This weekend is your last chance to catch the Young Artists’ Fall Tour of Mozart’s Così fan tutte. The singers perform tonight at Benaroya Hall (in the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall) and Sunday night at the Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort in Leavenworth.
Tonight’s cast hasn’t performed in a week, so today they had a quick “brush-up” rehearsal to give the singers a chance to refresh their musical memories, said Education Events Manager Justina Schwartz. “Since tonight’s a sold-out house, and this group hasn’t sung the opera since the 13th [in Bellingham], we wanted to be sure they could put their best musical foot forward tonight,” she said. The group will also arrive at Benaroya several hours before the performance to take some time to get used to the stage—to move the scenery around, rehearse any tricky blocking, and make sure everyone’s comfortable.
The brush-up was also helpful because several of the singers spent the past few days in New York City auditioning for young artist programs at companies such as Wolf Trap Opera and Houston Grand Opera, hoping for slots in their summer or fall programs. They returned late last night, so Schwartz said it was helpful to have this rehearsal so the singers could bring their focus back to Così. Are we going to see you this weekend?
You may have noticed small statues of Michelangelo’s David sculpture around Seattle over the past few weeks—sightseeing, enjoying a night on the town, and even hanging out at Seattle Opera.
Seattle Art Museum launched a promotion in October for its exhibit of Michelangelo sketches, among which is a sketch of his famous David statue being carted around Florence in a wooden crate. SAM made a dozen replicas of the statue which have been distributed around town.
When Little David came to visit Seattle Opera, he received a real behind-the-scenes glimpse of the company. He bought a ticket to La Traviata (the creation of another Italian master), he investigated the stunning costumes, he hung out in Francesco Demuro’s dressing room during the singer's make-up call, he joined Violetta’s party onstage, and - inspired by what he’d seen - he even requested an audition with Speight Jenkins.
You can check out all of Little David's Seattle adventures and learn more about how he got here over on SAM's blog. Have YOU seen him?
A composer finishes his opera. He mails it to his publisher who prints copies and sells them to opera companies all over the world who in turn take the published parts and distribute them to their orchestras. Easy right? At least until the rehearsal starts…
(Photo: Glenn Crytzer, Seattle Opera Music Librarian)
Imagine: The conductor gives the downbeat to begin, and the strings turn into a cacophony of various interpretations, the trumpets play triple forte, the first horn raises his hand to point out that his third page is printed upside down, and the second flute player has no idea whether to play flute or piccolo.
It would take hours and hours of expensive rehearsal time to work out all of those details in an opera. That’s where the music librarian comes in. When the parts arrive from the publisher I go down through the list of things that could go wrong in rehearsal and make notes in the parts that will help the musicians to avoid these pitfalls so that the conductor, instrumentalists, and singers can spend their rehearsal time making music. Here are some of the most important things I keep an eye out for.
First I check to see that the parts have adequate rehearsal markings – that way if the conductor asks the orchestra to begin in measure 235, they’ll all know where that is. The next step is to check the parts for errors. Most opera parts are engraved from sources that were made many years ago and were written out by hand. I’m sure you can imagine how painstaking it might be to write out every single part for Götterdämmerung by hand. Chances are you’d make a few mistakes while copying over those thousands upon thousands of notes, dynamics, and expression markings; therefore, it’s worthwhile to give them a once-over so that the instrumentalists aren’t spending their time in rehearsal correcting wrong notes.
After that come the bowings. It’s important that the string players all draw the bow across the strings in the same direction if they are playing the same part because the direction that the bow is drawn determines the phrasing of the musical line. Parts are usually given to the section leaders in advance to decide on bowings for their section, and then I copy bowings from their parts into the other section members’ music.
Cuts and transpositions specific to a production must be accounted for. If the director and maestro decide to cut 10 bars of music in act 2 and take the tenor aria up a 3rd in act 4, then it’s my job to make sure that this these details are marked into the musicians' parts. In the case of a transposition, I’ll generally take the whole section of music that is transposed and make a new part for each musician to use in the new key.
Bandas, or back-stage music, are often parts of an opera that were never orchestrated by the composer. Usually backstage music was played by the local town band in whatever city the opera was being performed, and the bandleaders were expected to orchestrate a piano part for that section of music to match the instruments they had in their local group. I confer with the Maestro and the Assistant Conductor to find out what instruments will be used, which version of the orchestration will be used, and from whom I can borrow a copy (banda orchestrations are usually not available from a publisher).
