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A new music event will feature 19 BYU-Idaho students
performing scenes from four Mozart operas Saturday, Nov. 16, at 7:30 p.m.
in the Barrus Concert Hall of the Snow Center for the Performing Arts. The
event is free and no tickets are required.
The
students, under the direction of Kristine Ciesinski and Diane Burt of the
BYU-Idaho music department, will perform scenes from The Marriage of
Figaro, Cosi fan Tutte, La Clemenza di Tito, and The Magic Flute.
“We
wanted to give the students the opportunity to do some work in opera, to
sing with each other, to move around and to act in place and character,”
Ciesinski says. “It will give students some stage craft. Opera is also an
incredible exercise for the brain; not only do you have to know the music
and text perfectly from memory, but you have to know the meaning of what’s
going on and be able to move around and make clear to the audience what
you’re thinking and feeling.”
Additionally,
the performance has been beneficial to students who have expressed interest
in opera as a career.
“With
the four-year transition of the school, students are becoming much more
advanced because they’re here longer,” Ciesinski says. “Their voices are
more mature, and they are ready to do these scenes. Some have expressed an
interest in wanting to go in this direction career-wise. This is a
wonderful opportunity for them to get a taste of what it’s like.”
Some
of the music will be in its traditional form, while others have been
updated to make them more relevant to the audience.
“I
adore the art form [of opera],” Ciesinski says. The professional opera
singer adds, “The music is absolutely heavenly. The audience will laugh a
lot – they’ll be surprised by how fun opera can be.” # # #
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