Two weeks ago, five brave Resident Artists journeyed to Piute, Wayne, and Garfield counties to bring opera to the children of this beautiful yet remote region of Utah. The Utah Opera Resident Artists (Baritone-John Buffett, Pianist-Daveth Clark, Mezzo-Sishel Claverie, Soprano-Jennie Litster, and Tenor-Andrew Penning) go on 5 week-long tours throughout the year. While on this most recent tour they gave twelve performances in five days for approximately 1,000 students and teachers. The remote location of this tour gave the Resident Artists the unique experience of performing for two very small schools of eleven and fifteen students, each with only one teacher. The students were very appreciative of the entertainment and the teachers told the artists on multiple occasions, “these kids so rarely get programs like this.” Students at Escalante Elementary in Garfield County showed their appreciation by coming to school dressed in their Sunday Best.

During the tour, while they weren’t performing, the Resident Artists spent their free time exploring their beautiful natural surroundings. This included a hike in Capitol Reef to a lookout of Chimney Rock. It had just snowed and our Mexican mezzo, Sishel Claverie, got her first real experience with trekking through snow. The whole gang discovered that they should have brought along proper footwear.

Evenings included home-made meals and intense games of Hearts and Settlers of Catan. The communities were also very hospitable, allowing the Artists to practice for upcoming auditions and concerts in their churches and schools.

On the drive from Boulder to Escalante the young artists made frequent stops at scenic overlooks to get out of the van, take pictures, and read the information at these sights. They learned that before the road from Boulder to Escalante was built, supplies and deliveries between the towns were made via mule-trains. The artists found this very amusing since one of the pieces they perform in their “Opera Star” program for the elementary school kids is called “The Muleteer Duet,” from Offenbach’s La Perichole. Every time this duet is performed, Andrew Penning always explains to the kids that “a Muleteer is basically a delivery man who uses a mule to carry his deliveries,” and further he explains, “a Mule is a combination of a horse and a donkey.” So at their last show at Escalante Elementary, John Buffett, who was hosting the “Opera Star” performance, added the historical anecdote about mules and Muleteers in Escalante. During this show we also took a moment to observe that the time was 11:11 on 11/11/11 and that we should all make a wish.

After the last concert the Artists parted ways with John, Andrew, and Daveth heading back to Salt Lake City via Bryce Canyon National Park, while the girls, joined by Education Director Paula Fowler and Assistant Tracy Hansford, took the same journey home the following day after doing some more exploring in the Escalante area. Taking in the spectacular views of the hoodoos in the giant natural amphitheater of Bryce Canyon was certainly a fitting end to a magical tour.

The purpose of Classical Connections is to further engage Utah Symphony guests during their experience at the hall, offering a new level of contextual understanding about the various connections that each performance has to other disciplines, art forms, and community issues. It’s basically another way for us to make your experience at the symphony as insightful and enjoyable as possible!

In the coming weeks, you can plan on seeing the display at most concerts, with various rotating content topics that relate to that evening’s repertoire. This past weekend, Classical Connections featured information about the human voice and how it is such a versatile musical instrument. It was a pleasure for us to also work with the National Center for Voice and Speech to compile most of the educational content for this particular display.

Come join us this weekend for the Messiah Sing-In to see this particular content rotation of Classical Connections up in the lobby again, and don’t forget to share YOUR voice on the display’s comment board as well as with the 3,000-voice audience choir that will fill the hall each night!

If you or your children attend this schools, keep a look out, and cheer on the Resident Artists!

If you have a love of music and would like to share that excitement with 5th graders, you’re a prime candidate to be a Utah Symphony Docent. Every year, virtually every 5th grader in the Canyons, Davis, Granite, Jordan and Salt Lake City school districts has the thrill of coming to Abravanel Hall to hear the Utah Symphony. In addition, we regularly get students from the Alpine, South Summit and Tooele districts. Most of these students arrive at Abravanel Hall excited about the adventure because they have been visited by a Utah Symphony docent who has introduced them to the concert.

The Utah Symphony Guild has sponsored our docent program for years and we couldn’t manage this program without them. Docents receive complete lesson plans for their school visit and attend a training session before going out to the schools. If you would like to learn more about our docent program, here’s a handy two-step process.

1. Call or email Beverly Hawkins at 801-869-9092 or bhawkins@usuo.org . She can answer your questions and put you in touch with the chairperson of the district in which you’d like to serve.

2. In addition to the regular concert-specific training in early February, docents are invited to attend a Listening 101 Workshop given by Symphony Education Manager Beverly Hawkins. This workshop is designed to help you gain a greater understanding of music. We will review the elements of music and practice listening for them. We will talk about the ways in which they are used by different composers and discover how this attentive listening can enrich our enjoyment and appreciation of music. Please join us on Friday, November 11, from 10 am to noon to spend some time exploring and enjoying music with others who share that joy. To rsvp, call or email Beverly Hawkins at 801-869-9092 or bhawkins@usuo.org .