Anomalies of all shapes and sizes can present themselves when preparing to produce an opera, so it’s important to be flexible and to be prepared for just about anything that might come up with regard to the music. There are not, to my knowledge, any degree programs that prepare students for a career in orchestra librarianship, so librarians have generally acquired all the skills for the position through their own hodgepodge of musical experiences. My degrees are in music composition (MM Cleveland Institute of Music 2006, BM Florida State University 2003), but skills gained from my experiences leading jazz groups, playing in symphony orchestras, singing opera, and even playing in rock bands have all also proved to be valuable in one way or another as the librarian at Seattle Opera. Every day presents a new challenge and requires you to find a new and creative way of overcoming it.
Cheers, Glenn
Glenn Crytzer has been the music librarian at Seattle Opera since June 2008; he’s the man who you see wandering around the pit in a funny hat. Glenn is a composer as well as a jazz band leader. His original compositions can be heard at http://www.glenncrytzer.com/ and his jazz band can be found at http://www.syncopators.net/.
There’s a great profile of former Young Artist Thomas Forde over on Voix des Arts today, where he talks about his early performances, his time at Seattle Opera, and the roles he’d love to sing. As a Young Artist last season, Forde sang Gremin in the Eugene Onegin adaptation, Wotan in Siegfried and the Ring of Fire, and Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He’ll be back in the Northwest in March to sing Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro at Tacoma Opera.
The second-annual NEA Opera Honors were held Saturday in Washington, D.C. The honorees were: composer John Adams (Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic); mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne; Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of San Francisco Opera who introduced supertitles to opera; stage director Frank Corsaro, best known for his 50-year association with New York City Opera; and conductor Julius Rudel, former general director of City Opera. A video tribute was shown for each honoree, and you can check them out on the NEA’s website.
Anne Midgette at the Washington Post notes the while it’s nice to honor the work of established artists, the NEA may be better off helping to jumpstart the careers of new artists. She used John Adams as an example:
Adams, in his remarks, cited a $2,500 NEA grant he had gotten as a young composer that enabled him to write his first orchestral piece, which in turn led to his commission for “Harmonium,” the stunning choral work that put him on the map. It was a reminder that the NEA may do more by enabling artists’ work than by honoring that work after they’ve done it. Read more.
Our Adult Education series continues tomorrow night at Seattle University with the first of three Verdi vs. Wagner face-offs this season. We’ll address psychology, politics, and art in the life of these two great opera creators, comparing and contrasting how they responded to three enormous tugs-of-war pushing and pulling back and forth across both their careers: the artistic shift from bel canto number opera to through-composed music drama; the political transition towards national unification, and, simultaneously, globalization; and (starting tomorrow) the ongoing battle between the Bohemian and the Bourgeois.
With that third category, we hope to address an issue--perhaps it’s also known as the tug-of-war between the blue states and the red, between liberal and conservative--an issue that comes up again and again, not only in the operas of Wagner and Verdi, but in most of the world’s most popular operas. The story of Carmen, for example, is the tragedy of Don José: a man torn between what bourgeois society is telling him to do: marry sweet, chaste Micäela, the good girl his mother has chosen and groomed for him, be an obedient soldier and an upstanding family man-—and what his loins are telling him to do: connect with (and try to stay connected to) the sexy, unpredictable, fascinating, infuriating Carmen, no matter what the cost. At Seattle Opera we just saw this battle waged, in La traviata, over the soul of Alfredo, between his uptight father, Germont, and his “fallen woman” girlfriend, Violetta. The issue will come up again, in the love affairs of Leonora, in Il trovatore, and Nannetta, in Falstaff; and it plays out in other Verdi operas as well, especially Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlos, and Aida.
