A
spen Opera Theater Center offers a wide range of exciting performance opportunities. These include three fully-staged productions in the Wheeler Opera House with distinguished conductors and directors, the Art Song Series, weekly public Opera Scenes Master Classes, and house concerts. All performers in these events are AOTC singers. In addition, AOTC singers participate in an intensive curriculum of music, acting, song repertory, diction and movement classes, rehearsals, Alexander Technique sessions, auditioning and professional-orientation workshops, individual music and dramatic coachings, weekly voice lessons, and vocal master classes taught by resident artist-faculty and guest artists. There will be eight Opera Scenes Master Classes with director Edward Berkeley. Two of these sessions are presented with full orchestra in collaboration with the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen. These give all AOTC singers the opportunity to appear publicly in scenes with conductor and either piano or orchestra. In addition, there may be an Aria Master Class led by international conductor James Conlon, music director of the Los Angeles Opera and Chicago’s Ravinia Festival. AOTC 2010 stage productions are centered on the Beaumarchais Figaro trilogy: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (libretto by Cesare Sterbini), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte) and John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (libretto by William Hoffmann). The final week of the season will be devoted to classes focused on audition technique and professional orientation. In different sessions, singers will work both in groups and individually with Gayletha Nichols, director of the Metropolitan Opera’s National Auditions, and Diane Zola, artistic administrator of the Houston Grand Opera, in addition to resident artist-faculty.
Operas for Summer 2010 Performances during the upcoming season will include new productions of: Rossini: The Barber of Seville Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro John Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles
22 | Student Catalog 2010
Yoosun Park (Donna Anna) with Donovan Singletary in the 2009 production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
A select number of singers will participate in one of a series of song recitals. This element, in which students prepare repertoire under the guidance of AOTC artist-faculty, provides excellent opportunities for both artistic and technical development. All members in AOTC are expected to sing in one opera chorus and to provide technicalsupport hours as part of their experience. The AOTC also conducts an opera coaching program in which opera piano fellowship
students participate in opera and vocal coaching with the AOTC’s artist-faculty pianists and coaches. In this program, fellows play for opera and class scene preparation, and perform with AOTC singers in the weekly opera scenes master classes. Fellowship candidates are auditioned by members of the opera artist-faculty. All singers and coaches must do a live audition. Assignments of all major roles will be made based on the AOTC 2010 national Aspen Music Festival and School