If you follow us on facebook, you’ll know that National Opera week is Oct 28 – Nov 6! Watch our blog, facebook, and twitter for all sorts of fun things as we celebrate opera.

Other upcoming education events:

Tuesday, October 25 | 7 PM | Our annual favorite: Spooky Symphonies! | Come join Utah’s favorite Halloween tradition! Grab your costume and compete in one of the state’s largest costume contests with categories for groups, adults, children & orchestra members. Plus, hear the Utah Symphony perform your favorite spooky symphonies. | Click here for info and tickets

Friday, November 4 | 2 PM | Utah Opera Production Studios | Opera masterclass observation opportunity with Stanford Olsen. Our Resident Artists will be singing.

Saturday, November 5 | 1 PM | Abravanel Hall Stage | Open masterclass obvservation opportunity featuring young violinists. This event is sponsored by the Utah Symphony Youth Guild

Monday, November 21 | 7 PM | Abravanel Hall | The Late Piano Sonatas | A Lecture/Demonstration of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas with Jason Hardink, Principal Keyboard. Sit on the Abravanel Hall Stage and learn about Beethoven’s solo keyboard compositions. Part of our Beethoven Festival.

Utah Symphony is visiting schools as well this week! Piute High School (Piute) and Bryce Valley High School (Garfield).

Other events happening this week: the Resident Artists will get to attend a forum on “Time Management and Other Wisdom,” our Symphony Guild is hosting a luncheon at Cottonwood Country Club, and we’re hosting a High Tea at Grand America:

Beethoven to his Immortal Beloved: High tea at the Grand America
Utah Opera Ensemble Artists and Utah Symphony musicians perform Beethoven songs and chamber music, interspersed with readings from Beethoven’s writings, Saturday, October 15 | 1 PM. $32 and $16 tickets available through Grand America Tea reservations: 801-258-6707.
Seating is limited; reserve early.

Recently, we returned from our first touring adventure! It was only the second week that we have been together, so it was a new and interesting experience for most of us (our baritone is returning from last year). We were still getting to know one another and getting comfortable with the programs “Who Wants to be an Opera Star?” and “Opera 101” which we are presenting to schools all over the state.

During our school shows, we perform arias, a couple of duets, a trio, and two quartets. We have prepared a few of each kind of piece, so we can pick and choose to make every show different. During our first couple of performances we stuck to the lineup we had rehearsed, but this week we became adventurous and debuted several different duets and trios to add variety and cater to our audiences.

It’s always interesting to see how the children behave and react. Sometimes they are very attentive and ask great questions, while other times they can be rambunctious and noisy. We never know how much the children know about opera and working the crowd to keep their attention is always a challenge. During this week, we had a couple of interesting requests that we accommodated. John sang a snippet of “Figaro” to demonstrate the baritone voice, and to show the vocal range of a soprano, I sang in my upper upper register at 9am.

In addition to performing and representing Utah Opera in Carbon County, we also tried to take advantage of the beautiful scenery of the area.

We visited a museum, toured a few sites, and hiked. In one such instance, we drove to the Left Fork of Huntington Canyon and, after picnicking at the trail head, hiked a beautiful horse trail beside a river until the ominous clouds threatened to open upon us- we turned back. On our return trip to town, we took the long way through the loop and were able to travel a very scenic and breathtaking route along many vistas.

We had an adventure off-roading in the15-passenger opera van on our tour of the unpaved Nine Mile Canyon which is known as “the world’s longest art gallery” because of the extensive rock art.

On our way back to Salt Lake City, we stopped at a school that delighted us with a special treat as we were packing up: a group of girls from kindergarten wanted to sing a song to thank us – so we learned all about the color red.

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Here are this week’s Education Visits:

Mountain View Elementary (Box Elder), Pioneer Elementary (Granite), Twin Peaks Elementary (Granite), Forbes Elementary (Alpine), Whitesides Elementary (Davis), and Wasatch Elementary  (Provo).

Also this week, our Resident Artist Sishel Claverie did a Random Act of Opera at the City Library today at noon. Did you catch it? Sishel is from Guadalajara and her performance was in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month. On Saturday, October 8 you can watch the family-friendly movie “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” at the City Library at 11am.

by Luke Howard

Many consider the ensemble pieces the most successful examples of vocal writing in Fidelio. The Act 1 quartet (discussed in Lesson 2), the “Prisoners’ Chorus,” the final trio, the concluding rejoicing—these are precisely the places where Beethoven can treat the voices symphonically, and that is his métier.