Tomorrow night we’ll look at the centerpiece of La traviata, the Act 2 Scene 1 confrontation between Germont and Violetta, in some detail, and I hope to show how much that scene has in common with the centerpiece of Wagner’s Ring, the Act 2 Scene 1 confrontation between Fricka and Wotan in Die Walküre. Not only do both confrontations come at the same location in their respective operas; both were written the same year, 1853, by composers who turned 40 that year (Wagner and Verdi were both born in 1813). Both scenes are courtroom dramas deciding the fate of a love affair, with one character (Violetta, Wotan) advocating Bohemian free love, the other (Germont, Fricka) pushing a more conservative agenda. The Bourgeois character wins, in both fights, by showing the Bohemian the flaw in his/her life-plans (Germont tells Violetta Alfredo will fall out of love with her eventually anyway, Fricka tells Wotan Siegmund’s sword will fail to cut Wotan free of his dirty bond with Fafner). And in both scenes, both characters, Bohemian and Bourgeois, are presented with sympathy, dignity and complexity; music and text here combine to create a kind of dramatic intensity never before seen in opera.
And Die Walküre is far from the only Wagner opera concerned with this most basic of human struggles. Most of Wagner’s mature operas concern marriage and its discontents, and explore why adultery is so much more fun. And two of his operas—Tannhäuser and Parsifal—are set in a world where chastity is at war with promiscuity: where Tannhäuser doesn’t fit in, either amid the wild Bohemian orgies of the pagan Venusberg, or among Wagner’s strict, sex-phobic Victorian Lutherans of medieval Christendom; where Parsifal must find a way to move beyond the endless war between the self-mortifying Grail knights and the dissolute, superficial, ultimately impotent forces of Klingsor.
At Seattle University we’ll talk about these issues; we’ll explore the image of Bohemian tenor-as-minstrel in Il trovatore, Falstaff, Tannhäuser, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg; we’ll put various Verdi and Wagner characters in the dating-game hotseat, with possible dates from the Bohemian and the Bourgeois side of things; and of course we’ll explore how the composers themselves dealt with the issue in their own lives. Neither lived a conventional, Bourgeois life, although Wagner called a lot more attention to his own flamboyant, Bohemian ways than did Verdi. Join us to learn more about these great composers, listen to music from a handful of their masterpieces, and to discuss these important questions with other opera fans.
The Young Artists’ fall tour is off to an exciting start. The singers played to a sold-out house on Wednesday night at Walla Walla Community College—and closed to a standing ovation. “It was a fantastic show,” said Maya Lahyani, the mezzo who sings Dorabella in Così fan tutte. “Our energy was really high, and it was so rewarding to have a full audience and see how well they responded to us.”
Maya loves performing in both casts. “It’s fascinating to have a different sister and a different pair of lovers each time,” she said. Plus performing with alternating groups of singers helps keep her performance fresh, which she admits can be difficult. “It’s easy to go on autopilot, but you have to listen to the other singers like it’s the first time you’re hearing their characters say things, and react as if it’s the first time you’ve heard that,” she said. “The show is new for each audience, and they deserve to see the most fresh and honest version of it.”
Maya is about to wrap up her time with the Young Artists—she leaves the Program once the Così tour ends to head to San Francisco, where she will be a 2010 Adler Fellow. If you don’t get a chance to see Maya in Così, you can catch her back in Seattle in February competing at the regional level of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.
On another note, everyone knows you don’t wish a performer “good luck” (which, any superstitious star will tell you is actually bad luck); instead you tell actors to “break a leg,” and, Maya tells me, you tell an opera singer “toi, toi, toi,” which comes from an old German phrase intended to ward off evil spirits.
So “toi, toi, toi,” to our singers at Western Washington University in Bellingham tonight and Sunday at Kirkland Performance Center. Will we see you there?
In this latest audio-only bonus edition of Speight's Corner, General Director Speight Jenkins and Young Artists Program Manager Aren Der Hacopian discuss Il Trovatore's music and some of the past artists that have been featured in this exciting Verdi opera.
The first round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions took place October 24. This series of competitions for young opera singers begins at the district level and culminates in a Grand Finals Concert on the Met stage. (Last year, former Young Artist Noah Baetge was one of the national finalists and Midsummer Night's Dream guest artist Anthony Roth Costanzo was one of the winners).
David McDade, Seattle Opera’s head of coach-accompanists, played the piano for the auditions and noted proudly that three of the five winners of the Western Washington/Alaska District are associated with Seattle Opera: current Young Artist Maya Lahyani, former Young Artist Michael Anthony McGee, and Jonathan Silvia, a former guest artist with the Young Artists Program, who recently sang the Marquis in La Traviata. Ksenia Poppova, a former music intern here, won an Encouragement Award.
