Opera Studies
Sixty years ago, the first Indiana University Opera Theater production took place in an auditorium that was built as part of an army barracks during World War II. This weekend (April 4-5), IU Opera begins celebrating its 60th anniversary with a reprise of that same opera, Les Contes d'Hoffmann -- except now it will be performed on a stage that rivals New York City's Metropolitan Opera House.
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Fantastical tales of love lost and inspiration found will delight Indiana University Opera Theater audiences April 4, 5, 11 and 12 at the Musical Arts Center. Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann depicts a writer's romantic adventures as he searches for his true love and ultimately finds fulfillment in his artistic calling.
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The IU Ballet Department's origins as a means of supplying operas with dancers inspired Michael Vernon, chair of the IU Jacobs School's Ballet Department, to offer ballet audiences "A Night at the Opera (at the Ballet)." On March 21 and 22, dancers will perform to ballet music from beloved operas by Gounod, Rossini, Handel and Meyerbeer.
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Familiar favorites combine with forays into fantasy in the 60th Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theater season. The 2008-2009 lineup includes beloved standards like Verdi's La Traviata, Giulio Cesare by Handel and The Nutcracker ballet, in addition to fairy-tale fun in Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges and Massenet's Le Cendrillon, the Cinderella story interpreted in the French operatic style.
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Soprano and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music graduate student Carolina Castells has made it through to the Grand Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the elite competition to identify the best young opera singers throughout the nation.
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Starting Feb. 22, Indiana University Opera Theater audiences can hear Le Nozze di Figaro, the beloved comedy by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as Mozart himself might have heard it in the traditional "bel canto" style. Guest conductor William Crutchfield is working to revive this 18th-century method, which emphasizes smooth vocal phrases, pure tone and improvised ornamentation suited to the individual singer's voice.
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