and to everyone who supported us through the day by joining our Facebook event, sharing, liking, and retweeting our posts, leaving us words of encouragement, and of course to those who gave so generously to help keep our program going and our teens singing. We are in your debt, and we will do everything we can to deliver in the form of beautiful music and ecstatic teen faces. I have no doubt that our students will leave our program, go out into the world, and make it a better, more compassionate, and more beautiful place, through music or whatever they end up ultimately pursuing. Your investment in them will not be in vain.
On that note, I wanted to add that for me, personally, one of the most gratifying things about the day was watching and listening to my own teens talk about the program and what it’s meant to them. I’d be lying if I pretended that I didn’t know they are enjoying themselves in the opera workshop, but I spent much of the day with tears in my eyes, listening to my own students talk about the work we’ve come to think of as routine at our studio. I was also extremely moved by the 11th-hour video contribution from my friend, Emilie Renard, whose thoughtful (and thorough!) discussion of our work and why she has supported us so consistently over the past few years basically validated all the work I love most dearly in the span of seven minutes.
Thank you, all of you, for your generosity and your belief in what we’re doing at Act Too Studio Opera Workshop. It means the world to us, and we will work to give back in all the beauty we can muster.
Read more #GivingTuesday stories ~ View our Facebook Event ~ Donate to Act Too Studio Opera Workshop
As #GivingTuesday races to a close, we’ve received this thoughtful video from British mezzo-soprano Emilie Renard, a long-time friend and supporter of the workshop. She’s always been very enthusiastic about what we’re doing, but it’s quite wonderful to hear her talk about it in such detail, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t gratifying.
Please give her a few minutes to make this pitch in favor of our program, and consider supporting us before #GivingTuesday is done, or really any time in the future. We’re hungry for your support. A million thanks to Emilie for taking the time to speak up for us in this way. And while you’re at it, start following her career very carefully, because she’s pretty spectacular.
Read more #GivingTuesday stories ~ Join our Facebook Event ~ Donate to Act Too Studio Opera Workshop
