Lynchburg, Va., a city of trees and hills on the banks of the James River, tries to blend its small-town charm with “big city offerings,” one of which is Opera on the James. The Opera America Level Four Professional Company, providing operatic entertainment in the region since 2005, has just embarked on an effort to take opera to the people.
In 2011 the company initiated a Young Artist Program in honor of Jane and Allen Tyler, longtime supporters of Opera on the James. The hope for the program was that participants would become “ambassadors for the fine arts and share their love of opera with audiences of all ages.” There is hope that the efforts by the YAP will help to continue the expansion of Lynchburg’s small but rapidly growing opera base. By all reports after its first year, the Jane and Allen Tyler Young Artist Program is hitting its mark and is off to a great start.
The geographical area served by the opera company does not have a lot of access to the arts, but does have a lot of interest. Cecelia Schieve is the executive director of Opera on the James and heads up the YAP. She wishes she could have said “yes” to all the requests for performances she received, but was consciously considerate of the singers’ time when deciding how many performances she could promise over the program’s four-week time span. She would eventually like to expand the program to six weeks, saying, “The more time I have, the more I can reach out.”
Schieve joined Opera on the James only last year. Though new to this post, she is no stranger to YAPs, having run programs with Florida Grand Opera and Anchorage Opera. She finds her work with emerging artists to be a particularly enjoyable aspect of her job. “For a company it’s very exciting to have young artists in house,” she shares. “It’s an opportunity to offer things that will influence the industry in the future and work with those people that will make that future. So it’s very exciting.”
YAPs are also very exciting for singers. It is no secret that the road to a professional career in opera can be a challenging one. Every singer’s path is unique, but many successful singers have in common their participation in a YAP or two (or more). For a singer fresh out of school, a YAP can provide a first glimpse into the professional world. For more experienced singers, it can provide a rejuvenation of sorts.
The Jane and Allen Tyler YAP is described by Opera on the James as “the training ground and springboard for technically advanced artists who are vocally secure, dramatically strong, and are building the stamina and performance experience to sing on the world stage.” The program found just such artists in soprano Allison Pohl, mezzo-soprano Shirin Eskandani, tenor Brendan Daly, and baritone John Dooley. This group is definitely of the “more experienced” variety—all have participated in other YAPs and already have professional roles under their belts.
During their time with the program, they had responsibilities with the mainstage production of The Barber of Seville: Eskandani and Dooley sang the roles of Berta and Fiorello, respectively, while Pohl and Daly covered the roles of Rosina and Count Almaviva. The singers asserted that the draw of a mainstage opportunity was strong, but another factor that led them to apply for the program was the chance to work with Cecelia Schieve herself. Her reputation and past experience inspired confidence that this fledgling program had solid roots in her leadership capabilities.
In addition to work on “Barber,” singers participated in diverse concerts, a 45-minute version of Hansel and Gretel, musical and dramatic coachings, business and career counseling, informal language practice sessions, and educational outreach. In total, they presented 18 performances beyond the mainstage show. These included an American music concert (performed at an American art museum), mixed genre concerts (eight different ones for diverse audiences), an Irish song concert, five performances of Hansel and Gretel, classroom visits which included performing Lieder, musical theatre, and discussions of film scoring at Sweet Briar College where the singers were in residence.
Not to worry, though—the singers did have one day off a week and they felt they were kept busy without being overbooked. The schedule still allowed ample time for singers to really dig in to coachings offered by the program. “It wasn’t like a half-hour coaching after a three-show day,” said Dooley. “We had time to actually use those to our benefit, not being so exhausted that the last thing you want to do is sing for another hour.”
One of the great benefits of the program, from Schieve’s perspective, is that singers have a professional coach “essentially just bonded” to them. The singers concur. The program’s vocal coach and accompanist was Tom Getty, who has served as conductor and music director for musical theatre productions at Kean University in New Jersey and has been a regular music staff member at Central City Opera in Colorado for 16 summer seasons.
