Known for more than cigarettes, Winston-Salem, N.C. is often referred to as the “City of Arts.” The city boasts the first arts council, established in 1948, and is now home to the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Winston-Salem Symphony, Piedmont Opera Theater, and The Stevens Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, five professional opera companies are within a two-and-a-half-hour driving radius of Winston-Salem.
The AJ Fletcher Opera Institute sits nestled in this southern bed of cultural arts. On Sept. 21, 2001, the North Carolina School of the Arts and the AJ Fletcher Foundation merged the school’s graduate opera program and the foundation’s National Opera Company to form the institute. The foundation pledged $500,000 annually to the institute and the school agreed to match that dollar for dollar.
As a result, the institute, which remains part of the North Carolina School of the Arts, created six to eight graduate-fellow positions.
“The graduate program includes free tuition, fees, health insurance, and a stipend,” explains Steven LaCosse, managing director of the AJ Fletcher Institute. Fellows receive a yearly stipend of $3600 the first year and $4200 the second year. The cost of living is relatively low in North Carolina, so the stipend covers much of a singer’s living expenses. “If they come back in the third year,” continues LaCosse, “they get $900 a month, all the free stuff, and a $1,000-a-year travel stipend for auditions. If they get into a competition, we help them with travel.”
The creation of the AJ Fletcher Institute threatened the strong reputation of the School of the Arts’ undergraduate program. Once known for providing ample performing experience to undergrads, those roles now would go to Fletcher fellows. But faculty members have worked hard to make sure undergraduate students still get great opportunities.
“When the institute was formed, we decided to beef up the undergraduate workshop opera program so that [undergraduates] still get an opportunity,” says Marilyn Taylor, voice department chair at the School of the Arts. “The workshop now produces one fully staged opera a year in a theater on campus and undergraduates are often called upon to perform solo roles in main stage productions of the Fletcher Opera Institute. In addition, undergraduates have the opportunity to sing in the chorus of Piedmont Opera Theater and work next to professionals.”
Kirke Mecham attended the institute’s production of his opera Tartuffe, directed by former resident stage director Will Graham, and was so impressed he approached the school about doing a workshop read of his new opera, Pride and Prejudice. “We workshopped Act I,” remembers Fletcher Institute Music Director James Allbritten. “Graduate students were involved and took some of the principal roles, but so did the undergraduates. They got to premiere roles with the composer—no less than Kirke Mecham.”
Along with a stronger workshop program, about three years ago the institute added two undergraduate fellows.
“Unless you just want to produce chamber opera, you have to have a healthy undergraduate department,” explains Taylor. “It became obvious fairly quickly that we needed to establish undergraduate funds for gifted students. Quite frankly, most of those awards have gone to men. There are two $5,000 scholarships, renewable for four years. If we don’t find two, we have the option of piggy-backing that for one person.”
Fletcher fellows sing in two fully staged opera productions each year. Because the School of the Arts has a top design and production school, each show is created from scratch, allowing for endless repertoire possibilities.
“Every costume that one of our graduate students wears was built for him or her according to their measurements,” says Allbritten. “Every production we do is new. We don’t rent a thing. We can’t, because there is a whole school full of students in Design and Production who need to be trained on how to build sets, design sets, etc. That leaves us wide open for repertoire. We can take real chances, because it doesn’t matter what’s in the warehouse.”
Aided by this flexibility, the school is committed to new works, producing one every few years. This year the institute will mount Ned Rorem’s Our Town, co-commissioned with Indiana University, Lyric Opera Cleveland, the Aspen Music Center, and the University
of Maryland.
With Our Town as the exception (it has been in the works for years), the faculty plans the season’s opera productions around the Fletcher fellows. “We don’t choose repertoire, and then choose singers. We choose the singers, and then look at what repertoire we can do with those singers,” explains LaCosse.
Fletcher fellows are also involved in outreach and touring work in conjunction with Piedmont Opera Theater.
“Everyone hates in a way doing educational outreach,” says former fellow Michael Shell. “Not because it’s going out and doing it for the students. It’s the 8 in the morning part of it. When I look back, however, those were the times when I really learned how to sing. With a few performances every day, you learn what it takes to stay in shape and get up and perform whenever you need to.”
With recent appearances at Virginia Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, and Opera Omaha, these days Shell combines directing with his singing career. Last summer he assistant directed the world premiere of Stephen Hartke’s The Greater Good at Glimmerglass Opera. How did his education prepare him for “real life”?
“I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now had it not been for the fact that the focus of the education was on learning to be the best singer I could be, how to perform, and getting the tools down, so that I could be thrown into any situation and know how to deal with it. It really prepared me for what I’m doing now.”
Other graduates are having success as well. “Dawn Pierce is currently singing with Des Moines Opera. Emily Newton just finished with Opera Theater of New Jersey as Fiordiligi,” says LaCosse. “Jennifer Barsamian is at the Utah Festival Opera this summer. In addition, the institute has had four Metropolitan District winners in five years. Eighty-five percent of our graduates are working as singers right now in some capacity.”
The vocal program at the School of the Arts is small, with only 52 voice students in all, including the seven Fletcher fellows. The small size can be both an advantage and challenge.
“I think it’s a very different mindset to be in a large program than a small program,” points out Allbritten. “I was a graduate student at Indiana University, a very large program. If you weren’t necessarily self-motivated, once you got there and started seeing all of these great singers and watched them pass you by, you began to get very motivated! Because our program is small, and because the students are all more or less guaranteed performing opportunities, if you’re not self-motivated to work it’s easy to become complacent.”
For this reason, in addition to talent and potential, Allbritten looks for work ethic and drive in potential fellows. “In our audition process I’ll ask them to sight-read. I’ll ask them to read a little German, French, and Italian to see what their diction skills are like. Then I coach with them. You know, ‘Here’s some information, what do you want to do with it?’
“I’ve had so much fun in some auditions, because you see them run with the information, and that tells me they’re self-motivated. They want the information, and they want to be able to run with it.”
Just five years after its inception, the AJ Fletcher Institute, under the umbrella organization of the North Carolina School of the Arts, is off and running. With top instructors, quality opera productions, memorable outreach opportunities, and significant financial aid, the institute is greatly enhancing the lives of the singers and community it serves.
For more information visit www.fletcheropera.com.