“I’ve always been proud of our Young Artists Program,” McDade said. “And when our ‘guys’ do well I am always happy.”
McDade rehearsed with each of the singers, but spent the most extensive sessions with Silvia, who sang “Come dal ciel precipita” from Macbeth and “Schweig! Schweig!” from Der Freischutz. McDade said his performance was “the best I’ve ever heard Jonathan sing, he took risks and gave 100%”
Lahyani sang arias from Massenet’s Werther and Bellini’s Norma. McGee performed arias from Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Rossini’s Semiramide.
Don’t miss the next round of the competition, when the five district finalists participate in the regional auditions on February 7 in Seattle!
Last night, the singers in the “red” cast—Marcy Stonikas, Bray Wilkins, and Eric Neuville, along with Maya Lahyani, Erik Anstine, and Sarah Heltzel, who sing with both casts—had their final rehearsal. (The “blue” cast, which features Vira Slywotzky, Alex Mansoori, and Michael Krzankowski, rehearses tonight.)
Marcy Stonikas, who sings Fiordiligi in the “red” cast, said everything really gelled at last night’s rehearsal. “It felt like we all were singing as a group, like a unit,” the soprano said, adding that it was great to finally rehearse in front of an audience. Erik Anstine, who sings Don Alfonso in all performances, agreed: “With an audience we can see which jokes land, where to pause, and what adjustments we should make.”
Marcy, much like Bray and Alex, noted the benefits of having a role that’s double-cast. “Vira is an extraordinary actress, and it’s really refreshing and educational to watch her character choices.” But while the two are inspired by each other, Marcy noted that they still have to make their performances their own. “I am not Vira, and if I tried to be her, it would just bomb,” Marcy said, with a laugh. “But I can take what she does in certain places and figure out how to make it work for me.”
The singers definitely bring a bit of themselves and their own interpretations to their characters, but for the most part, all the staging is the same. Even when there are slight differences, Erik says he’s not thrown off when performing with the different casts, because everyone is making choices in character, so he can easily react in character. “It’s not ‘oh, Marcy turned right [where Vira turns left],’ instead it’s ‘Fiordiligi does this, so Don Alfonso does that,’” he said.
Tomorrow the Young Artists pack up and head out to Walla Walla for their sold-out performance on Wednesday night. Will we see you there? If you miss out, you still have four more chances to see these exciting young singers this fall!
Join us 7 pm, Tuesday November 17th, to discuss issues of liberal and conservative lifestyles in the operas of Verdi and Wagner. Hosted at Seattle University's Wyckoff Auditorium. For a full list of programming in this free series, click here.
This blog post is republished from Richard Kessler's ArtsJournal blog, Dewey21C. The original post can be read in full here. ____________________ A few tidbits I have come across recently and not so recently; most in person and a few in writing:
"You arts people think that all principals have to do all day is think about arts education." -- School District Official
I would rather kids have nothing than have arts education of low quality." -- School District Administrator
"The integration of the arts cannot be done at the high school level." -- School District Administrator
"I am only really interested in a broad arts education that is integrated across the curriculum." -- Principal
"The integration of the arts has no quality and no sequence and cannot be accounted for." -- Professor of Education
"When is the arts program going to include us?" -- A non-arts subject area teacher in middle school
"Parents are the key to arts education." -- Foundation Staff Member
"Parents are a waste of time." -- The very same Foundation Staff Member
"Parents in low income areas don't care about the arts." -- Arts Education Consultant
"Parents in low income schools understand that the arts are part of a well-rounded education." -- Grass Roots Organizer.
"Low performing students shouldn't be required to have the arts." -- School District Official
"Music Saves Lives." -- Arts Advocate
"There would be no arts education without cultural organizations." -- Arts Administrator
"There is no arts education in our schools." -- Elected Official
"This year is going to be another great year for arts education." -- City Official (in the same school district as the elected official)
____________________
What is Seattle Opera's part in arts education? Seattle Opera’s Education department has programs designed to reach virtually every age group. In order to make opera irresistible to young people, we have tailor-made our education programs for grade schoolers, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students. Through exciting programming, engaging lectures, and thrilling live performances, we are preparing the opera audiences of tomorrow – today. Grade School: Opera Goes to School Grade School: RingFest 2009 Summer Program Middle School: Backstage Tours High School: Experience Opera College: Student Group Sales, Front & Center Program Teacher Training: Seattle Pacific University Wagner Class
Plus all the pre-performance lectures and free community lectures at various venues around town. But back to the blog post - what have YOU heard about arts education? Chime in in the comments!
