Every year, opera workshop directors take on the task of choosing repertoire appropriate for a class of students with a wide range of abilities and levels of training. In my position as a piano professor, I feel very fortunate to have the privilege of teaching our university’s opera scenes workshop. A “recovering” opera pianist, I have been able to direct our institution’s summer program for the past four years. This experience has allowed me to delve into the vast operatic repertoire and given me valuable experience as a stage director and conductor.
Each summer, I design the workshop in a way that allows each vocalist the opportunity to learn a complete role. I believe it is important for students to develop a character through a complete work. As with any training program, opera workshops attract students with a great range of abilities, from the top vocal performance majors to non-music majors with limited vocal training. Teaching the course as a summer offering creates additional casting challenges; students often find summer opportunities or employment offers that force them to drop the class at the last minute. I never know the exact makeup of my class until the first time it meets.
With these challenges, finding the right repertoire takes vast amounts of time and has led me deep into the world of short operas in one act. The depth of this repertoire is almost overwhelming—hundreds of one-act operas. Locating the best works for a specific class of students is a daunting challenge, but not impossible, with some time and effort. While researching this repertoire, I’ve come across a number of very charming pieces by well-known composers such as Mozart, Offenbach, and George Gershwin—after studying the works of established masters, it is very intriguing and fulfilling to explore the wonderful little gems written by more obscure and neglected composers such as Seymour Barab and Antonio Salieri.
Operas in one act are ideal choices for educational programs. One-acts are often (although not always) less vocally demanding, call for a smaller cast, and require minimal set; in fact, some works require no scenery at all. This allows productions to operate very comfortably within tight budget constraints. (In my workshop, I am able to operate without a production budget by drawing upon the resources of the institution’s theater department, a luxury other types of organizations do not have.) Programming this repertoire also offers a pedagogical advantage. Each member of the cast gets the opportunity to create a complete character and develop it through the course of an entire work.
Educational programs and professional companies frequently present operas in one act, but singers, pianists, conductors, and directors can program them in other ways. This delightful body of literature lends itself well to programming by other types of organizations. Numerous works are perfect vehicles for community organizations (such as community theater groups), churches, and even for inclusion on vocal recital programs.
Community theater organizations can find a number of works that contain substantial amounts of spoken dialogue between the arias and are structured much like musical theatre pieces (Offenbach’s The Blind Beggars, for example). Works like these are perfect fare for a “double bill” with a spoken play or shorter musical theatre piece. Church groups have a respectable body of literature at their disposal as well; many of the operas are based on biblical stories, such as Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. By collaborating with an educational program or other community organization, a church can easily mount a fulfilling production.
Programming an opera as part of a vocal recital is a task that is little trickier to accomplish, but the literature offers many suitable works. Several operas require just a single performer and an abundance of others call for only two or three characters. Most of these pieces are less than 30 minutes in length with some as short as 10 to 15 minutes. Producing an opera with one or two colleagues is a wonderful way to collaborate with friends while building a recital program that is much more eclectic and intriguing.
The Italian intermezzo provides the most interesting repertoire appropriate for inclusion in a recital program. Intermezzi are short one- or two-act “mini operas” written during the first half of the 18th century to provide comic relief between the acts of a full-length opera seria. Most call for only two characters and are perfectly suited for inclusion on a collaborative vocal recital—but beware; anyone who wants to program one of these works today faces the challenge of locating a score. The amount of literature written was truly massive (nearly 1,000 intermezzi were composed between 1700 and 17501), most of these pieces exist only in manuscript copy—manuscripts tucked away in obscure European libraries and private collections. (Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona is the only example of this short-lived genre that is still produced regularly.)
Not all one-acts are difficult to locate, however. Works written more recently are much easier to find than Baroque intermezzi. The Classical and Romantic eras yielded only a few one-act operas, but in the twentieth century, the repertoire blossomed once again. A wide range of one-acts have been written in the past 100 years. You can find pieces written in almost any musical style, with any type of plot, etc. Most of these works are fairly easy to locate. The majority are either still in print or cataloged in a U.S. library and available through interlibrary loan. Often, you can obtain unpublished works by living composers by contacting the composer directly.
I encourage anyone who has not looked into this vast body of literature to spend a little time exploring this great wealth of operatic repertoire. Consider an opera for your next recital, the next Christmas concert with your church choir, or your summer musical theatre project. A number of reference resources are available for research in this area and, with a little time and effort, you can find the perfect show to meet your needs. Happy hunting!
Endnotes
1. Charles E. Troy, The Comic Intermezzo: a Study in the History of Eighteenth-Century Opera (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1978), 41.