Caption: Image of the Prisoner’s Chorus from Utah Opera’s 1999 production of Fidelio

Next, the famous “Prisoners’ Chorus:”

(Music starts at 0:57)

There is no question this is gorgeous music—a terrific 7-minute chorus in the style of a German Männerchor. But how does it propel the drama? It doesn’t. Absolutely nothing happens on stage during the chorus, and the theme of its text is only incidental to the opera. For all the lofty philosophizing about freedom and liberty in this chorus, the opera itself is about the love of a woman for her husband, and her bravery. A brave wife’s love is what the final chorus celebrates, and what the original subtitle of the opera underscored. This is another example where Beethoven’s remarkable music is far more important than the dramatic pacing or the story at this point.

Finally, the “stand-off” in Act II, “Er sterbe”:

The music in this scene is amazingly vivid—impassioned, emotional, moving—and yet Pizzaro, Leonore, Florestan, and Rocco stand there virtually stock-still for a full five minutes, with daggers and pistols drawn, making sure to reveal their true identities to all before the drama can continue. Then everyone freezes when the trumpet signals the arrival of the Minister, and they sing at length again about Leonore’s love and courage. The most exciting scene of the story, and the most musically animated, is actually one of the most visually static parts of the opera.

There is no issue at all with Beethoven’s musical instincts. He develops themes, varies the melodies, sustains the musical interest with masterly perfection. That is Fidelio’s greatest strength, and undoubtedly the reason for its continued success. But dramatically, in terms of the action on stage, these scenes are weak. (I personally find them almost farcical, for opposite reasons. The Act I quartet is a comic scene, but is treated as a very serious theme and variations. “Er sterbe,” on the other hand is a serious scene, the most intense of the opera, but the dramatic pacing so attenuated as to make it almost ludicrous on stage.)

Caption: Fidelio, Act II, Scene 3 (”Er sterbe”), an engraving from 1815

What carries the day is Beethoven’s music. It is proof, if it were needed, that opera is essentially a musical genre, not a dramatic genre. Otherwise (as a critic once claimed) Meryl Streep would be hired to sing every mad scene, and Sigourney Weaver would do everything else. We forgive opera for not being totally realistic because there is compensation in the music itself. And with Beethoven’s Fidelio, there is more than enough compensation for the weaknesses in dramatic pacing and libretto. Wilhelm Fürtwangler, the great German conductor, once observed, “Fidelio is not an opera in the sense we are used to, nor is Beethoven a musician for the theater, or a dramaturgist. He is quite a bit more, a whole musician, and beyond that, a saint and a visionary.” So the struggle Beethoven experienced in producing Fidelio wasn’t so much a struggle to write a good opera. It was the struggle to write an opera on his own terms, a symphonic opera that breaks all the “rules” of staged drama and allows the music itself to be the lead character. It is what he excelled at in his symphonies, and in that struggle to symphonize the opera genre with Fidelio, he succeeded beautifully.

Tomorrow night (Tuesday, September 27) is the first of our family concerts this season! You’ll get to hear nine young musicians play eight concerti. There are famous works such as Vivaldi’s “Spring” from the Four Seasons as well as little known concerti for flute and xylophone. Bring your budding musicians and they’ll be inspired to practice when they hear how amazing these nine young musicians are! Click here for more info about this concert.>>

And lastly, here’s some great photos from our Resident Artists’ performance at the SLC Farmers Market last week:

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Our Utah Opera Ensemble Artists have a busy week ahead of them! They’ll introduce the students of Herriman Elementary (Jordan SD), South Kearns Elementary (Granite SD), Jim Bridger Elementary (Granite SD), Whittier Elementary (SLC SC), and Polk Elementary (Ogden) to opera! They’re also going to do a presentation of their Opera 101 program to the Wasatch Youth Center. You can get a taste of our excellent Ensemble Artists yourself this Saturday at the Salt Lake City Farmers Market! They’ll perform at noon.

We are also giving a couple of school tours of the Utah Opera Production Studios this week. Plus, you can learn about the music on this weekend’s concert at the pre-concert lectures happening in Abravanel Hall’s First Tier Room prior to the concerts (7:15pm) on September 23 and 24.

Looking ahead to next week: make sure you don’t miss our annual favorite: the Salute-to-Youth Concert on Sept 27th. Nine young soloists, all stellar musicians, will rock Abravanel Hall with concerto movements they’ll perform with Utah Symphony! You’ll hear a movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “Spring,” rare flute and xylophone concerti, as well as perennial favorites by Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Mendelssohn. These young musicians are incredibly talented. You can learn more about them at the artist profiles section on our website.

We’ve also posted the first lesson in our three-week course on Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio. Click here!