If we're singing in English we need a translation...

We commissioned an orchestration, but since we're singing and we don't just want to sing la-la-la, we need words to sing. Hansel & Gretel was originally set in German by Adelheid Wette, who happened to be the sister of the composer, Engelbert Humperdinck (not that Engelbert Humperdinck, more about that later). Because this is an introduction to opera for our community, we thought it would be best to sing in English, so we started looking for a translation. Our conductor suggested contacting the Welsh National Opera and the English National Opera. We did and the Welsh National Opera referred us to David Pountney who was gracious enough to license his libretto to us. You can read about him and his impressive credentials here:

http://www.imgartists.com/?page=artist&id=12&c=2

We are very lucky because it is the same libretto used by the Metropolitan Opera!

Our project becomes more exciting by the day and we are continually astounded at the willingness of great musicians around the world to help us.

What do we mean by "intergenerational opera"?

Hansel & Gretel: An Intergenerational Opera Production does not just mean that we expect adults and children in our audience. Illumination Opera's goal is to not only produce operas for our community, but to also give children and adults in our community the opportunity to take part in creating this ephemeral work of art, an opera production.

Elementary age children will learn about Hansel & Gretel in their music classes. By the time they attend our production they will have learned the story and some of the music, including the Gingerbread Children's chorus.

The Hansel & Gretel chorus will be made up of children from our two Middle Schools and youth church choirs in Chelmsford. For most of these young singers this will probably be the first time they have appeared with an orchestra and as part of a production with adults.

Michael Withers is orchestrating for 14 players with a core of professionals who will be supplemented by high school and community players. Our teenage musicians will have their first opportunity of playing with professional musicians who have played with major U.S. orchestras.

Senior citizen volunteers will be building our sets and other adults have volunteered to help costume our production.

We believe that we will not only build community by having all ages involved, but we will build an audience that didn't previously exist for the exciting art form of opera.

More about our Orchestrator

Michael Withers came into our lives when our conductor, Dan Rowntree, met him in England. Maestro Rowntree was looking for a reduction of Carmen for Westford Chorus and as it happened Michael had orchestrated the opera for chamber orchestra. That was our lucky day, because the orchestration was perfect and gave us the experience of singing with an orchestra rather than just piano. Michael's orchestration followed the original very closely and with only 14 players. (SHAMELESS PLUG: Michael's orchestrations may be rented, so contact us if you have interest.)

When we began thinking about Hansel & Gretel, we wrote to Michael. By coincidence Susan was going to be in England and she and Michael arranged to meet for tea. Michael graciously agreed to the commission of the orchestration for Hansel & Gretel. The photo of Susan and Michael commemorates that wonderful moment of agreement! (Susan and her husband were going to Glyndebourne that evening, thus the formal attire.)

Michael is truly a Renaissance man. He originally trained in chemistry at Imperial College, London, and has subsequently enjoyed a career in journalism and editorial work in the fields of science and medicine, but his main passion is making music. He trained privately in violin and clarinet, but his abiding interest from an early age has been conducting.

Opera is his first love, and he has conducted a wide repertoire, ranging from Purcell (King Arthur and Dido and Aeneas) to Britten (Rape of Lucretia). His interest in bringing new life to rarely performed works has led him to perform works such as Dvorak's The Devil and Kate and Holst's The Perfect Fool, and more recently, in Brighton, three neglected operas by Vaughan Williams Hugh the Drover, The Poisoned Kiss and The Pilgrim's Progress. Michael conducts regularly with the Brighton-based opera group, Heber Opera.

Michael started conducting regularly in 1975 when he was appointed conductor of Imperial College Operatic Society. He had already conducted several choirs and chamber groups and this appointment gave him the opportunity to work regularly with a very capable student group. Between 1975 and 1979 he conducted a wide range of performances including:
Utopia Ltd (Gilbert and Sullivan)
Orpheus in the Underworld (including translation of the lyrics)
Yeomen of the Guard
Pirates of Penzance
Grand Duchess of Gerolstein (Offenbach)
Venus and Adonis (John Blow)
Excerpts from The Tales of Hoffman
Gondoliers

In 1979 Michael left Imperial College Operatic Society and become one of the founder members of Imperial Opera. Imperial Opera drew on a wide range of soloists, and had a regular, very capable chorus. All performances were fully staged using full orchestras. Many of the soloists Michael worked with in Imperial Opera have made successful performing careers in music. The repertoire for Imperial Opera included
Robinson Crusoe (Offenbach)
La Belle Helene (Offenbach)
Acis and Galatea (Handel)
The Chaplet (Boyce)
The Perfect Fool (Holst)
The Wandering Scholar (Holst)
The Devil and Kate (Dvorak)
King Arthur (Purcell)

During this period Michael also worked with Betchworth Operatic and Dramatic Society in several G&S operettas, and some Christmas musicals. He also sang with and was assistant conductor of the Horniman Singers, a chamber choir specialising equally in the renaissance repertoire and contemporary music.

