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About
the Lowell House Opera
Established in 1938, the Lowell House Opera is the longest continually
performing opera company in New England, featuring a mix of Harvard students
and Boston area students and professionals. Every year dozens of artists
and student artists volunteer their time to create a production with
full orchestra, costumes, sets, and lighting. The operas are performed
in their original language, with English supertitles projected in front
of the stage. The hall presents a more intimate performance venue which
is particularly suited to lighter voices and audience members to see
opera up close.
Lowell House Opera offers educational opportunities on many levels and
is dedicated towards developing professional skills on many fronts. Experienced
directors and production staff direct workshops and individual coachings
to enhance performance skills. Singers are able to learn and perform
their roles in their original language, and explore the literary basis
and historical context for the work. For undergraduates in particular,
it offers a unique opportunity to work with and create contacts with
more experienced artists who have made or have begun to make opera and
theater their life's work.
Lowell House Opera is a community effort involving artists within and
outside of Harvard University. It is seen by audience members from throughout
the Boston area, over 1500 people each season, and is critically acclaimed
as Harvard University’s flagship annual opera.
Recent activities of the Lowell House Opera’s 2007–2008
season include:
- Fully staged and costumed opera production of Puccini’s Turandot,
including the original completion by Franco Alfano
- Orchestra concert of Italianiate opera preludes, intermezzi, and
soprano arias, where undergraduates and community members had the opportunity
to play great works which are not often performed except in full-length
operas and in recordings
- Two undergraduate opera workshops where participants learn acting,
stage movement, diction, character development, costume design, musicianship,
and other facets of opera and give a final performance in one or more
opera scenes
- Two master classes for undergraduate opera singers, taught by an
experienced singer/teacher and an accomplished opera conductor
- Symposium on Puccini’s Turandot with presentations
and performances led by an internationally known Puccini scholar and
noted opera conductor
Many Lowell House Opera alumni have continued in opera and music. An
incomplete list:
- Alan
Gilbert ’89, who conducted the 50th anniversary production
of Lowell House Opera, Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of
Windsor (1988), was the former Music Director of the Santa Fe
Opera and begins his first season as Music Director of the New York
Philharmonic in 2009–2010.
- Hugh
Wolff ’75, who was one of two conductors of the 1974 production
of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, is former Music
Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Frankfurt Radio
Symphony Orchestra and current Director of Orchestras at the New England
Conservatory.
- Sara Jobin ’91,
who played harpsichord in The Marriage of Figaro in
1989, made history in 2004 as the first woman to conduct mainstage subscription
performances at San Francisco Opera, and has returned to conduct the
company four times since then. She has served as guest conductor at Anchorage
Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Tacoma Opera, and Arizona Opera, and made recent
débuts
with Symphony Silicon Valley and the Dayton Philharmonic.
- Evan
Christ ’93, who was one of two conductors of the 1993 performance
of Rossini’s The Italian Girl in Algiers, is Generalmusikdirektor
at the Brandenburg State Opera House in Cottbus, Germany, and Associate
Music Director of the Wuppertal Opera in Germany.
- Sarah
Hicks ’93, who also conducted the The Italian Girl in
Algiers (1993), returned to Lowell House to conduct La bohème in
1995; she is now Assistant Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, where
she conducts the innovative series “Inside the Classics”,
and Staff Conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.
- Soprano Ilana
Davidson, who sang Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro (1989),
will sing Amor in Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice with
the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec as well as Haydn’s Creation with
the Harrisburg Symphony in 2009–2010.
- In the 2009–2010 season, tenor Vincent
Wolfsteiner, who sang Don José in Bizet’s Carmen (2002),
performs his first Siegmund in Wagner’s Die Walküre in
the Staatsoper Hannover in Germany; and Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio and
Aegisth in Richard Strauss’s Elektra at the Anhaltisches
Theater Dessau in Germany.
- Lee
Poulis ’02, baritone, who sang Mr. Lockit in Britten’s The
Beggar’s Opera (2000), Marcello in Puccini’s La
bohème (2001), and Escamillo in Carmen (2002),
is now ensemble soloist at the Theater Bonn in Germany, where in 2009–2010
he sings Wolfram in Tannhäuser, Father in Hänsel
und Gretel, Belcore in L’elisir d’amore,
Marcello in La bohème, and Pantalon in Prokofiev’s The
Love for Three Oranges.
- Baritone Joshua Benaim ’97, who sang Colline
in La bohème (1995), makes his Metropolitan
Opera début in 2009–2010 as Journalist in Alban Berg’s Lulu.
- Sarah Meyers ’02, who stage directed the 2004
production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges,
is Guest Stage Director at the Metropolitan
Opera.
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