ARKADELPHIA: Healthy dose of Italian
OBU opera meets new challenges with fall production
By BY WAYNE BRYAN Staff Writer
This article was published November 12, 2009 at 4:16 a.m.
PHOTO BY CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER / DAVID HUFF
Sophomore Xavier Lagunas practices his performance during a rehearsal of Giaacomo Puccini's Italian Opera Gianni Schicchi.
LITTLE ROCK — Managing a student production of an opera is always a challenge, with singers to coach and direct, instrumentalists to play the score and sets and props to arrange.
To Jon Secrest, producer and co-director of the Opera Theatre at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, the challenges are familiar after 15 years. For the 2009 fall production, Secrest has added a full orchestra, and his singers will perform Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi in its original Italian.
“All our earlier productions have been in English,” said Secrest, who is chair of OBU’s applied music program and coordinator of vocal studies. “It is easier for the students to learn, and we thought it would be better received in Arkadelphia, but several students asked that we do something in its original language and we thought about it this summer.”
The 17 students who auditioned and won the roles have met the challenge of singing in Italian, said Glenda Secrest, who teaches voice and vocal diction at OBU’s music division and is co-director of the Opera Theatre.
“They have done a wonderful job,” she said. “The students like it, and after graduation, it will be good for them to have a role like this under their belt.”
Glenda added that Gianni Schicchi’s familiar aria O mio babbino caro loses something in the translation to “Oh, my dear father.”
The famous aria is sung by Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta. The Secrests have cast two students to alternate the role, giving both of them an opportunity with the showcased character. They are Grace Johnson of Tyler, Texas, and Elisabeth Hipp of Memphis, Tenn.
The cast range in ages from 17 to 22. Italian is not taught at OBU, but singing in Italian, German and French are routine assignments for voice students on the university level.
“They are doing an admirable job with the diction and have been so professional in learning the opera,” Glenda said.
For the audience, the translation will be available in surtitles, electronically flashed above the stage.
Accompanying the cast will be a mixed orchestra of Ouachita Baptist students and professionals.
“We usually have wind and brass players and the strings are played using an synthesizer,” Jon said. “This year we will have 15 students from instrumental program and eight players from the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra on violins, violas and cellos.”
The professional were made available by Texarkana Symphony Orchestra conductor Marc-Andre Bougie and orchestra manager Andrew Clark, an alumnus of OBU.
When Puccini composed the opera for his 1918 premier at the New York Metropolitan Opera, it was set in the year 1299, but the Secrests has updated the set to the late 1940s to early 1950s.
“It is good to try something new and different,” Glenda said, “and the costumes and props are less expensive and easier to find.”
The entire production has come together in just a few months. Auditions for the roles were held in the first week of school in September. Rehearsals began the next week. In October, work on the opera continued four nights a week.
“As we got closer to the show we also added weekend rehearsals,” Glenda said.
As if that was not enough for the young voices, they have also been working on their regular singing assignments from their studio teachers. Just a week before the opera opens, many of the cast members will join other student singers at a Southern regional meeting of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, where their performances will be judged. Then the singers must get ready for their end-of-the semester juries when their development is heard and grades are issued.
“In the fall, we all just come to school and then hang on,” Jon said.
The opera was selected because it matches up well with the university’s students and audience.
“We always select a comedy, and Gianni Schicchi is light-hearted,” Jon said. “The one act is a good length with lots of laughs, and our students have the voices to do Puccini.”
The production runs Thursday, Nov. 19, through Sunday, Nov. 22, at the 1,500-seat Jones Performing Arts Center at OBU.
Public tickets are $8 and can be purchased by calling the Jones Performing Center box office at (870) 245-5563 or by visiting its Web site, www.obu.edu/finearts.
Tri-Lakes, Pages 55 on 11/12/2009
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