Big Wild Opera

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Carmen

Teacher: John Rolston

AIM: To introduce the operas that Anchorage Opera will produce this season (08-09). Each course (autumn on Carmen, winter on The Barber of Seville, and spring on Zarzuelas) consists of three classes preceding the week of performances and a review and critique the week after. Brief selections from CDs will enliven each of the classes.

FALL

October 22: French opera from Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) to Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and the place of Georges Bizet (1839-1875) within it.

October 29: The tragic life of Georges Bizet and his operas. A child prodigy who won the coveted Prix de Rome as a teenager, he completed 15 operas but could get only nine of them staged. He received little recognition (nor remuneration) for any of them. The critics trashed his masterpiece, Carmen, and he suffered a fatal heart attack three months after its premiere at the age of 36.

November 5: Carmen – the story, the music and its significance. The greatest and most popular of all French operas, it had over 1,000 performances in the Opera-Comique Theater alone between 1875 and 1905. The music is full of unforgettable melodies and haunting atmosphere (of Seville) expresses the sexual obsession of a young soldier, José, and the sexual freedom of a young gypsy, Carmen, with power and clarity that is compelling and profound. Wow!

November 8 – 16: Live performance in the Discovery Theater: no class.

November 19: Review and critique.

WINTER

January 21: Opera Buffa from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736) to Stephen Sondheim (born 1930) and the contributions if Gioacchino Rossini (1797 – 1868) to this tradition.

January 28: Gioacchino Rossini revolutionized Italian opera, producing 40 operas between 1809 and 1829, when he completed his longest opera, William Tell, and retired from opera composition. This lecture will focus on his comic operas, far and away his most frequently performed.

February 4: The Barber of Seville – the story, the music and brio – in which the young Count Almaviva needs the help of the local barber, Figaro, to woo his lady-love, the fabulous mezzo-soprano, Rosina. This opera contains the greatest patter song of all time, “Largo al Factotum” and a favorite basso aria, “La Calunnia”.

February 7 – 15: Live performances in the Discovery Theater: no class.

February 18: Review and critique.

SPRING

March 4: The history of Spanish opera, the development of Zarzuela and its popularity throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

March 11: TBA

March 18: TBA

March 25 – 29: Live performances in the Discovery Theater: no class.

April 1: Review and critique.

About John Rolston

John Rolston was born and raised in Los Angeles and vividly recalls attending an Elizabeth Schwarzkopf recital in his teens. His mother had the New York Metropolitan Opera matinee radio broadcasts filling his home every Saturday throughout his childhood, and his parents gave him his own copy of the Victoria

De Los Angeles and Jussi Bjoerling recording of La Boheme for his high school graduation (long since played into the dust).

After teaching philosophy for 35 years (at Weber State, Anchorage Community College and the University of Alaska, Anchorage), John retired in 2004 to catch up on his reading and to devote himself to opera and his five grandchildren. He has just taken on the job of hosting “Saturday Night at the Opera” on station KLEF, FM 98.1, and plans to air several Bizet operas in October and several Rossini operas next January. John also does volunteer work with Anchorage Opera every week.

John volunteered to teach OLÉ! Opera simply to share his deep love and respect for this wondrous art form that “puts drama on the wings of song.”