By Sindhu Ananthavel
UCSB’s Department of Music hosted an Opera Gala last month, showcasing the talents of UCSB and Ventura College students in three separate performances: one at UCSB, one at Ventura College and an abridged version at the Casa Dorinda retirement community.
In collaboration with UCSB’s Department of Theater and Dance and Ventura College’s Department of Performing Arts, the event featured a chorus, orchestra, dancers and opera singers.
The primary focus of the Gala were the six opera singers, all graduate students in UCSB’s music department: Olivia Barker, Lorenzo Johnson Jr., Colin Ramsey, Christina Pezzarossi, Valdis Jansons and Ariana Horner Sutherland.
UCSB Music professor Isabel Bayrakdarian is a renowned soprano singer and Director of Opera Theatre at the university.
Isabel Bayrakdarian, who heads UCSB’s Voice Program, directed the performance in working with UCSB Dance professor Christina Mccarthy and Brent Wilson, Ventura College’s chair of the Performing Arts.
Music and staging was selected with the singers in mind, to highlight their unique voices, Bayrakdarian said.
“Choosing just one piece that's going to showcase all six of my singers was impossible,” Bayrakdarian said. “The main purpose of the selections was custom fit repertoire that fits our specific students' voices.”
The Gala itself was split into three acts, the first of which featured the baroque music of George Handel, with excerpts from “Alcina” and “Rodrigo,” performed by Barker and Johnson Jr. The second act took a darker turn, with Christoph Gluck’s “Orpheo ed Euridice,” featuring a soloist dancer beside Pezzarossi. Then Ramsey, Jansons and Sutherland concluding with excerpts from Wolfgang Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”
The third act opened with a more contemporary selection of João Oliviera’s — the UCSB Corwin chair of composition — “The 70th Week,” with soloist April Amante alongside several dancers. The performance then finished with Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte,” featuring all six main singers.
UCSB Dance professor Christina Mccarthy devised the performance alongside director Isabel Bayrakdarian.
Bayrakdarian said she had an interdisciplinary aim with the performance, seeking to combine the talents of performers from different departments.
“Dance has to go with music or rhythm, by itself it doesn't make sense. So it makes sense then, for our live music to be married with their dancing,” Bayrakdarian said. “The whole project is really steeped in collaboration and celebrating each other.”
The Opera Gala featured the UCSB Chamber Choir and Ventura College Chamber Singers as a combined chorus, and dancers and orchestra performers from UCSB Theater and Dance.
Bayrakdarian said that along with complementing the singers, the selection of music illustrated the evolution of music in the opera landscape.
“It's a very interesting way of showing how we have evolved musically in the last four centuries, and seeing the journey from where we started to where we are right now in the landscape of opera,” she said.
Bayrakdarian stressed that the success of the Gala was only possible through the talents of UCSB and Ventura College of Performing Arts students and faculty.
“If there ever was a project that requires teamwork, this was it, and it worked because everybody's strengths were being highlighted.”
Sindhu Ananthavel is a recent UC Santa Barbara graduate who majored in Communication and minored in Professional Writing in the Journalism track. She was also a web and social media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.