Orlando Sentinel

At UCF’s

- By Ryan Gillespie Staff Writer

Summer Opera Institute, young singers receive voice lessons, attend stage-classes and get instructio­ns designed to increase their range and develop their voices.

Joseph Calzada’s voice hasn’t sounded better than it did Sunday when he took the stage at the Rehearsal Hall at the University of Central Florida.

The 17-year-old spent the past 10 days perfecting each note — including hitting the high E he coveted — at UCF’s Summer Opera Institute.

At the summer crash course, students receive voice lessons, attend stage-movement classes and get other instructio­ns designed to increase their range and develop their voices.

“We really intensivel­y brought out our voice,” said Calzada, whose parents and brother were in the audience from Fort Lauderdale. “They really made me explore my range and hit really high notes and really low notes.”

He added, “In this last 10 days, I think my voice … has really been top notch.”

The program is in its fifth year and hosted both by UCF’s opera program and Opera Orlando. Singers work throughout the 10 days on various pieces and publicly perform one with the aid of a pianist at the conclusion of the program.

The singers are mostly high school and college age, and this year were between 15 and 35 years old, said Thomas Potter, who runs the program and is the executive director of UCF Opera.

Of those, some are from the Central Florida area and ferry themselves to and from the institute, which runs from 9:30 a.m.- p.m. Others, like Calzada, take up refuge in a campus dormitory, which provides some their first taste at collegiate life.

“It’s also a recruitmen­t tool for UCF and the school of performing arts,” Potter said. “There are two or three at least in this group who are seriously considerin­g UCF, and we’re pleased with that.”

On Sunday, the singers took the stage one by one to perform a piece they’d worked on throughout the 10 days. In the audience were their instructor­s, family and friends, eager to see their progress.

“Really one of the main goals of today is to not only showcase what they’ve learned … but also for them to see where they are now compared to where they were the first day they came here,” Potter said.

Groups of students also took to the stage to give feedback on their week at camp,

which costs $550.

For Keely Parker, a recent graduate of Millsaps College in Mississipp­i, she was able to see up close how the UCF Opera program operates. She’s looking for the right school to pursue a master’s degree.

She was familiar with Orlando from family vacations and said the partnershi­p between the university’s opera program and Opera Orlando helped sell her on UCF’s summer workshop.

“I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that performanc­e is such a process,” said Parker, 22.

“There’s something really exhilarati­ng and really visceral about the rawness of opera. There are no microphone­s, there’s limited technology — it’s about the human voice and the human story.”

 ?? PHOTOS BY SARAH ESPEDIDO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPH­ER ?? Vincent Valentine, left, and Joseph Calzada, students of UCF’s Summer Opera Institute, perform Sunday as the program comes to an end.
PHOTOS BY SARAH ESPEDIDO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPH­ER Vincent Valentine, left, and Joseph Calzada, students of UCF’s Summer Opera Institute, perform Sunday as the program comes to an end.
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 ?? SARAH ESPEDIDO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPH­ER ?? UCF’s program helps young singers increase their range and develop their voices.
SARAH ESPEDIDO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPH­ER UCF’s program helps young singers increase their range and develop their voices.

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