Copious Notes

SummerFest closes out its 2009 season with the musical Once on This Island by writer Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty. The musical tells the story of Ti Moune, a peasant girl in Haiti who believes the gods spared her life so she could save a rich boy, Daniel, and fall in love with him. The production is directed by Margo Buchanan. Performances are July 22-26 at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Feature: UK Opera students spend summer exploring musical theater in Once on This Island.

Tai-Kristin Smedley is Ti Moune, Luther Lewis III is Agwe, Manuel Castillo is Armand, and Taylor Eldred is Andrea in SummerFest's production of "Once on This Island" at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive July 22-26. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

University of Kentucky opera singers aren’t developing their musical theater skills only at It’s a Grand Night for Singing.

This week, in Once on This Island, ­SummerFest fans will see students’ increasing ­efforts to diversify their talents.

While many of their ­colleagues in the UK School of Music headed off to summer festivals, workshops and other programs across the country and overseas, four students stayed in Lexington to be part of the cast of the musical, based in part on The Little Mermaid.

For doctoral student Manuel Castillo, it is a first brush with musical theater.

“I don’t have a lot of ­experience with musicals, so I knew it would be a good ­opportunity to learn and get a little taste of it,” says Castillo, 35, from Guadalajara, Mexico.

For Taylor Eldred, the show is familiar territory. The ­Lexington native was in shows in the Arboretum when the event was the Lexington ­Shakespeare Festival, and she was in a production of Once on This Island at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Margo Buchanan.

But none of those ­productions was under the ­direction of her college acting coach, Margo Buchanan.

“When Margo said she was doing Once on This Island out at the park, I said, that’s a great opportunity to be out there with the family,” says Eldred, 21, a rising senior in vocal ­performance.

Luther Lewis III, 22, and ­Tai-Kristin Smedley, 21, the other students in the cast, also got their starts in musicals, before immersing themselves in opera. All four students have sung in recent UK productions such as La Bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor.

“Vocally, it is not as hard as opera,” Castillo says of the ­musical by writer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, whose other shows include Ragtime and Seussical.

“But there’s a lot of dancing and movement and staging, and it requires another kind of intensity in the acting.”

And there’s the point of getting opera students into musicals and on other stages.

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