Trills in Store for Opera Students’ Audience

Opera fans were turned away at the door during last September’s sold-out showcase of Cal State Northridge opera student vocalists. And there’s no guarantee next month’s version, with nine singers mixing European opera standards with rarely performed American works, won’t end up the same, warned organizer Rena Cohen, in spite of a move into the school’s larger Campus Theater.

“It was so very successful, and it was beautifully sung,” said Cohen, president of the Opera Buffs support organization, which is sponsoring the Oct. 6 concert.

The program, titled “Performers Showcase of Operatic Excerpts, Including Popular American Operas,” is being produced and conducted by David Scott, who is in his 29th year heading the respected CSUN opera program.

Among the works scheduled are selections from the American operas “Susannah” by Carlisle Floyd and “The Ballad of Baby Doe” by Douglas Moore, and Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” which Scott said “certainly spills over into opera.”

This nearly two-hour “montage of musical theater” is to be performed by James Anest, Michael Anthony, Anne Bell, Jason Daniel, Michelle DeYoung, Lisa Kantkartzis, Carol Ann Kessler, Robin Parkin and Huventino Zapata. The Opera Buffs will provide the student singers with honorariums for their performances.

“They were chosen because David Scott felt they best represented the young voices that he’s working with,” Cohen explained. “And I’m sure they are very able. They have had training in music as well as theater.”

The Opera Buffs, a seven-year-old nonprofit group that supports the local opera scene with funding, scholarships and awards, will provide each singer with a performing stipend. This is the second CSUN showcase that the group has organized with Scott, who in 1963 joined the university’s music department, which has produced two major opera productions every year since.

“It’s difficult to get enough exposure, enough experience and enough kinds of repertoire,” Scott said of the showcase’s value to participating singers. “You hardly ever finish up that kind of thing.

“It takes a long time to learn to be an opera singer,” he added. “You don’t just do four years and then you’re out doing it. You continue to expand and grow” after school.

Cohen also suggested that the local community benefits at least as much with the concert showcases.

“I think this introduces a lot of people to opera who might not otherwise go to an operatic production,” Cohen said. “And they can see that opera is fun, that it is beautiful and that there can be nothing more inspirational than the human voice.

“People who only think they like rock ‘n’ roll can come and hear a beautiful form of singing that can give them much, much pleasure.”

“Performers Showcase of Operatic Excerpts,” featuring CSUN opera students, is presented at 2 p.m. Oct. 6 at the CSUN Campus Theater. CSUN is at 18111 Nordhoff St. Tickets are $7 for adults, $3 for students with ID. For more information call the Opera Buffs at (213) 664-3253, or the CSUN music department at (818) 885-3093.

CLASS ACTS: Bill Vestal was remembering one of the more dramatic performances of the “Sundays at Four” series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. As the series producer of these hourlong weekend shows of live classical music, he was thinking back to the performance of Kevin Bell. The 1990 winner of the New York Metropolitan Opera auditions, Bell was singing “Old Man River” to an audience mixed with casual walk-ins and hard-core regulars of the weekly free performances. “It had the audience screaming,” Vestal said. “I actually had a couple of goose bumps.”

The “Sundays at Four” concert series, which is also broadcast live at 4 p.m. on KUSC (91.5-FM), has offered classical music free to the public at LACMA’s Bing Theatre since February, 1985, under the auspices of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. And for about 30 years before that, the series was presented at the County Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park.

“Basically, I’m looking for people who are interested in something more than just playing an instrument,” Vestal said of series performers. “They have something to communicate, and want to turn people on to music.”

Often, he added, the series features members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic or other noted local ensembles that sometimes use the opportunity to experiment with unusual material.

Scheduled for this afternoon is pianist Mary Macdonald, who will perform selections by Mozart, Calligaris and Chopin. A dual harpsichord recital is scheduled Sept. 26 by Patricia Mabee and Nancy Sartain, featuring music by Francois Couperin, Antonio Soler, and Johann Christian Bach. And the month of October is to be dedicated to classical works from Mexico.

The purpose of these programs, Vestal said, was “to nurture music and to nurture people with music.

“I’m trying to keep it as mixed as I can because I want to tweak somebody’s interest.”

“Sundays at Four,” a weekly series of free live concerts, is presented 4 p.m. Sundays at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bing Theatre, 5905 Wilshire Blvd. For more information, call (213) 485-2437.