CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : ‘Rip Van Winkle’ Keeps S.D. Students Awake, Entertained

Art students at San Diego’s O’Farrell School for the Creative and Performing Arts recently gave the colonial Rip Van Winkle some California perspective. They had him snoozing under a palm tree.

The pupils were designing the program cover for the school’s production of “Rip Van Winkle,” a new children’s opera, according to Jack Montgomery, the opera production’s stage director.

Last week, Montgomery and his crew from San Diego Opera crowned five weeks’ work with about 50 O’Farrell students to stage the premiere of Los Angeles composer Jeffrey Rockwell’s

hourlong “Rip Van Winkle,” a commission by San Diego Opera’s highly successful educational outreach program.

But Montgomery and Rockwell, who was in town for the production’s opening, wanted the students to learn more than which species of tree are native to New York’s Hudson River Valley.

“When I sat down to compose the music,” explained Rockwell, “I definitely did not want to write a pop opera--Lloyd Webber they already know. I wanted them to be exposed to a traditional, classical style of

music. Since the story is a period piece, I thought the music should reflect an American sound that had an operetta flavor to it.”

For his “Rip Van Winkle” opera story, Rockwell went to both Washington Irving’s 19th-Century short story and to a turn-of-the-century dramatic setting of “Rip Van Winkle” penned by thespian Joseph Jefferson.

“Jefferson made a career out of playing Rip Van Winkle,” said Rockwell. “He was one of America’s first great traveling actors--like James O’Neill, the playwright’s father. We even included a few direct quotes from Jefferson--his audiences always wept when he played the role.”

Montgomery not only wrote the libretto, but collaborated with Rockwell in structuring the work. He stressed the opera’s ability to teach the conventions of traditional opera.

“Our goal was to include an indirect type of music education by giving them quartets and trios to sing, as well as the solos and chorus pieces, musical forms they would already know. For example, the character of Henry Hudson, a statue that comes to life, relates to Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ and the music for the storm scene directly quotes Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’.”

Although the opera sports its pedagogic elements well, the duo insisted that its primary goal was to have the students enjoy performing it. Montgomery felt that the real success was the approval the production received from the 700 other O’Farrell pupils who attended one of the two performances last Wednesday.

“They were attentive throughout the piece,” Montgomery noted. “We could not have been happier when the audience joined in with the rhythmic clapping in the final chorus.”

When asked whether the youngsters found singing dialogue to be strange--some critics have always deemed operatic recitative to be artificial and unnatural--Montgomery noted that the students never questioned the convention.

“They never thought recitative was strange. At this age, they just do what they’re told without questioning it.”

Rockwell gave grudging credit to popular music for reducing the students’ resistance to some opera conventions.

“With the rock music operas and videos they are used to seeing, they like complexity on stage and don’t find it difficult.”

They also learned the music amazingly well.

“When one of the principal characters missed a final rehearsal--she went to L.A. to film a TV commercial--the entire company sang every note of her part in her absence,” Montgomery said.

Next week, “Rip Van Winkle” will take up a six-week residency at its next school, La Jolla Elementary, where the three-person team from San Diego Opera will start all over and produce the opera with a new crop of students.

“Rip Van Winkle” joins the local company’s other resident children’s opera, an adaptation of “Hansel and Gretel,” in this commendable outreach program that makes it rounds in San Diego area schools.

And oh, the cover was redesigned.

Do it yourself. Deprived of one of Western civilization’s more stellar cultural artifacts, the pep band, a group of students at La Jolla High School decided to take matters into its own hands.

A cadre of La Jolla High students, including juniors Geoff Zatkin and James Cook, approached the Foundation of La Jolla High to underwrite a pep band instructor for the fall semester.

After two weeks of rehearsing, under the direction of San Diego State University student David Hall, the new pep band made its debut last Friday at a La Jolla home football game against University of San Diego High. Apparently the band still needs some more pep: La Jolla lost, 20-0.

One less Soviet. Conductor Evgeny Kolobov, scheduled to conduct this week’s three San Diego Symphony performances of Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky,” has canceled because of illness, according to symphony officials. In his place, Milwaukee Symphony music director Zdenek Macal has been summoned. Macal, a native of Brno, Czechoslovakia, made his American debut in 1972 with the Chicago Symphony. He also guest conducted in San Diego two seasons ago.

Forty fingers--count ‘em! Point Loma Nazarene College opens its new concert series in Brown Chapel this Friday with four pianists simultaneously playing two pianos. The ensemble, called the “American Piano Quartet,” will feature a number of orchestral transcriptions as well as John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” arranged by ensemble member Mack Wilberg. This is not something you can hear every day of the week.