MUSIC and DANCE : Chapman, UCI Singers Take Different Opera Routes

Which is more challenging for a fledgling opera singer: the rigors of a full-length opera or the vocal hurdles in a series of different scenes?

For the curious, results of both approaches will be presented this week.

Chapman College will put students in a full production of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” to make them face the problems of developing a character and trying out vocal technique over the long haul.

Meanwhile, across the county at UC Irvine, students will focus on more limited challenges in a sampling of opera scenes tonight and Thursday.

What are the differences and philosophies behind each approach?

“Becoming another person--a character--gives students an opportunity to really experiment with and try out their voice technique to see if it really works under pressure,” said Patrick Goeser, Chapman College’s director of opera productions.

“Students grow in their ability to use their voices more adequately and more artistically because it’s demanding,” said Goeser, who will direct “The Bartered Bride” for a three-performance run that opens today at the campus in Orange.

E.C. Frank, UCI visiting professor, said, however, that too many colleges “come up with an opera for public relations purposes without having any real substance beneath it” and that his sampling of opera scenes will be a natural outgrowth of a monthlong workshop he is teaching. (Frank will join the UCI staff full time next year.)

“It will be really what a workshop performance ideally should be--an extension of the exercises we do,” Frank said. “We’re not promoting a slick, polished product now. That is not a reasonable or necessarily educational objective for a one-month intensive.” If it sounds like there is a sense of rivalry between the two schools’ philosophies of opera education, Goeser was quick to explain that the approaches are not mutually exclusive.

“We did opera scenes in the fall,” Goeser counters. “But this is a major production we do in conjunction with the communications department.”

Why “Bartered Bride,” Smetana’s comic folk opera of a woman who defeats her parents’ plan to marry her off to a rich man’s dim-witted son?

“It fits the combination of voices that we have on campus,” Goeser said. “The music is challenging. It’s a stretch for the voices but is well within their capacity. And the story line takes a great deal of comic spirit, understanding and ability from an acting standpoint.”

At UCI, Frank will direct opera scenes from works by Mozart, Donizetti, Humperdinck, Richard Strauss and others toward very specific ends.

“The majority of opera-training programs across the country neglect stagecraft, stage movement and acting for singers,” he said. “So what happens is that there are an awful lot of collegiatelyprepared singers who can sing very well and who know the literature but don’t know what to do with it once they get on stage.”

That’s why Frank has been conducting a new monthlong workshop on the fundamentals of stagecraft, which consists of a series of exercises tied to particular goals.

“We might work on focus--absolute, undaunted concentration on another character,” Frank said. “They work in pairs, with one person trying to follow and mirror every single thing that the lead person is doing. . . . Then when they do go to sing their duet, all of a sudden, they are more comfortable in responding to one another peripherally and also in dealing with each other eye to eye. So many times in opera, two people can be singing a love duet but they might as well be people standing in different city blocks.”

Other exercises involved working on building trust or learning intimacy.

Whatever their differences, the end result of both the Chapman and UCI programs is to take students out of the safe confines of the classroom and put them into the real-world arena of public performance.

“The ultimate goal of all of this is to have something that interests the public,” Frank said. “It’s very easy to lose sight of this fact in an educational institution. . . .

“I’ll be much happier if these kids can come out on the stage and take some chances in front of the audience. If that happens, and they really trust the audience and themselves, the audience will take some chances right back, and something very special can happen.”

‘THE BARTERED BRIDE’

Tonight and Friday at 8 p.m. Sunday at 4 p.m.

Waltmar Theatre, Chapman College, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange.

$6 general; $4 for seniors, students and children.

Information: (714) 997-6812.

CLASSIC OPERA SCENES

Tonight, 8 p.m.

Fine Arts Concert Hall, UC Irvine Campus

$5 general; $4 for UCI students

Information: (714) 856-6616