Wolf Trap Opera

There’s a good number of show folk in my life who greet a performance day with the phrase above. Many days, I call up my Facebook feed and find someone with this wonderfully exuberant phrase as their status update. Yes, there are show days that are tough – fatigue, illness, nerves, other distractions. But much of the time, we adore doing what we do so much that we can’t wait to share it.

Tonight’s performance has been sold out for a while, thanks in part to the synergy between our artists and the featured photography of Terre Jones. Those lucky enough to have tickets will be treated to the best kind of music making: at turns virtuosic, raw, intimate, dramatic, humorous, evocative, and daring. It’s all delivered by singers who are also some of the best people I know, and I’m fortunate to share the stage and these few days with them.

My show day routine? An early 5-mile walk (thank you, mild northern Virginia winter), my full yoga sequence (too often abbreviated…), tidying up my printed music (we collaborative pianists are masters of the scissors-and-tape optimal page turn), wardrobe decisions (does one wear a dress or pants to play Ravel and Jerry Lee Lewis?) and a technical rehearsal in the theatre. Good video excerpts should be available in the next few weeks, and I do promise to share some with you. Happy weekend!

Photo courtesy Terre Jones: Sunrise over New River Gorge, West Virginia

Summer 2012. Just the facts, with links to the Wolf Trap website for casting and other details:

Operas at The Barns

Don Giovanni
June 29, July 1(m), 5 & 7

The Rake’s Progress
August 3, 5(m) & 11

Concerts & Recitals

From Bel Canto to Can Belto with Steven Blier
July 15 at The Barns

Beethoven’s Ninth with the National Symphony orchestra
July 28 at the Filene Center

Aria Jukebox Artist Showcase
July 22 at The Barns

Vocal Colors
June 28 at The Phillips Collection

Want More?

Here’s the jumping-off point for all things 2012 Season WTOC-related: www.wolftrap.org/wtoc

And just in case you want to curl up with a cup of coffee and the script for the entire First Look season announcement event that took place today, have at it :)

UPDATE 2/22/12

Video clips of the season announce are now available!

• Kim Pensinger Witman – Introduction: Next to Normal
• Skype Greetings from the Giovanni cast and the Rake’s Progress cast
• Season rep teasers from Andrea Carroll (Zerlina), Olivia Vote (Bel Canto Recital) and Corinne Winters (Anne Trulove)

By Lee Anne Myslewski, Co-Manager, Wolf Trap Opera Studio

Most of you who read this blog are familiar with our modus operandi for casting our Filene Young Artists: we find the best singers and then choose repertoire that will highlight their particular strengths.

We follow a similar framework with the Studio Artists. Granted, we’re a little more constrained in selecting this group because we need voices to work well together in a choral setting (these singers make up our choruses for the operas), and can only hire as many singers as we have needs for those particular ensembles. Additionally, these folks are not as far along in their vocal development as our Filene Young Artists – the talent a little more raw. This unfinished quality makes their auditions so very exciting: we really never know who is going to walk in the door! But it also poses certain challenges; a lot can change in a young voice in the six months that elapse between the end of the audition tour and the beginning of rehearsals!

So here I am, making my first steps towards choosing repertoire for our Scenes program. I have recordings of the singers from the audition tour. I have emails from them with suggestions from their teachers and coaches. I have personal preferences and gut instincts. And I have scores, as you can see…oh, so many scores.  I also have a fantastic colleague in Texas (Studio Co-Manager and Head of Music Staff Grant Loehnig) who is available to brainstorm, tell me what things are really great, and to kindly point out that, in suggesting something particularly big or long or off-the-beaten-track that I might, just might, be mad as a hatter.

But, in keeping with the Alice in Wonderland reference, I am quite firmly down the rabbit hole this fine February day…with lovely voices and a million options to dream about, vet, carry forward or discard. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the season, and also one that serves as a sponge, taking up every second I can give it, and expanding to fit these long, grey winter days. If I don’t answer the phone? I’m likely sitting with my head in a  score, dreaming about the perfect finale for a warm summer’s day.

2011 Studio Artists perform the finale to The Marriage of Figaro

I spent the week in Houston, in a bit of unplanned time on the piano bench, coaching some young singers. (The jury’s still out as to whether that was a good idea, but it’s behind me now, and I survived.) In these few minutes before I desperately try to catch up on all of my Wolf Trap work, I leave you with this brief summary of how Trappers seem to be everywhere.