The relationship with Imperial Opera also led to some enterprising concerts conducted on behalf of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society. Michael conducted the first modern performances of several of Sullivan's serious compositions, including the oratorio The Martyr of Antioch, On Shore and Sea and incidental music to Macbeth, The Merry Wives of Windsor and others.

Since moving to Brighton in 1989, Michael has been involved with a number of Sussex-based companies, including the Brighton-based Wandering Minstrels, Burgess Hill Operatic Society, and is the regular musical director of Heber Opera.

For Wandering Minstrels, Michael's repertoire has included
Patience
La Belle Helene
Pirates of Penzance
Carmen
Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci
The Poisoned Kiss (Vaughan Williams)

With Heber Opera, he has conducted
The Rape of Lucretia (Britten)
Hugh the Drover (Vaughan Williams)
The Pilgrim's Progress (Vaughan Williams)
The Ephesian Matron (Charles Dibdin)
Pyramus and Thisbe (John Frederick Lampe)
The Beggar's Opera (Gay/Pepusch)
Dido and Aeneas (Purcell)
Tosca (Puccini)
Otello (Verdi)
Don Giovanni (Mozart)
Carmen (Bizet)
Cavalleria Rusticana and I Paglicci
Magic Flute (Mozart)
Die Fledermaus (Strauss)
Cosi fan Tutte (Mozart)
Masked Ball (Verdi)
Aida (Verdi)
Dragon of Wantley (John Frederick Lampe)
La Bohème (Puccini)

With Burgess Hill Operatic Society, he has conducted
West Side Story (Bernstein)
Brigadoon (Lowe)
Carousel (Rogers)
Sugar (Styne) – currently in rehearsal

Orchestrations
Michael started to prepare reduced orchestral version of the Heber Opera repertoire around 10 years ago when the company began to tour to smaller venues. His 'chamber orchestrations' have been successfully used for a number of years in a variety of venues. They retain much of the composer's orchestral colour whilst shifting the emphasis from a large orchestral timbre to a chamber sound.

He recently began to make his orchestrations available to other performing companies, and has had several of them performed on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Illumination Opera Company

Our company in alphabetical order...

Demetra Bristol, soprano (Sandman and Dew Fairy) is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Colleges of Engineering and Business Administration. Upon joining the Westford Chorus in 2001, Demetra rediscovered her passion for classical voice and found many new friends who share her love of music. Demetra sang the role of Mercedes in the Westford Chorus’ 2006 production of Bizet’s Carmen and has sung several solos, duets and ensembles in past Westford Chorus programs. Demetra also sang the role of a Stepsister in Sondheim’s Into the Woods, and the role of Mrs. Nolan in Menotti’s The Medium for a scene study class, both at Indian Hill Music School. Demetra studies voice with Chelmsford resident Monique Phinney.

Nancy Bush, soprano (The Witch) After an early start pursuing a musical performance degree which included many opera scene study roles as well as a turn as Ado Annie in Oklahoma, Nancy returned to serious singing in 2000. Since that time she has performed solo work in Schubert’s Mass in G as well as Handel’s Judas Maccabeus and The Messiah. With the Westford Chorus she is a soloist and sang the role of Marcellina in an abridged production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro as well as Frasquite in the full production of Bizet's Carmen. She also appeared as one of the Trio in the fall 2005 production of Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, as The Witch in a production of Into the Woods and Anna Maurant in Kurt Weill's Street Scene through Indian Hill Music Center. Nancy lives in Westford with her husband Dan and children Emily and Kevin. She is currently a student of Monique Phinney.

Megan Errgong-Weider, soprano (Gertrude) is very excited to be making her debut in Hansel and Gretel. Megan holds her Master of Music from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. She is an elementary music educator in the Chelmsford Public Schools as
well as the choir director for the Atkinson Congregational Church in Atkinson, NH. Megan is a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and is currently studying voice with Monique Phinney.

Susan Julian Gates, mezzo-soprano (Hansel) and co-producer, is a resident of Chelmsford. She studies voice with Monique Phinney and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in Dramatic Art. She began her career in stage management with the Inverness Music Festival and the Washington Opera. She has also worked for the Manhattan Theatre Club and the New York Lyric Opera. She sang the title role in the Westford Chorus production of Carmen in 2006, as well as Cherubino in a reduction of The Marriage of Figaro and Julie in Show Boat. At Indian Hill Music School she has sung the role of The Mother in Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, which she is reprising in December, as well as Dinah in Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, and Miss Todd in Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief. She, along with Nancy Bush and Bill Kruger, are the founding members of After Five Cabaret. They debuted at The Java Room in Maltby and Shire’s Starting Here, Starting Now. Ms. Gates also is a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the official chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Debra LeBrun, Assistant Conductor/Rehearsal Pianist received her B. Mus. from Syracuse University and her M.M. in Organ Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. She is active in the New England area as a teacher and performer on both piano and organ and as a conductor. Since 1986, Mrs. LeBrun has been the Minister of Music for the Congregational Church of Littleton where she directs an active music program including an intergenerational handbell and singing choir program. Debra has been the accompanist for the Nashoba Valley Chorale since 2000 and regularly accompanies for many musicians in the area. She is a staff accompanist at Indian Hill Music School in Littleton, MA where, in addition to general accompanying, she assists with the opera workshop program. She has accompanied and helped with the music direction of opera workshop productions of The Old Maid and the Thief, Trouble in Tahiti, Into the Woods, and Amahl and the Night Visitors as well as scenes from many other operas. Other local shows she has played piano for recently include You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Just So!, the Bug Opera, and Starting Here, Starting Now. Debra is also an adjunct Professor of Organ at UMass Lowell, has served on the board for the Worcester American Guild of Organists, and is Past Chair of the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers, Area I, Inc. She lives in Westford, MA with her husband, Steven, and daughter, Sarah.

