USC Fall '21 Opera Artists

The loss and stress of the past year-and-a-half have been overwhelming. Whether we lost loved ones or associates or empathized with friends who had suffered loss, we in the arts need and mercifully have outlets to express our grief and our hope for the future. When choosing repertoire for the Fall, Mo. Brent McMunn and I wanted to pick pieces that could utilize as many of the talented students (both graduate and undergraduate) as we could, to give them an opportunity to vent the emotions that have been building during the pandemic. Thus, we chose two pieces about loss and renewal. CURLEW RIVER is the first of Benjamin Britten’s “Church Parable” operas. It was written toward the end of his prolific career and tells the story of a “Madwoman” who is searching for her son who was kidnapped a year earlier. Gluck’s ORFEO ED EURIDICE is the story of a young husband who’s wife has died on their wedding day. He braves seemingly insurmountable odds to find her and bring her back to life. Both are “mystery” plays, dealing with supernatural elements. In searching for a contemporary approach to these pieces, I was immediately struck by the fantasy lives based on reality of the characters in the pieces and the fantastical and yet all too real lives of my neighbors in downtown Los Angeles, the residents of LA’s Skid Row. I felt a kinship in the desperate searching for answers and survival between the characters in both pieces and our Skid Row brethren. The students of the Opera Program have pushed themselves to take risks and create characters with strong biographies and lives on Skid Row. It has been an improvisatory, creative experience that I will never forget and always cherish. I hope that you, the audience, might be moved by these young performers to do something during the holiday season and beyond to help the Skid Row souls, many of whom have been forced into their situations by mental illness (a female PTSD ex-Marine, a paranoid schizophrenic), by being priced out of housing in Los Angeles, some have been thrown out of their homes at a frighteningly young age for their sexual identification or have left home to escape abuse, some are drug addicts, some are immigrants. These are only a handful of the stories that the students have created to make their onstage characters live. On another page in the program, "You Can Help!", you will find suggested charitable organizations that you can donate to to help these worthy, wandering human beings. You will also find several organizations with whom you can volunteer.