Departments
Arts
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Week of 30 January 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 18 |
Arts
Guest artist adds gusto to Handel as Opera Institute launches its first mid-winter festival
by Judith Sandler
If you consider opera intimidating and inaccessible, maybe you should spend a few minutes watching singer-director Drew Minter work with BU Opera Institute students. Articulate, funny, and approachable, Minter -- who is the guest director for the production of Handel's opera Clori, Tirsi, e Fileno, which will be presented by the Boston University Opera Institute on January 31 -- has a knack for making his art fascinating, accessible, and comprehensible.
Clori, Tirsi, e Fileno kicks off the Opera Institute's first-ever Mid-Winter Fringe Festival, modeled after the Outside the Main Gate events at the Edinburgh Festival. Consisting of a series of three one-act operas, each presented at a different venue, the idea for the festival came from Sharon Daniels, assistant professor at SFA and director of the Opera Institute and Opera Programs.
"We wanted to give our advanced young professional talent more opportunity to do complete roles of artistic value, sung in the original language, rather than having students perform a series of opera scenes, the customary way of giving young artists performing experience," says Daniels. "We are also exploring new genres and new performance sites, which should be appealing to new audiences. And with Clori, Tirsi, we're giving an opportunity to one of our young conductors to collaborate with one of the premier artists in the field of baroque opera performance."
To provide students the opportunity of working with experienced professionals, Daniels has engaged outstanding artists to direct each program. She selected Minter to direct the first program because of his thoroughgoing knowledge of the genre, both as performer and director. Hailed by the Washington Post as "one of the world's half-dozen top singers in his vocal category," he has in recent years embarked on a parallel directing career.
"I never intended to direct," says Minter, "but four years ago an overburdened Nicholas McGegan asked if I would consider directing a piece for the Göttingen Handel Festival [the oldest Handel festival in the world], and I've been there ever since." And his directing has received the same high praise as his singing. Reporting on a recent Minter production, Le Méridional found that the opera contained "a great unity, rare coherence, and a total appropriateness of all the elements in service of the music."
Daniels invited Minter to SFA not only to direct the opera, but also to present master classes. "One of the things I enjoy most is the master class. Sharon wanted me to share what I know about baroque theater; I said yes because I'm always interested in working with new people."
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Drew Minter, one of the
premiere artists in the field of baroque opera
performance, directs first-year Opera Institute
students Sarah Pelletier (left), who plays the part
of Clori, and Deborah Van Renterghem, who plays
Tirsi. Photo by Fred
Sway
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Minter has more than done research on the music of George Frederick Handel. A veteran of more than 20 performances of Handel operas and 15 recordings of the composer's works, he may be the ideal person to communicate the intricacies of the musical practices of the baroque era. But Minter is also teaching the students a discipline they have not encountered before in their many years of musical training -- the style of baroque gesture, a set vocabulary of graceful gestures, each communicating very specific ideas, that has regained popularity in performance in just the past couple of decades.
"Learning the style of baroque gestures has been very challenging," says Sarah Pelletier, a first-year Institute student who sings the role of Clori. "It's like ballet, and it's very exposed," Ehly says. "It's interesting to get a sense of that physical vocabulary and discover that it clarifies the musical gestures as well." Adds Van Renterghem, "Through gesture you help to communicate the meaning of the words and the temperament and character of each piece."
The students say they find Handel's music challenging in a way that 19th-century opera is not. "In music after the baroque period there's more drama, more scenery, more props," says Pelletier, "but with this music we have to become more inventive. This style is much more challenging because it relies solely on the music, so you have to work more with the colors and the words and the music."
For the members of the small orchestra, composed of SFA students, the opera holds similar yet different challenges. "The orchestra is much more involved in the action of the opera than would be true in a large romantic work," says graduate student Kostis Protopapas, who conducts the orchestra for the production. "Because the orchestra is on stage and the group is much smaller, it's like playing chamber music. The orchestra must pay very close attention to produce just the right sound. That's the biggest challenge."
The first event of the Opera Institute's Mid-Winter Fringe Festival, Handel's Clori, Tirsi, e Fileno, directed by guest artist Drew Minter and conducted by Kostis Protopapas, will be presented at the Tsai Performance Center on Saturday, January 31, at 8 p.m. The Festival continues on February 11 and 12 with Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, David Gately, guest director, and Jeffrey Stevens, musical director. The Festival concludes March 3 through 6 with the Bizet/Brook La Tragédie de Carmen, Joshua Major, guest director, and Allison Voth, musical director. Locations will be announced. General admission for all performances is $4, and students are admitted free of charge.