Local youth to hit high notes with Opera Australia
ALONG with similar groups in 20 regional towns across NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, the children in Macquarie Conservatorium’s Youth Chorus are learning music from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Friday afternoon at 5pm is not when you expect a group of school kids to be up for some really hard work. It’s the end of the week, it’s been a long day at school, and at this time of year, it’s pretty cold and miserable as well. But Friday at five was the only time a group of young local singers had free in their busy after-school schedules to rehearse together for a very special project.
Along with similar groups in 20 regional towns across NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, the children in Macquarie Conservatorium’s Youth Chorus are learning music from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They will perform on stage for one night in a full-scale production of the opera in Dubbo this August, alongside the professional adult singers of Opera’s Australia’s touring company.
Opera Australia has invited children’s choirs in every town they visit on their 2016 Marriage of Figaro tour to be part of their show, an opportunity to involve youth in an art-form sometimes viewed as elite and old-fashioned.
Classical opera is not something regional children experience live that often, either as audience or performers. But training children in singing and acting on stage is something Macquarie Conservatorium already does in our Youth Music Theatre program. So here at the Conservatorium, we were excited to take on the challenge of putting together a children’s choir for this opera project, when asked by Dubbo Regional Theatre, who are presenting Opera Australia’s Marriage of Figaro in their 2016 subscription series.
Opera is my professional area, I ran an opera company in Canberra for 10 years before moving to Dubbo, and worked as a professional opera coach for years before that. But my opera work didn’t involve children that much.
Dancers, actors, dogs and stilt walkers have all been on stage in the productions I’ve worked on, but not a choir of young singers aged ten to fourteen. So after more than 30 years in the opera business, this is something new for me, as co-conductor of our Chorus with my colleague Raelene Burn, our Youth Music Theatre musical director.
First, we had to find our young singers. For this kind of challenge, they needed to audition, so we put the word out and ran three audition workshops, where a range of activities dressed up as games allowed us to assess the applicant’s skills in team work, taking direction, confidence and of course, vocal quality.
We selected 22 young people with different singing backgrounds. Some came from Macquarie Conservatorium’s Youth Music Theatre program where they have performed on stage in our own small shows.
Quite a few have sung with that great regional choir initiative, Moorambilla Voices, where they’ve mastered challenging new Australian choral repertoire. And most sing regularly in their school choirs and school musicals, with a few singing solo in eisteddfods.
Jack Lyon from Dubbo Public School found his voice participating in the Moorambilla Voices camps and performing in their concerts.
“I did Moorambilla last year and I’m doing it again this year. I’ve learnt to blend my voice with others around me and also how to sing high, which I really need for The Marriage of Figaro music,” says Jack.
Jack does music at school and sings in his school choir, but hasn’t learnt to play a musical instrument yet, which means he has pretty much taught himself to read music.
“It was hard at first to read the music, because I haven’t been taught that specially. But I can work out quite a lot of it, and I’ve got used to the counting and a few other things, I can follow the music now.”
Sarah Hall from Dubbo West Public School has also had the Moorambilla experience, and as a very talented 11-year old trumpet player who recently won the award for best brass solo player of any age at the City of Dubbo Eisteddfod, music-reading isn’t the biggest challenge for her.
“It’s easy for me to read and understand the music because I’ve been learning trumpet for a while. With the singing I’ve done so far, I’ve had to learn to extend the range of my voice, to sing louder and to have confidence singing in front of people.”
Singing is declared fun by both Jack and Sarah.
“I like learning the different songs, singing different parts and doing some acting,” says Jack.
“When you sing in groups, you have fun with the other people singing with you and make friends,” says Sarah. “You also get to express yourself when you sing.”
Both have found the music of The Marriage of Figaro quite different to anything they’ve sung before.
“Most of the singing I’ve done has been jazz, or pop, or music for kids,” says Sarah. “I don’t often sing classical music from so long ago, like Mozart”.
“It’s different to what I sing at school and at Moorambilla,” says Jack. “And it’s not like the music I sing around the house, which is pop or hip hop.”
While all the members of the new Macquarie Conservatorium Youth Chorus have some useful experience singing and performing, that’s mostly been alongside other young people and singing music written for their age and a small vocal range. The music the Chorus sings in this opera is originally written for an adult opera chorus, not a chorus of children, so is quite difficult musically and written for mature operatic voices that can sing really high.
In eight Friday rehearsals, they will learn their demanding music and words from memory, to be ready to learn their stage movements in just two rehearsals with the Opera Australia chorus master, who comes to Dubbo three days before the show.
They’ll also be in costumes, which for this production are in traditional village peasant style from the eighteenth century, Mozart’s era.
“We’ve seen the sketches of the costumes,’ says Sarah. “They are really nice.” One detail was noticed by Jack. “We’re not wearing shoes on stage, it’s bare feet!”
Jack and Sarah are approaching the opera with open minds, and know there will be a lot of new experiences performing in a professional production.
“I’ve seen some opera on television,” says Sarah.
“Opera singers can really project their voices, they don’t need to use microphones, even in a really big hall. We’ll be singing in a big theatre, and we will have to watch the conductor. And know all our songs from memory.”
Jack hasn’t seen opera at all, but has a good idea of what will be involved.
“Being in this opera, it will all be a lot bigger, and we’ll have adults singing on stage with us. There will be an orchestra of different instruments. We will be in our costumes and we’ll have to act our part, not just stand still and sing.”
The great tenor Jose Carreras, currently on his final concert tour of the world, first sang in opera as a boy soprano aged 11, appearing in La Bohème. Australian music theatre star Anthony Warlow sang the boy soprano part of the Shepherd in the opera Tosca at the Sydney Opera House.
Perhaps for one of our 22 young singers, their performance in The Marriage of Figaro in Dubbo will be remembered as their first step to a career as an opera singer. Opera Australia’s Marriage of Figaro is at Dubbo Regional Theatre on Tuesday August 9, 7.30pm. Visit www.drtcc.com.au for bookings
… Macquarie Conservatorium’s Youth Chorus are learning music from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They will perform on stage for one night in a fullscale production of the opera in Dubbo this August, alongside the professional adult singers of Opera’s Australia’s touring company.