Oswego Opera Theater will perform Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” on Nov. 11 and 12 at SUNY Oswego’s Waterman Theatre. The performance will feature professional singers, members of the Oswego community and SUNY Oswego students in a full-length, Italian-language production.
This year’s production will follow Oswego Opera Theater’s previous performances of “La Traviata” in November 2006 and March 1985.
Benjamin May, an assistant professor in SUNY Oswego’s Music Department and conductor of the university’s State Singers, said that this production has an unusual makeup, and that “La Traviata,” which is sung in Italian, poses new challenges in production. May, who is the production’s choral director, also has an on-stage role.
“I’m playing the baron, who is sort of the bad guy in the whole thing, so I’m learning that role in being on stage, and I’m also the chorus director, so I had to recruit singers, teach them the notes and the rhythms and the words, which has been a tall order for people who don’t speak Italian,” May said.
Performing in Italian is not necessarily more difficult for the student chorus, who have previous experience in singing in foreign languages. Rather, May says the challenge memorizing the full-length opera.
“We already do a lot of different foreign languages in choir, so just asking State Singers, who are full of experience, to learn something in a different language is not a huge challenge, but just the fact that there is so much of it has been a challenge for them to learn everything,” May said.
The production is sung entirely in Italian, but will still be accessible for those unfamiliar with the language.
“There will be subtitles above the stage with English translations, just so the audience can understand what we’re singing about,” May said.
Oswego Opera Theater productions use a combination of community members and students for its choruses, but “La Traviata” is the first time that students have been recruited from the State Singers, providing an opportunity for students to participate in the opera within classes they would already be taking.
“A lot of State Singers are very busy people, so they wouldn’t necessarily volunteer to give up one night a week [for rehearsal] to be in the opera. However, when they have the chance within a class they’re already taking, a lot of them jumped at the opportunity,” May said.
Meeting the challenge
Juan La Manna, the production’s co-artistic director and conductor, said that learning an entire opera in Italian to keep up with professional singers poses a challenge for student choir members, because the professional singers already have extensive experience with the language. The challenge is a welcome one for the students, La Manna said, because of Italian’s prominence in opera and the opportunity to work with a language well-suited to operatic performance
“[It] does pose a challenge for our college singers; the professionals that we have hired are all really used to singing in Italian, because Italian [is not wholly] the archetypical language of opera, but almost,” said La Manna, who also is a professor in the SUNY Oswego Music Department. “The professionals are used to singing in Italian, and they actually like it, because as a language, it really lends itself to singing.”
While a novel and challenging experience, La Manna said, the student choir members have not backed away from the amount of learning and rehearsal required of them.
“By and large, they all welcome doing something different,” La Manna said.
While this year’s production will be his second time conducting it, he hopes his previous experience will show in the production, La Manna said.
“I’m really looking forward to this, and part of the reason I chose this [opera] is because, throughout my history of conducting opera, I haven’t really had a chance to do the same opera twice; it really gives me a different perspective and a depth of knowledge that I hope will inform the performance,” La Manna said.
Oswego Opera Theater’s production of “La Traviata” hopes to draw those unfamiliar with opera due to the rare opportunity for the campus community to perform such a lengthy opera, May said.
“Full-length Italian operas don’t happen in small towns,” May said.
May hopes that the production connects well with the SUNY Oswego campus and community, who likely have not had the chance to see an opera of this scale, and sees the foreign-language aspect as a way for audiences to broaden their horizons to experiencing storytelling in a different language.
“What I hope audiences take away from the production, first of all, is that we have a lot of great singers in the area, and it will showcase their skills,” May said. “And second, I hope that people who are not necessarily familiar with opera, or things like watching a foreign film with subtitles will be touched by the story and how readily accessible it is.”
Oswego Opera Theater’s production of “La Traviata” will be performed on Nov. 11 at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 12 at 2 p.m. in SUNY Oswego’s Waterman Theatre. Tickets are available at tickets.oswego.edu for $30 and $10 for SUNY Oswego students.
-- Written by Ethan Semeraro of the Class of 2023