When sequencing the excerpts to be performed at tonight’s Opera Gala, Neal Stulberg, director of the UCLA Philharmonia, resorted to a tactic all too familiar to any student who has attempted to construct an exhaustively researched paper. Instead of note cards, though, he used leaflets of paper with various excerpts from popular operas to determine the succession of pieces for the gala.
“I actually spread out all the pieces on the floor in front of me,” Stulberg said. “I had little pieces of paper and started moving them around in various ways to figure out what was the best trajectory of the program, so that different voices, different kinds of voices appear at different times.”
The Opera Gala, hosted by UCLA Opera and UCLA Philharmonia at Schoenberg Hall, is a chance to showcase both canonical pieces of opera and the vast array of talent within the voice and music departments. The gala differs from the program’s tradition of performing operas in their entirety. Instead, an array of selections from quintessential works such as Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus,” Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Gounod’s “Faust” and Bizet’s “Carmen,” among others, will be presented. Stulberg shares conducting duties with Yiorgos Kountouris and Daniel Cummings, two UCLA doctoral student conductors.
The sprawling format, featuring 17 separate pieces, creates a musical sampler to excite both enthusiasts and initiates to operatic and symphonic traditions. Furthermore, the gala offers a unique chance for the young performers in the voice department to perform a variety of esteemed pieces backed by an expansive orchestra.
“This department has become internationally known in recent years, and its students are winning competitions and positions right and left … all of whom have the potential to go on to major professional careers,” Stulberg said.
The performance, thus, should be a rich exposition of the auspicious new voices set to carry out mainstream operatic tradition.
Graduate student and bass-baritone Apollo Wong, who will be performing the famed “La Vendetta” from Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” assures that the gala will provide a promising display of opera.
“We hope to bring to the students, to the audience, the most professional operatic repertoire and quality music,” Wong said. “And they see this nice collaboration of symphony orchestra and singers together, which is not always an opportunity you can get.”
The Opera Gala provides a unique opportunity for the opera and philharmonia programs to collaborate, allowing the young vocalists the chance to sing behind rich symphonic arrangements. This can be a daunting task to the singers, who have spent weeks adopting a rigorous mode of training to prepare for the event.
Yet the gala was constructed to be instantly accessible to any UCLA student, the format itself befitting dilettantes of the opera scene.
“It’s easier to sit through a gala sometimes than sit through a long opera ““ you get to applaud after a five minute piece as opposed to having to wait for a 50-minute act until you can applaud,” said Rakefet Hak, director of the UCLA Opera Studio. “I think that relaxes the audience a little bit when they can participate.”
Stulberg and Hak both hope that the Opera Gala can break down the conception that the music department is an insular facet of the UCLA community.
“I think it is really important for UCLA students to see what’s going on campus that is not just only in their one little department … there’s something very social about opera,” Hak said.
“It’s the art of working together as a group and doing something together. And I think that’s a huge thing, a huge message that opera can send to the world.”