The Rape of Lucretia dress rehearsal on Tuesday featured Michelle DeYoung (’95) in the title role, with Ryan McKinny (’06, ’08) as Collatinus. (photo at left)

At Traviata on Wednesday evening, WTOC alums were onstage and in the house. Chad Shelton (’99) stepped in for an ailing Alfredo, wedging the Traviata in between his performances of Lucia in Austin. His Lucia colleague and WTOC alum Weston Hurt (’05, ’06)  traveled from Austin for Chad’s performance. HGO Studio singers and former Trappers Catherine Martin (’10, ’11) and Nick Masters (’09, ’10) were onstage as Flora and Grenvil, and former Studio Artist Brittany Wheeler (WTOS ’08) sang Annina.

I ended up in this mess as a favor to our dear friend Eric Melear, once a pivotal member of our Wolf Trap team (and before that, a WTOC Fellowship recipient), now Associate Music Director of Houston Grand Opera.  Hearing him play and speak at their competition finals (Concert of Arias) was a pleasure in so many ways. I was taken care of this week by none other than the inimitable Amra Catovic (HGO Studio Administrator and former WTOC intern), and my partner in crime on the coaching staff was Grant Loehnig (Co-Manager of the Wolf Trap Opera Studio).

My colleagues on hand for the Concert of Arias and the next day’s house auditions included Forth Worth General Director Darren Keith Woods (’84 & ’85) and LA Opera Artistic Administrator Joshua Winograde (’00, ’01). The finalists in the competition (9 singers chosen from among the 600 who auditioned) included Sarah Larsen (WTOS ’08 and our Sarelda in last April’s Inspector premiere) and a soprano who is about to become a member of our clan as a 2012 Filene Young Artist (look for our Season Announcement on Sunday, February 12!).

It’s a small world, an even smaller business that we’re in, and people in whose careers Wolf Trap participated are everywhere. To everyone out there who helps the WTOC make a difference in their careers, from our donors and patrons to staff members and artist mentors: Be proud, people. It’s good work, this.

A guest post from my colleague Lee Anne Myslewski

I said I would write this blog post. I had a great idea and everything! But boy, am I struggling to put it into words. You see, I want to talk about youthful enthusiasm – it’s one of those things that, as a company, we have in droves. But it’s also something that, personally speaking, I have less and less of as each year ticks by. (Funny how that works…)

So, how to talk about it? I know! Liken the Wolf Trap Opera Company to a vampire! Vampires are cool (well, they were…although that could’ve been so ten minutes ago. But bear with me.), they’re ageless and they feed off the lifeblood of young, attractive people!

THAT’S SO US!

(Hmmmm… Well, that’s not a very flattering spin, if I think a little more about it…)

In some ways the visual holds water: We traffic in highly talented, exuberant artists. And we give them big opportunities… opportunities that, for some of them, can result in big career moves. They’re at exciting times in their lives, making crucial decisions about their artistic selves and voices; they’re figuring out how to navigate this tricky (and shrinking) field. We’re happy to get behind them, support them, serve as sounding boards and shoulders on which they can vent.

But we’d be fibbing if we said all this support it’s 100% altruistic. You see, the three of us that are in the office all year round? Well, we look forward to May like some folks look forward to Christmas. For, as well as we work together, as much as we enjoy each other’s company? We LOVE that heightened sense of energy that the summer brings. Long days? No problem. Seventeen million things to do? Bring it on. Crazy, unpredictable personalities? YES. Because the energy and the art-making are the things that light our fires, that keep us invested in working through those cold, wet, gray February days. In many ways, that operatic adrenaline IS our lifeblood… so the vampire analogy isn’t terribly off base.

But rather than comparing the Wolf Trap Opera staff to the cast of Twilight (since I’m not actually able to do so, as I’ve not read the books or seen the movies. For shame.) let me instead tell you about some related interactions that I’ve had in the past few days that have made me excited for the summer.

Firstly, we have an eager, opera-hungry volunteer with us this spring named Sam. He is into opera the way I was when I was a student – totally, completely, borderline fanatically. Sam will start his studies at Rice University in the fall, but in the meantime he’s spending some quality time with us researching and translating and formatting supertitles. He’s stationed in our library, and has been taking full advantage of our collection of cds and dvds (with some sage guidance from fellow volunteer John Feather) to continue his studies. Watching him discover recordings and singers, and listening to him talk about them is exhilarating – not just in a Rip Van Winkle, “I remember back in the day…” kind of way, but in a manner that reminds me of how excited I was to discover an amazing voice, an incredible art song, a definitive rendition. And Sam is also a reminder of all the best reasons that I got involved in this crazy field in the first place: a love of beautiful music, of compelling performances, and of sharing those stories with others.

