The Mannes Opera: Hitting the High Notes - The New School

Photos: Eugenia Ames
Summer 2007
MANNES OPERA
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Metropolitan Opera, where he will conduct
Il Trittico again next Saturday. He is also the
heart and brain of the Mannes opera
program, which he took over, and
reinvented, in 1998.
“Anyone who knows him only through
his Met performances may have missed
what is clearly a natural gift for pedagogy.
As the rehearsal progressed, the singers’
brows gradually unfurrowed, to be replaced,
by the Act II finale, with smiles. Despite
flaws, they were clearly grasping the style.
“‘They are singing Mozart,’ said Regina
Resnik approvingly. A star mezzo of the
1950s and ‘60s, she is now the Mannes
Opera’s master artist in residence. Every year
she comes in for more than a month of
intense work on the spring opera, bringing
invaluable insights into character
development and the mechanics of
portraying a role onstage.
“‘I personally learned a great deal about
the Mozart Figaro through him,’ Ms. Resnik
said of Mr. Colaneri – no small praise from
someone who has sung the opera many
times.
“Mr. Colaneri studied organ and choral
conducting, but from his infectious
enthusiasm and respect for opera, you would
think he had been weaned on it. He went
about establishing firm foundations for the
Mannes program so methodically that he did
not mount a full production – it was La
The double wedding celebration in Act III (Sunday).
4
Bridesmaids Sara Sturdivant and Heidi Sauser conducted by Shin Ju Kang as Don Basilio serenade Young Joo An as the Count, Chee
Shen Tan as Don Curzio, and Rosa Betancourt as the Countess on Saturday Evening.
Bohème – until 2003. His primary concern is
to meet students’ needs: to train them in
roles they can sing again later in their
careers, and to place their interests first in
every decision, down to the lack of
supertitles.
“‘That’s an expense that is more geared
toward the audience’s reaction, rather than
what the students need,’ Mr. Colaneri said.
‘I would rather take whatever amount of
money that would be, and put it into more
coaching time. Then I tell the students,
O.K., no titles, so we better be
communicating and telling that story in the
most convincing way, so that somebody
really could get it.’
“His approach could be called oldfashioned.
But it is also helping the program
attract ever better students, and helping make
opera at Mannes so much fun to watch.”
The Mannes Opera opened its successful
2006-07 season with its annual January
Evenings of Opera Scenes with The Mannes
Orchestra at The New School for Drama
Theater on Bank Street. It featured semistaged
performances of scenes from Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas, Bellini’s I Puritani, Verdi’s
Il Ballo in maschera and La Traviata, and
Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann. The
conductors were Joseph Colaneri and opera
department faculty members Susan
Woodruff Versage and Ted Taylor. Director
Laura Alley, set designer Roger Hanna,
costume designer Helen E. Rodgers, lighting
designer Jeff Davis – the same superb
professional team responsible for Figaro’s
great success – created a production that
transcended the theater’s intimate
proportions and inspired the student singers
to deliver performances that proved to the
discerning audiences that The Mannes
Opera has indeed “found its voice.”