Photo by Peter Morenus
By Karen Singer '73 (CLAS)
During a master class held in a rehearsal room at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City earlier this year, veteran opera performer Anthony Laciura bounded around the room, singing and acting to illustrate various points to a group of undergraduate and graduate music students from the UConn School of Fine Arts.
Laciura encouraged Jennifer Darius ’01 (SFA), a soprano, to imagine extreme emotions while singing “Vissi D’Arte,” an aria from Tosca. Her resulting performance grew more expressive, eliciting a broad smile and praise from the enthusiastic Met star.
Another graduate student, tenor Thaddaeus Bourne, also benefited from Lacuira’s tutelage when he delivered a strong, animated rendition of an aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute.
On the same spring day in April, 146 UConn students watched a full dress rehearsal of Puccni’s Il Trittico and then enjoyed an evening performance of Handel’s Giulio Cesare.
Between performances, some students discussed lighting design, costumes and other elements of opera production with stage director Sharon Thomas and company director Stephen A. Brown.
Learning from performers, directors, stage designers, costumers and other opera insiders at one of the world’s greatest music venues is a unique opportunity that UConn undergraduate and graduate students experience thanks to a partnership that began five years ago.
The program was initiated through the efforts of Raymond Sackler, an international philanthropist and long-time UConn benefactor who, with his wife Beverly, established the Sackler Artist-in-Residence Program and an annual music composition prize in the School of Fine Arts, working with David G. Woods, dean of fine arts, and Joseph Volpe, who was then general manager at the Metropolitan Opera.
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| The cast of Verdi's Nabucco during a recent full dress rehearsal on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. |
| Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera |
“Our affiliation with the world-renowned Metropolitan Opera sets us apart from other universities, conservatories and schools,” says Woods. “It provides our students with experiences and opportunities that enhance their artistic understandings and their knowledge of art.”
“The Met had never done this before with any university,” says dramatic arts professor Tim Saternow. “Each intern has had a different experience based on their skills, and it’s also wonderful for the Met, to develop that individual experience.”
Gary English, head of the department of dramatic arts, adds that the internships “give our students a professional gateway into a professional life … and shape their life in a much more immediate and aggressive way.”
The nine students who have been interns since the collaboration began agree the experience has helped jump-start their careers.
Mark Spain ’04 M.F.A. arrived at the Met in early 2003 when he was a third-year graduate student in costume design and a technical intern. It was a heady experience for the Idaho native, who delighted in drawing pictures of people in superhero costumes.
Before enrolling at UConn, Spain earned a degree in theater at the University of Idaho and worked in the costume department at the Seattle Opera.
As an intern in the Metropolitan Opera’s costume shop, Spain organized trims, fabrics and buttons; measured and priced swatches at fabric stores for the opera’s costume designers; and repaired jewelry for the crafts department. Offered a job at the Met after his internship, Spain chose to complete his degree, which he did in August 2004.
The Met quickly hired him as a stock supervisor and earlier this year, he was promoted to production supervisor.
Today, in the Metropolitan Opera’s fifth floor costume shop, he is responsible for checking inventories for each performance and ensuring that “every single piece” of each garment and accessory is ready for prime time.
Spain coordinates costume repair and replacement work, which sometimes involves scrutinizing photographs of past productions.
With a repertoire of 28 operas, the Metropolitan Opera has seven new productions slated for 2007-08. Spain is responsible for preparing between 100 and 500 costumes for each production. It is a colossal task.
Spain believed for some time his career path would lead to New York City. He says the UConn-Metropolitan Opera internship program helped him to arrive sooner and provided an inside track to the contacts and friendships he has developed at the Opera.
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| Daniel Jeanette '05 (SFA), an assistant to Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb, in the lobby at Lincoln Center in New York City. |
| Photo by Peter Morenus |
“I don’t think I would be where I am right now had it not been for that internship,” adds Daniel Jeanette ’05 (SFA), an administrative assistant in the office of Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb.
Jeanette works with Gelb’s executive assistant, Rachel Walkinton, coordinating the general manager’s calendar, answering correspondence and coordinating travel plans.
During his internship, Jeanette secured copyright permissions for musical examples for an opera curriculum for elementary school children in grades K-4. He also helped coordinate activities for the semi-final and final concerts of National Council, a kind of American Idol for the opera world, which he describes as the largest search in the country for rising opera talent.
Like Jeanette, other former UConn-Metropolitan Opera interns agree that their experience helped advance their careers in the arts.
On his first day as a technical intern at the Met, Jerad Schomer ’07 M.F.A. watched a lighting rehearsal for Orfeo ed Euridice, by Christoph Willibald Gluck.
To his surprise, the show’s lighting designer, UConn alumnus James Ingalls ’72 (SFA), invited Schomer to view the performance sitting with him at the lighting board. It was a highlight of Schomer’s final semester as a scenic design major in the UConn master of fine arts program.
Schomer spent much of the time updating Met production history databases but was thrilled to get an assignment to draw trees for a production of Macbeth. Those drawings, he says, played a role in his hiring soon after graduation at I. Weiss, a theatrical supplier of theatrical draperies and backdrops.
“I haven’t seen all the benefits I’m sure that the internship is going to bring me in my career,” says Schomer. “But it’s already paying off.”
For Lindsey Muir ’03 (SFA), the Met internship provided a different kind of artistic experience, even for someone who grew up surrounded by musicians. As the daughter of the founder of the Litchfield (Conn.) Performing Arts organization, she was involved with the world of music for many years and studied vocal performance at UConn.
Her experience working on projects for several departments at the Met during her administrative internship provided a broader view of arts administration.
Sifting through old programs and photographs, she assembled an online database of every opera in the house and every performer who had ever performed there.
For the development office, Muir lined up in-kind donations from corporate sponsors for gift bags for an end-of-season cocktail party, working with the likes of Godiva Chocolates and Saks Fifth Avenue, among others.
She later worked as development coordinator for The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, State University of New York, before returning to Litchfield Performing Arts, where she is director of marketing and promotions for the organization’s jazz festival and summer camp. She recently released a compact disc of her own music, You’re Nearer: Love Songs of the ’30s and ’40s.
Similarly, Cully Long ’04 (SFA) says his experience as a technical intern at the Met provided him with a rare opportunity to interact with “big-name, internationally known designers” he otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet at such an early point in his career, including the chance to observe director Julie Taymor and George Tsypin (the show’s designer) prepare for their production of The Magic Flute.
Today Long is a freelance designer whose clients include several opera companies. He recently published a book of his illustrations, A Line: Sketch Portraits from the New York City Subway.
As this year’s group of interns prepares to head to New York City, the UConn partnership with the Metropolitan Opera continues to grow. Beginning this December, UConn will become the only university in New England to provide Metropolitan Opera simulcasts, scheduled for Saturdays at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.
For information about the simulcasts, visit www.jorgensen.uconn.edu