Schieve provided business and career coaching as well as dramatic coaching. Pohl expressed that she especially enjoyed her time in dramatic coachings with Schieve. The opportunity to get feedback and direction from someone who sees a lot of auditions was an unexpected strength of the program.
“The amount of coachings was incomparable,” said Pohl. Singers generally participated in two or three coachings per week and could work on any repertoire they chose to bring. For singers accustomed to shelling out hard-earned cash for such a service outside of a YAP, quality time with professional coaches was a real gift. Singers also had opportunities to audition for the conductor and stage director, who also provided valuable feedback.
The program also provided a great opportunity for participants to expand their opera community connections. Schieve views this aspect of the program as an “open conversation among colleagues.” She is able to provide advice to singers, make recommendations on their behalf, and help them develop a timeline to aid in their career plans.
The singers also felt a connection to the communities in which they provided educational outreach, with opportunities to be teachers as well as performers. Dooley used his crossover experience to conduct an informal masterclass talk at Sweet Briar College for students of musical theatre. Pohl also mentioned her enjoyment of these opportunities to be teachers of opera as an art form and as a career choice by sharing their own stories with high school and college students. She felt that their work with young people helped “to inspire some young minds and dispel stereotypes about opera and opera singers” by presenting a variety of repertoire. One of the highlights of outreach for Eskandani came in the form of a question from a little girl who asked, “Why is opera so nice?”
Additionally, for Dooley, the experience included a personal benefit, returning to his home state, to an area where his relatives had lived for many years. He was able to make personal connection with audience members in post-performance discussions. He saw something of himself in some of the children they performed for in the schools, as a non-athletic kid in an athletics-heavy school system. He felt the outreach was able to reach kids “on an emotional level, to appeal to their sense that there are other places for people that have other skill sets,” and that one of those other places is right in their own community and is called “opera.” He points to the sold-out performances of “Barber” as proof that the community connections made by the outreach events resulted in counteracting potential patrons’ fear of opera and increasing their willingness to give it a try.
Singers should consider many things before auditioning for and accepting a position with a YAP. It is a professional commitment, not to be entered into without knowledge about what to expect and what is expected. Singers should ask whatever questions may come to mind to determine whether they and the program are a good match for one another. As Schieve puts it, “It is a buyer’s market on both sides.”
With that in mind, Schieve, Dooley, Pohl, and Eskandani offer some free coaching here concerning what questions to ask about a program:
1. Is it an AGMA contract? If it’s not (Tyler is not), ask whether they generally follow AGMA outlines (Tyler does). Ask about the general number of hours or performances per day. The intensity and diversity of activities a singer encounters in a YAP can be a double-edged sword. A singer needs to realistically assess their own skill level and endurance potential when considering whether a particular program would provide a benefit to them at this point in their career. How much new material will you need to learn and perform? How much of it will be relevant to your future goals?
2. Do YAP participants have access to mainstage artists, conductors, and stage directors? At Tyler, artists enjoyed this privilege, but it is not a given everywhere and may depend on individual artists.
3. What is the singers’ access to the coach? Is the coach dedicated to the program specifically or is it a staff accompanist with other duties? Some singers may prefer working with a variety of coaches, where others may prefer to build a relationship with one coach (which is the approach taken at Tyler).
4. What do you want to gain from a program? Specific roles, a variety of performance opportunities, professional contacts, location? Take everything into consideration.
The singers I spoke with all found the Jane and Allen Tyler YAP to be a very positive experience. Eskandani (who had the busiest schedule) appreciated the fine balance of the respect they received as “musicians in our own right” with a “supportive and nurturing environment” that allowed participants to hone their skills. Pohl agreed, “The people we were covering were such top-notch singers, there couldn’t have been a better situation to study a role for the first time.” “Everything that was advertised about the program was followed through on,” added Dooley. “[Schieve] had everything set up for us. She had everything prepared for us and thought through with answers to things before we asked them. That was very nice.”
If this program sounds like something you might benefit from, watch for audition notices in CS and visit
www.operaonthejames.org to keep informed about all of the great work that’s going on in Lynchburg.
