Even during a global virus pandemic, it’s not over until the quarantined lady sings.
The Wolf Trap Opera is currently the only U.S. opera company to provide an in-person training program for quarantined singers, who are presenting a virtual summer slate.
“We still wanted to bring our singers to be with us this summer,” Wolf Trap V.P. for opera and classical programming Lee Anne Myslewski told WTOP. “They want to be able to connect with people in the industry and they want to be able to perform, so by having these virtual performances, they still get to do big pieces from the repertoire.”
So far this summer, they’ve already performed “Aria Jukebox” and “Love Surrender.”
“[‘Aria Jukebox’] was a performance where the audience gets to pick what the singers sing, they vote on the selections … then we reveal the choices live to the singers in performance,” Myslewski said. “That is still up and available to see on our website … as are scenes from ‘La Bohème’ and ‘Eugene Onegin,’ part of our ‘Love Surrender.'”
The next virtual show will be broadcast Aug. 23 with “The Orpheus Project.”
“There’s a myth about Orpheus falling in love with his wife, her being bitten by a snake and taken into the underworld,” Myslewski said. “We’re exploring two different works that were written back in the 1600s and 1700s … about being in love and wanting to be with that person and having to go through huge trials in order to be together.”
Sept. 6 brings a collection of nature-themed pieces by Verdi, Bellini and Wagner.
“We have this beautiful National Park as a resource to us here in the opera company and we’ve used it a lot for rehearsals outside,” Myslewski said. “This next program ‘Into the Woods’ actually is based on scenes that were all scripted to be in the woods, so we get to take advantage of the natural beauty that we all love so much about Wolf Trap.”
The virtual summer season wraps Sept. 20 with “Studio Spotlight.”
“We have two tiers of artists,” Myslewski said. “Our studio artists are graduate students who are just figuring out if this is the profession they want. They’re all super talented and they have a senior program that we are capturing at The Barns of a number of scenes that range from Mozart to contemporary works like ‘Champion’ about a boxer.”
As for the other tier, the professional opera members hail from all over the country thanks to auditions in D.C., New York, Houston, Chicago, Cincinnati and Los Angeles.
“We do a big audition tour every year,” Myslewski said. “We get usually about 1,200 applications. We hear about half of them in live audition. From that we pick 18 Feline artists, which are singing the main roles, then 17 studio artists to cover them, play understudies, sing chorus and have a curriculum that they do while they’re with us.”
These artists usually have a decent amount of experience under their belts.
“There’s a real parallel to medical training as far as how much training our folks have,” Myslewski said. “They’ve done their graduate studies, they’ve done their residency, and now they’re ready to get out there and go, which makes this time and everything shutting down a little more tragic. … It’s really hard to do in the middle of a pandemic.”
Not to worry, Wolf Trap invited them all to quarantine in Northern Virginia.
“They are all in an extended stay hotel and they each have suites,” Myslewski said. “The hotel was great to work with us. They have lifted their noise ordinance so that our folks can actually practice. … It’s probably the loudest hotel in Northern Virginia.”
The six-week program began in June with four weeks on site from July 13 to Aug. 8.
“We had two weeks of quarantine, which was all remote coaching, language work and dramatic work,” Myslewski said. “We created this bubble so that they could socialize and rehearse with each other but had limited if at all contact with the outside world … then started making music together in a very socially-distanced, safe way.”
The actual opera recordings were filmed in and around The Barns at Wolf Trap.
“All of the scenes are very small to just two or three people to be able to keep the number of people in a room the lowest possible,” Myslewski said. “Singers are masked while they’re not singing, everybody else in the room is masked the whole time, and we’re working in 45-minute chunks so the room has a chance to air out in between.”
Unlike previous years, there’s now a lot of editing work to do after the performances.
“There’s so much work to do to process all of that audio and video and really make it sound good,” Myslewski said. “Crafting audio for an operatic voice is really different than speaking or even singing into a microphone. It takes a lot of skill to refine that … so we wanted to make sure those audio engineers had a chance to do that well.”
As for viewers, it’s all free to watch remotely from the comfort of your home.
“We wanted to make it accessible,” Myslewski said. “We’re not using it as a fundraiser. It’s more important for us to be able to get these important talents out there, especially while there’s no live performances happening. We want to be able to give them an opportunity to show their momentum, to show their growth, to show their artistry.”
Such a pivot is the perfect way to adapt until next year’s big 50th anniversary.
“I’m excited to bring them back next summer, so that we are able to do some more fully produced work with them,” Myslewski said. “I’m holding out hope for a great summer for our 50th anniversary next summer. … For us to be able to get together again and experience live music on a grand scale, that is my big hope for the 50th anniversary.”