Secondly, I had the opportunity to talk about auditioning with some students at American University on Sunday. It was a two hour class, and it flew by – I’m not sure who had more fun, me or the students. (Actually, I’m pretty sure the winner was me. It was a blast.) I blabbered, and they took notes, overlooked my awkward stories and asked fantastic, thoughtful questions. The three ladies who performed mock auditions were well prepared, flexible and quite gracious. They incorporated my suggestions on the fly, with good humor and seriousness, and seemed to make genuine connections quickly and deeply. And again, I was struck by the sense of passion, of excitement, of possibility that seemed to charge the air in the room.

So, to Sam and the students at American University, thank you so much for giving me that infusion of lifeblood that I so desperately needed to tide me over until summertime. (I hope that you’ll let Wolf Trap Opera return the favor by joining us for one of our performances this summer!)

I’m not a visual person. My first instinct is to hear, touch, smell, taste, guess… almost anything except see. It comes therefore as a bit of a surprise that our relatively recent forays into vocal concerts with visual prompts have resonated so strongly with me.

Next month’s America’s National Parks: Through the Artist’s Lens concert was a beautiful brainstorm of my colleague Lee Anne. We’ve had success pairing song with paintings, largely through our partnership with The Phillips Collection on our summer Vocal Colors series. Lee Anne suggested that this time we draw inspiration from the photography of Wolf Trap Foundation CEO Terre Jones for a concert pairing songs with images from American’s National Parks.

Guest artists Melissa Shippen, Jamie Van Eyck, David Portillo, Alex Tall and I spent time with a gallery of these photos, allowing the images to conjure up songs from our current repertoire as well as music that we’ve heard and loved but never had a chance to perform.The process of choosing the music was extremely personal and wildly variable. A dust storm in Wyoming begged for Copland’s setting of Emily Dickinson’s “There Came a Wind Like a Bugle.” Rachmaninoff’s impetuous “Spring Waters” immediately suggested the drama of waterfalls in West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park. A saturated New Mexico sunset called up the jazz standard “Orange Colored Sky.”

The grandeur of these photographs lent itself readily to music that is lyrical, sentimental, passionate and/or contemplative. But it was also incumbent on us to find the other side of life in the Parks, and this is where some of the true brainstorming came in. We found the humor in the animals that wandered into Terre’s lens – an imperious and quizzical billy goat in South Dakota, a lone bison in Wyoming, and this horse-meets-machine moment:

Of course, the big challenge of the moment is finding my chops, as I relocate from the desk to the piano in preparation for the concert on February 17.  The first few times I did this after being away from the piano for weeks (ahem…months…), it was terrifying. I thought I’d never be able to play again. But now, after spending 15 years at my desk, punctuated by brief intense flurries at the keyboard, the routine is predictable. I shall ignore these first few days of feeling as if my brain is no longer connected to my hands, and before I know it, the music will flow. This time, with beautiful and inspirational images of natural beauty on the other side of the stage.

Here at Wolf Trap Opera in January, the volunteers outnumber the rest of us.

How fortunate we are to have this small army of dedicated opera lovers! Last year, our four regular volunteers logged over 600 hours, and their time and talents have quickly become indispensable.

John Feather‘s natural habitat is the media room of the Foundation’s music library. His encyclopedic knowledge of opera recordings has quickly endeared him to our artists, and he’s a great resource on discography. Shown here with his trusty LP-to-CD digitizing machine, he’s steadily converting our store of historic recordings to easy-to-use digital formats so that our artists can access them.

Fred Mushinski works with WTOC staff member Susan Weinsheimer to keep the library catalogued and organized.  Most recently, he’s been in dogged pursuit of standardizing and updating our supertitle rental library. We’ve thrown a lot of things Fred’s way, and he’s cheerfully caught them all!

Sandra Saydah watches over the CD library and is a huge help every autumn when over a thousand audition applications, resumes and headshots threaten to drown us all. While I was working on my 40th anniversary WTOC history project (which is not abandoned, I promise… I will get back to it and not leave you hanging in 1985…), Sandra was a godsend!

In addition to pitching in with his colleagues in the library, Joe Fleig cheerfully logs hours in our general storage area, keeping up with the physical paper records and helping us along on our path to digitize our files.  Joe, Sandra and Fred are also part of our volunteer housing host program (see below).

In early 2012, this regular group was joined by a young volunteer who is an aspiring opera singer. Sam Waters is spending two days a week with us this winter/spring, and his first project (wildly labor-intensive) has been prepping the supertitle powerpoint files for one of this summer’s operas.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to mention the other group of big-hearted folks without whom we simply couldn’t operate: our housing hosts. We enjoy the support of over two dozen families who open up their homes every summer to provide lodging for our young artists and staff. (We still need a few good homes for artists and staff this summer… to find out more, contact us at wtoc@wolftrap.org.)  Thanks to all of these wonderful folks who shower us with elbow grease and good will, we are much better than we have any right to be!

I spent this workday morning at an event that was both somber and joyous – a memorial service for a member of the Wolf Trap family. Mary Frances Pearson founded Wolf Trap’s Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts in 1981, and she was a steadfast and enthusiastic fan of Wolf Trap, its education programs and its opera company. She lived a long and beautiful life, but as always, it was hard to see her go.

Mary Frances’ daughter-in-law delivered the homily, and she used an analogy that will stick with me a while. She spoke of the act of living as diving deep below the surface of the water; struggling to get to the dark undiscovered territory at the bottom, grabbing a fistful of the things there that no one else had ever seen, then breaking free and springing with burning lungs toward the light. The evocation was primarily spiritual, but I was struck with the degree to which this analogy describes the artistic life both in its sum and in its daily small parts.

Artists of all types (and don’t think that if you can’t paint, sing or dance that you’re not an artist…) can lose hope when the road seems long and lonely, and their path gets dark. But that’s how we get at the stuff that only we can bring to the light. It has to get dark and dangerous before we can find what’s important, but we must have the courage and faith to keep diving until we truly find it. Then we can take it, hold it tight to our chest, and churn to the light to share it. So it is with life, with music, with anything that can stay.

On this day celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a link to a letter he sent to Sammy Davis, Jr. in December of 1960.

It’s been a long week.

We’re saying bon voyage to a valuable member of our team. Since 2009, Ryan Taylor has been our Manager of Community Development, our summer marketing and development liaison, our 2012 season audition consultant, an invaluable colleague and a wonderful periodic addition to our small regular staff in the”off” season. He’s heading west to Phoenix, having just been tapped as Arizona Opera’s new Director of Artistic Administration. It’s fabulous news for Ryan, and we couldn’t be happier for him. (Well, we could be, if we could just find a way to clone him…)

In recent seasons, we’ve sent Administrative Fellow Joshua Winograde off to be LA Opera’s Artistic Administrator.  Eric Melear was the Music Director of our Opera Studio (having gotten his Wolf Trap start as a Coaching Fellow), and he’s just landed in Houston as their Associate Music Director. And now Ryan’s leaving us behind. Isn’t it enough that the young artists go through a revolving door and out into the world? <sigh>

We haven’t been able to hire an Administrative Fellow for a few seasons, and in light of this transition, we’re re-opening that position. To find out more, go here.

Since I seem to have little brain space for anything substantial, here’s my list of links for this Short Attention Span Friday. Happy surfing :)

• You’ve probably heard about the unfortunate cell phone incident at the NY Phil this week. I am personally terrified that my phone will learn how to turn itself on in my purse and mortify me like this. Ouch.
• Tweet Seats: Can we really welcome smart phones into the theatre in this way? I have a love/hate relationship with the idea.
• Big opera news in your nation’s capital this week. Exciting stuff for my old employer, the Washington National Opera. The return to the Terrace Theatre isn’t the biggest news in this story, but somehow it’s my favorite part.
• Aretha‘s been to Wolf Trap many times, but I wonder if she knows we have an opera company… Hmmm….
• The Virginia Opera blog scored a huge hit this week with a discussion (well, kind of a lovely rant) on pop culture’s fascination with children who sing “opera.”
• And finally, Wolf Trap’s own From The Inside Out blog featured critic and blogger Tim Smith’s take on opera trends for 2012. He says there’s nothing more foolhardy than making predictions, but I think he’s spot on.

Happy weekend!