Maggie Marshall, Co-Producer, has degrees in English from SUNY Binghamton and Library Science from URI. She has sung in choirs for decades, taken piano and organ lessons for decades, and has been the Minister of Music at All Saints' Episcopal Church since 1985. Maggie has been a strong proponent of the arts through her many years as Enrichment Chair at the Harrington Elementary School, and is also passionate about literacy, and has been a Chelmsford Public Library Trustee for many years.

Daniel Rowntree, Conductor (B.M./M.M University of Michigan/ Western Michigan University. Post-grad: Moscow Conservatory - formerly USSR) is a native of Michigan and began his conducting studies as a high school student at Interlochen Academy. After completing his undergraduate and graduate work at University of Michigan and Western Michigan University, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and completed his postgraduate work in orchestral conducting and orchestration at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he studied conducting with Dmitri Kitaenko. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1982, Mr. Rowntree studied conducting with Leonard Bernstein and Mistislav Rostrapovitch at Tanglewood, and with Zubin Mehta, Sir Georg Solti and other prominent conductors in master classes at the Julliard School, Boston Conservatory, Oberlin College, and Chicago Conservatory of Music.
Since that time, Mr. Rowntree has directed hundreds of ensembles and productions, ranging from touring companies of “Annie"; to a great deal of studio work in NYC (creating some of the most catchy used-car dealership jingles ever recorded for New Jersey demographics) and Renaissance Ensembles; from World Music Groups to professional orchestral productions; from community orchestra to community choruses. For the past ten years, Dan's passion has been to foster excellence and innovation in amateur community ensembles, taking singers and instrumentalists to performance at levels beyond the usual scope of what they would generally achieve in local groups.
Mr. Rowntree has directed the Westford Chorus since 1997.

Linda Holstein Stronge, soprano (Gretel) returned to singing six years ago when she joined Westford Chorus. It was a terrific decision for not only has she had the opportunity to grow vocally but she’s made a wonderfully supportive group of friends whom she cherishes. Previous roles with Westford Chorus include Edith in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, Micaela in Bizet’s Carmen, Barbarina in a reduction of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and most recently Magnolia in Showboat. As a student at Indian Hill Music School, Linda sang the role of Monica in Menotti’s The Medium and Rose in Weil’s Street Scene for a scene study class. She also sang the role of Cinderella in the IHMS production of Into the Woods. When not practicing, Linda works with young children and their families in the Lowell area. Linda studies with Chelmsford resident Monique Phinney.

Dan Swanson, baritone (Peter), a resident of Westford, MA, is a graduate of the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. At the Univ. of Illinois he sang with the Oratorio Society, which included a recorded performance of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis directed by Robert Shaw. At the Univ. of Michigan he sang with the Men’s Glee Club, which included a 30 day tour of Europe and a first place finish at the The Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, Llangollen, Wales. Dan has been singing with the Westford Chorus since 1997 and is in his second season with Spectrum Singers. His previous roles include the Pirate King in Pirates of Penzance, Hucklebee in The Fantasticks, Noah in Two by Two, Bob in The Old Maid and the Thief, Figaro in scenes from The Marriage of Figaro, the Postman in The Most Happy Fella, Sam in Trouble in Tahiti, Melchior in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Escamillo in Carmen, and Dr. Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro. Dan studies voice with Chelmsford resident Monique Phinney.

Michael Withers, Orchestrator, has over 30 years experience conducting a wide range of opera, from Purcell to Britten, and taking in a healthy dose of Mozart, Puccini and Verdi en route. Over the past 15 years he has been working with Heber Opera, a semi-professional group based in Brighton, UK, and specializing in chamber-scale productions ‘in the round’. It was Heber Opera’s need for orchestrations of operas that would suit the group’s touring performances that led Michael to start ‘re-orchestrating’ the repertoire – with the result that he has completed chamber orchestrations of 11 operas.

We're Off and Running...

I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts. Franco Zeffirelli

This blog chronicles the progress of a fledgling community opera company in almost rural New England. We are avocational singers who love opera and who believe that most of the people who say they don't like opera have never seen one. Many of us were part of the Westford Chorus production of Carmen and we know first hand what it is like to have audience members say, "Now I want to see a REAL opera." This was the greatest compliment we could have because it meant they had never seen an opera and our performance made them want more.

In later posts you will learn more about our first production: Hansel & Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck.