The Student Opera Association of PSU started about 15 years ago, when funding for the university’s music program was cut, according to singer Emily Skeen. Formed by students and faculty from the ashes of the university opera, it was called Portland State Opera Theater.
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Masked (wo)men: Two Ball-goers show off their fiercest masks.
Since those dark days, the music department, and especially the choir program, has reemerged as one of the university’s strongest departments. Now SOAP exists largely to provide additional opportunities for voice students to strengthen their skills and resumes, as well as to bring the venerable art form to the greater student body.
The organization helps singers by (among other things) staging an audition feedback workshop every year, which brings local professionals to hear PSU’s opera students sing and then provide them with critical advice. The latter part of the group’s mission, bringing opera to the masses, involves throwing parties.
SOAP puts on all kinds of free events for the PSU student body, including their annual summer opera and annual masquerade ball. To our good fortune, that ball will take place twice this year. SOAP put on a masquerade ball back in June, then realized that masquerade goes with Halloween like milk with vodka.
The ball, which went down on campus last Saturday, featured as its theme “the devil.”
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What’s this, what’s this? Masquerade ball attendees pose for a photo in their finest Halloween duds.
“The best case would be [for the performers] to sing an aria that the devil himself sings,” said tenor and SOAP co-coordinator Carl Moe prior to the show. Moe has been involved with SOAP for several years.
SOAP is aware that it takes more than beautiful voices to draw in overstimulated college students, so they also offered a disc jockey—who spun dance music for most of the night—as well as a lavish catered spread.
Generally, masquerade masks are the thing to wear to a SOAP party, but the 50 or so attendees’ costumes ran the gamut.
This year’s masquerade ball was a great opportunity to see one of PSU’s strongest
departments flex its muscles, and get cultured at the same time.