Opera / Music Theatre Workshop
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Mission
Opera/Music Theatre Workshop’s three-fold mission is to provide a training ground for student performers in mainstage productions, to engage and build its future audiences with productions for school children, and to enrich the cultural life of the campus and the surrounding community by performing fully staged productions of operas and Broadway musicals.
History
The
opera program at Southeastern has carried out its mission with
performances of opera since the 1940s. A double bill from 1947 offered
Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana paired with a staged version of
Bach’s Coffee Cantata. Other early productions included Manon, Tales of
Hoffman, Die Fledermaus, The Tender Land, Dialogues of the Carmelites
and La Traviata.In 1981 the opera program changed its name to Opera/Music Theatre Workshop, expanded its season from one to two productions each academic year, included Broadway musicals in its offerings and began touring children’s opera to local schools.
Today
Opera/Music
Theatre Workshop currently presents a production each semester in
Pottle Music Building Auditorium with full orchestra, a professional
stage director, and with sets, costumes and lights designed by faculty
from the Theatre division of the Department or by other professional
designers. The orchestra is selected from among the finest string,
wind, piano and percussion students in the Department. Children’s
operas and musical theatre pieces are either toured to local schools or
presented on campus for young audiences.Auditions are open to the entire student body and majors from other departments on campus regularly appear in productions.
For more information, please contact Chuck Effler at (985) 549-2249 or ceffler@selu.edu