Opera improvisation is not traditionally part of an opera curriculum, however, if well-taught and presented it can be a powerful skill that dramatically affects a singer’s craft and mindset. In improvisation singers are liberated from the boundaries of "Right and Wrong" and must rely on their own creativity. This interactive session features collaborative exercises designed to increase listening sensitivity, harmonic awareness, vocal expression, and emotional connection to music and text. Attendees are invited to invent arias, ensembles and whole scenes, with and without accompaniment. Here, there are no wrong notes, no “correct” ways, no judgements. Just the thrill and joy of spontaneous creativity.

Congratulations—you’re a collegiate opera director! Do you ever feel like you don’t know if you are a bird or a fish? You’re a music director one day, a stage director the next, and the day after that, you are crawling across the floor leading movement improvisation, or building a three-person, seven-foot tall whale puppet. Many programs and institutions deal with limited budgets, small groups of students, student demographics that include few male singers, and limited orchestral and facility options. How do we address these challenges and convince stakeholders that we can still present a program of value and quality for the students? This session will ask the question: What is the core experience needed for training? We wil alsol explore solutions for the developing collegiate opera program, propose some groundwork for institutionalizing the solutions that work best, and involve participants in an open forum discussion, utilizing the experience and expertise of everyone in the room.

A session to discuss not only how to ( a ) teach young composers to write effective vocal/operatic music, but also how to ( b ) demonstrate how healthy collaborations between composers and performers can help populate the field of opera with more vocally-satisfying music. How can performers help a piece serve its creators, its interpreters, and its audiences? How can composers help collaborators explore new material while respecting their practicalities of their instrument(s)? The American Futures team aims to help break the stigma : to help young musicians see the responsibilities, the joys, and the benefits of leaping into new music collaborations together.

As a student of Dominick Argento, Libby Larsen’s work within the operatic landscape has become a driving force for young composers, singers and directors. This session will serve as an exploration of Libby and Dominick’s contributions to our artform through a question and answer format. This session will be aided by short performances, by student young artists and faculty members, of the works of both Libby Larsen and Dominick Argento.

Fifty-Third Street examines the lives of two homeless men in New York City, and the reactions toward them from various facets of society, including the church. Nagel, a self-professed Atheist who utilizes Biblical references throughout the score, welcomed Tammie Huntington, an evangelical Christian, to produce and direct the opera’s premiere in 2007. Together, they walk us through the opera’s score, and share on the history of their collaborative relationship, that through this opera, models interdisciplinary partnerships with social justice programs, providing the cast, as well as audiences, a chance to respond to the rising rate of poverty in America.

(A Performance Panel featuring the History of Operas by African American Women Composers)    My Sister’s Keeper: Operas by African-American Women offers a brief overview of the history and scope of opera composition by women including Shirley Graham Du Bois, Zenobia Powell Perry, and Julia Perry. The session incorporates live performance, media, and short narrative to illuminate the effect of race, gender, and class on their lives, works and compositional styles. These trailblazers contributed to contemporary opera in the face of financial and cultural barriers, and synthesized Western art music techniques with those of the African-American tradition. Despite some having gained national and international recognition during their lifetimes, these women’s achievements are forgotten today.

Choosing a graduate school is one of the first pivotal decisions that defines a singer’s career path as a working vocal artist. The value system that guides these choices ultimately defines a singer’s success.  This session will offer strategies to help guide the decision making process for selecting the right graduate school along with a focused approach for navigating the application and audition path.  Variables that are integral to the process such as assembling a trusted team of mentors, tactics for selecting the right program, repertoire choices, and the audition preparation timeline will be discussed in this presentation.

Your resume is often the first interaction a potential employer has with you, and the internet is full of tutorials on landing jobs in traditional career paths. But singers don’t have traditional career paths or traditional skill sets – so how do we present ourselves well in the comparatively unknown worlds of performance, academia, and arts administration? This session will look at standard resumes/CVs in these sectors and give participants valuable tips for formatting as well as framing non-traditional skill sets.

Projections have been used in opera for over forty years, but their use on college campuses and by smaller companies has been limited by the lack of available resources both in equipment and knowledge. This session seeks to expand the affordability, boundaries, and availability of projections for the stage. The goal of this session is toward innovation in performance and instruction to provide information and application for collegiate opera workshop and small company stage directors. The innovation lies in taking a technological medium usually restricted to higher budgets and making it accessible to all. As part of this session, we will demonstrate our experiences working with various designs with video examples from scenes programs and select a live student performance with a design walkthrough by the presenters from the basic level of use to the more advanced in developing new works.

Join Cleveland Opera Theater’s Director of Education and Outreach to learn how Cleveland’s premiere opera company remains true to its Opera Per Tutti roots. Through family-friendly “opera tailgating” to intellectual opera lectures, Cleveland Opera Theater really does offer “Opera for All”!