--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Joe Smith" <msilver1951@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > <snip > > > Is your daughter training to sing opera? > > > > She's a third year student at the University of Northern > > Colorado, a public university with a small student > > population. They have an excellent voice performance > > department,the whole music department is tops, winning > > first place awards each year. She's training with Malde > > as a mezzo soprano-opera department and really enjoys it. > > She spent this summer touring Europe with a professional > > opera company. When she graduates next year, she hopes to > > go back to Germany and join up, hopefully, with an opera > > company. She said Germany has an opera theater on every > > corner. > > Yes, Germany's steeped in opera. That sounds fabulous. > > I love the mezzo voice, and the parts seem to be more > interesting, more character. What roles does she sing? > Have you had a chance to see her perform?
Fort Collins is 40 minutes from the university so anytime she performs, I go and attend. She performed with the TEATRO LIRICO DâEUROPA in Germany and was able to join them again last month when they came through Colorado last month. http://www.vilarpac.org/vpac/press-center.aspx?mode=detail&id=vpac09_3 Her role in Aida which they performed was one of the chorus, these were the slave girls of the queen. Freshman-sophomore students generally end up in chorus positions, lead roles generally offered to seniors or graduate students but this year, her third, she's been offered a lead role in Pirates of Penzance as one of the sisters, did an opera scene as Carmen, mezzo role, was Hansel in Hansel and Gretel which she did well. They have a woman's glee club which is the largest in the US, 120 girls and sounds remarkable. Each year, the university puts together a Gala which shows off every department in the music major from jazz, opera to symphony. At the end of the concert, they combine the symphony with the chorus, for example Handel's Messiah. It's unbelievable. The whole music program is fantastic because there's only a few hundred people in the entire music major, everyone is friendly and you don't have that cut throat competition that you may find in the eastern schools. That's not to say that it's not competitive, you just don't find razor blades in the piano keys. (a rumor started about Julliard) The directors are amazingly talented, this one guy who puts the opera productions together is very talented. Melissa Malde, the voice teacher has done a lot of work with her for almost four years now. http://www.arts.unco.edu/pva/faculty/bios/malde.html
