Students, friends, faculty and family members all gathered Friday, Nov. 13 at the Bernell and Flora Snider Music Recital Hall to witness a special performance by the California State University, Stanislaus (Stan State) Opera Workshop Ensemble.
The Stan State Music Department held the Opera Workshop Scenes, which covered many famous old composers and musicians such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bizet. Stan State’s Opera Workshop Ensemble is a collection of students who work diligently each semester in order to prepare for this concert.
“We do a program like this each semester, so all of this was learned up until this point,” Marshall Jones III (junior, Vocal Performance/Music Composition) said. “Vocally and training wise, we are always continuing to grow and get better, but production wise is just a semester.”
Their hard work and dedication to the art was visible in their performance on Friday night. The whole Opera Workshop Ensemble sounded amazing as they sang in unison, and Jared Eben did a wonderful job bringing the music to life with his impressive piano skills. It is really amazing what our fellow peers can do with only a semester to work with and learn these songs.
Frank Dillon (senior, Vocal Performance) discussed a few of the struggles of getting prepared for this concert.
“One of the things is singing in different languages,” he said. “You do have to know how to sing them correctly phonetically.”
Coming together as a group to perform posed a challenge as well.
“Another thing is, as an ensemble, it’s one thing to be able to sing something just by yourself, but to do be able to smoothly do it as a group is a whole other beast,” Dillon said.
If you have never been to an opera performance and would like to experience one firsthand, the Stan State Opera Workshop Ensemble will not let you down. They were very impressive, singing in other languages such as Italian and German. For them to be able to perform seamlessly as an ensemble in foreign languages is a very tough task to accomplish, but they made the audience feel as if it were their first language when singing.
If you want to attend future performances held by the Stan State Music Department or learn more about them, visit their website here.