“Every year, before our opera production opens, we do a little performance where we talk about the opera we’re going to be doing and perform a little bit of music, to give people a taste of what the music is,” said PSU Opera Director Christine Meadows.
“Every year, before our opera production opens, we do a little performance where we talk about the opera we’re going to be doing and perform a little bit of music, to give people a taste of what the music is,” said PSU Opera Director Christine Meadows.
The Retired Associates of PSU will host this year’s preview at the Lincoln Concert Hall Thursday, April 5. The event will open with a half-hour performance of classical piano music by pianist Ella Opdal, followed by a 45-minute performance by Meadows’s opera students.
Meadows will conduct her students as they sing excepts from French composer Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, composed in the early 20th century.
“It’s an opera that hasn’t been thought of as standard repertoire, but this opera is definitely one of the top operas of the 20th century,” Meadows said.
Opdal will play a variety of classical tunes from her book of sheet music. Meadows’ students will sing in traditional operatic style.
“In a live performance, you never know what will happen. You are experiencing it as it is created, which is thrilling for the audience members and the performers,” Meadows said. “Opera is exotic, intense, extreme, decadent theater and music.”
Meadows played the violin as a child and took singing lessons as a sophomore in college. She has made it her life’s work.
I love the physicality of singing and creating a character from the text and music,” Meadows said.
Opdal, who has played piano at RAPSU’s meetings for 10 years, fell in love with the instrument as a young girl.
“When I was 11 years old, I asked my parents if I could have lessons,” Opdal said. “From then on, I was hooked.”
The spring opera production of Dialogues of the Carmelites is scheduled to open April 27.