As La Traviata came to a close last week, our Facebook page recently saw some posts by familiar faces...both Nuccia Focile, our Wednesday/Saturday Violetta, and Francesco Demuro, our Friday/Sunday Alfredo, wrote on our wall to express their love and thanks to all the Seattle audience members and fans that made their time here so wonderful. We had to pass along their warm thoughts! Their comments, along with their Facebook profile pictures are posted below:
Nuccia Foccile: To all my friends at Seattle Opera: Thank you ever so much for being sooooooo wonderful. I miss you all!!!!!!!! Lots of love, Nuccia
Francesco Demuro: ..E' stato un onore lavorare con tutti voi..avete reso meraviglioso il mio debutto negli Stati Uniti...con infinita gratitudine...a presto!!!!!
(Translation: It was an honor to work with you all. You have made my United States debut wonderful ... with infinite gratitude ... see you soon !!!!!)
If you're not already a fan of Seattle Opera on Facebook, come join us and see these comments as they happen in real time. Connect with other Seattle Opera fans, see behind the scenes photos and videos, and now (just added yesterday!) write your own reviews of the operas you see on stage.
Last night, Seattle Opera’s Adult Education series continued with a presentation on “Verdi: Parents & Children”, given by me, Jonathan Dean, at Seattle University’s Wyckoff Auditorium. I surveyed a series of Verdi operas, including La traviata, Il trovatore, and Falstaff, and followed Verdi’s use of the images of sinfully arrogant parents, disobedient children, and the curse that smites generation after generation of a family. Verdi never puts romantic love front and center in his operas; his tenor-soprano love duets, lovely as some of them are, are never as compelling, or sexy, as the tenor-soprano duets in Puccini’s operas. Instead, Verdi’s best scenes showcase the love between parents (particularly fathers) and children, and his many baritone-soprano father-daughter duets are really where it’s at.
When you look at Verdi’s biography, it becomes evident why the composer responded so powerfully to stories about parents and children: as son, and as father, he was unusually blessed and cursed. (Look at our Seattle Opera Verdi Spotlight Guide for details!) After the decimation of his first family, Verdi’s career got going with Nabucco, an opera about an insanely arrogant father and his sadistically wicked daughter. He wrote Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata a decade later, at the time of his second family meltdown, and it’s easy to see how these operas all build on each other. Rigoletto closes with the image of the broken parent cradling the dead child, the grotesque Rigoletto with the daughter who was killed when he attempted to play God and be avenged upon his enemy; but in Il trovatore, Verdi’s next opera, that same story played long before the opera began, when Azucena murdered her own son in an attempt to be avenged upon her enemy. It’s fashionable to ridicule the complicated plot of Il trovatore, but the music Verdi wrote for Azucena’s nightmarish flashbacks, mental agony, guilt, panic, and frustration always impresses me with its unflinching, unbearable sincerity: what it must feel like to be responsible for your child’s death.
Azucena La mano convulsa stendo... stringo La vittima... nel foco la traggo, la sospingo... Cessa il fatal delirio... L'orrida scena fugge... La fiamma sol divampa, e la sua preda strugge! Pur volgo intorno il guardo e innanzi a me vegg'io Dell'empio Conte il figlio... Manrico Ah! Che dici! Azucena Il figlio mio, Mio figlio avea bruciato! Manrico Quale orror! Azucena Sul capo mio le chiome Sento rizzarsi ancor!
Azucena I reached out my trembling hand…grabbed the victim…shoved him into the fire… The deadly delirium stopped…the horrid scene fled [my eyes]… But the flames grew, and devoured their prey. I turned away, and saw before me the son of the wicked Count… Manrico Ah! What are you saying? Azucena My son, I burned my son! Manrico What horror! Azucena On my head I feel the hairs rising up again!
