MURFREESBORO — The brilliant student voices of MTSU’s Opera Workshop will bring
Depression-era America to musical life Friday and Sunday, March 18 and 20, in
special performances of composer Aaron Copland’s classic opera “The Tender
Land.”
Public tickets
are $10 per person for the MTSU Arts-sponsored production and free for MTSU
students, faculty and staff. Curtain time is 7:30 p.m. March 18 and 3 p.m.
March 20 in Hinton Hall inside MTSU’s Wright Music Building.
Tickets
for both performances are available online at http://www.showclix.com/event/tenderland and at the door. A
searchable, printable campus parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap.
“The
Tender Land” tells the story of a 1930s farm family in the Midwest, a narrative
that Copland was inspired to set to music after reading James Agee's “Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men” and seeing Walker Evans’ Depression-era photographs included
in it.
He
composed the work between 1952 and 1954 for the NBC Television Opera Workshop,
but the producers rejected it for TV. The New York City Opera finally premiered
the work in 1954. MTSU’s production is conductor Murry Sidlin's 1985 revival
version, which reorchestrates Copland’s original composition into a two-act
opera with a smaller chamber orchestra.
Young
Laurie, who’s the first in her family to complete high school, leads the
10-member cast of “The Tender Land”. The setting is the 24 hours before her
graduation day, when the spring harvest and a family party bring guests,
strangers and young love.
The
production also features a chamber orchestra comprising 11 MTSU students and a
high-school cellist who’s a private student with an MTSU School of Music
professor. MTSU senior art major Mika Mollenkopf of Nashville designed the
“Tender Land” set, and the university’s theatre department helped with
costumes.
“It's a
very difficult piece of music to learn,” explained H. Stephen Smith, the MTSU
vocal professor who also serves as director of the MTSU Opera Workshop. “If you
have talented students who are willing to put the effort and work into
preparing the roles, then it can be something that's really accessible to
people. There's a connection that people make to it.”
Along
with the first-act closer “The Promise of Living,” which is probably the
best-known piece from “The Tender Land,” Smith said the Sidlin reorchestration
also includes two old-time American songs, “Long Time Ago” and “Zion’s Walls.”
“We're
hoping people will recognize those,” Smith said. “It makes people a little more
comfortable when they hear things they've heard before.”
“The
Tender Land” was the subject of a special lecture last fall at MTSU on its
origins, reception and interpretation as well as Copland’s run-in with U.S. Sen.
Joseph McCarthy during its composition.
Dr.
Joseph Morgan, professor of musicology at MTSU, said then that Copland’s music
“is often considered the prototype of the American sound in classical music”
with works like “Appalachian Spring,” “Billy the Kid” and “Fanfare for the
Common Man.”
The
student artists in the MTSU Opera Workshop present fully staged,
professional-caliber performances of renowned operas for the university
community. Some of the ensemble’s recent productions include “The Merry Widow,”
“Hansel and Gretel,” “The Marriage of Figaro,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and
“Sweeney Todd.”
You can
listen to Smith discuss the opera and the upcoming performances in a podcast
from the Feb. 29 edition of “MTSU On the Record,” MTSU’s weekly radio program,
at http://www.mtsunews.com/smith-tender-land-2016.
You also can get a preview of the music with a performance of “The Promise of
Living” at the 2015 Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts Large Ensemble
Concert in Hinton Hall at http://youtu.be/rO8HBcK7KW8.
For more information, please contact Smith at h.stephen.smith@mtsu.edu or
615-898-2504.
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