Conflict between parents and children drives most of Verdi’s operas. But the important thing is, they aren’t all like Nabucco and Abigaille, arrogant, obnoxious, and cruel. Many of Verdi’s characters, including the grotesque Rigoletto and Azucena, are wonderfully sympathetic. Verdi’s parents and children may have their problems, but we in the audience care about them because they love each other so much. Gilda and Rigoletto have their beautiful, moving scenes, Azucena and Manrico care enormously about each other, even Germont is a loving father to the two young people whose happiness he destroys in La traviata. My favorite Verdi opera, Simon Boccanegra, is almost a wish-fulfillment fantasy, for Giuseppe Verdi, about the best possible father he could be, with the best possible daughter. We listened to much of Boccanegra’s redemptive, healing music last night, and to some of the tender parent-child scenes from Verdi’s other operas: here’s a moment from Luisa Miller (written immediately before Rigoletto) in which father and daughter fantasize about escaping from their problems, together, into a world where every day is Daddy-Daughter Day:
Al nuovo albore noi partirem. Andrem, raminghi e poveri, ove il destin ci porta. Un pan chiedendo agli uomini andrem di porta in porta. Forse talor le ciglia noi bagnerem di pianto, ma sempre al padre accanto la figlia sua starà. Quel padre e quella figlia Iddio benedirà!
We’ll leave at dawn. We’ll wander, aimless and poor, Wherever destiny takes us. Begging our bread from men, we’ll go from door to door. From time to time we’ll bathe our eyes with tears, but the daughter will always be beside her father. Such a father and such a daughter God will bless!
Join us on November 17, at Seattle University, for a night of Wagner vs. Verdi and the great nineteenth-century Bohemian – Bourgeois tug-of-war!
When New York City Opera opens its 2009-10 season this weekend in the newly-renovated and renamed David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center (formerly known as the New York State Theater), things will sound a little different to audiences. The voice amplification system that was added to the theater in 1999 has been removed; now operagoers will only hear the singers’ live, unfiltered voices. (Via Robin Pogrebin on New York Times' “Arts Beat” column)
Opera fans, do you enjoy the amplification-free sound of operatic voices that you hear at Seattle Opera and other companies? Would it impact your experience or enjoyment to listen to those voices if they were amplified? Is it strange for you to attend other theatrical performances where the performers use microphones?
Watch the latest episode of Speight's Corner, as Seattle Opera General Director Speight Jenkins and Young Artists Program Manager Aren Der Hacopian discuss the music and artists of this exciting upcoming Verdi opera, Il Trovatore. Performing at McCaw Hall January 16 - 30, 2010.
Another Seattle Opera production closed last night, and all the captions are in. Our final contest winner is Pat Palmer for their caption, "Evel Knievel's Great,Great Grandfather." Thank you to everyone who played along in our silly contest!
As we relish fond memories (and tunes in our head) from La Traviata, here are all the winning captions throughout the production in review. Enjoy!
"They're really going all out in the donors' lounge this season!"
"If Scarlet O'Hara can get drapes to fit, so can I!"
"Violetta...I just saved alot of money by switching to Geico."
"SHE SAYS: Raise the roof.. HE SAYS:OH yea!!"
"Where are my car keys? I left them right here!"
"Lavish costumes still predominate in Sir Mix-A-Lot's otherwise thoroughly modern interpretation of "La Traviata." In this still, Violetta (Eglise Gutiérrez) plays coy as Alfredo (Francesco Demuro) sings, "LA face with the Oakland booty," from the "Un dì, felice, eterea" remix."
"Dude, I TOLD you counting cards doesn't work in this game..."
"I told you I was going to wear that dress tonight!"
"Your face is going to freeze that way."
"My dear, are you SURE eating all that garlic was a good idea?"
"All the single ladies....all the single ladies...."
"Why oh why did I have that triple shot macchiato after dinner? I'm never going to get to sleep."
Tonight’s cast hasn’t performed in a week, so today they had a quick “brush-up” rehearsal to give the singers a chance to refresh their musical memories, said Education Events Manager Justina Schwartz. “Since tonight’s a sold-out house, and this group hasn’t sung the opera since the 13th [in Bellingham], we wanted to be sure they could put their best musical foot forward tonight,” she said. The group will also arrive at Benaroya several hours before the performance to take some time to get used to the stage—to move the scenery around, rehearse any tricky blocking, and make sure everyone’s comfortable. 
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