Copious Notes

UK Opera singers Everett McCorvey, Reginald Smith, Jr., Luther Lewis, Catherine Clarke, Julie LaDouceur and Tedrin Blair Lindsay at the entrance to the Kentucky Village at the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championship. Photo courtesy of Everett McCorvey.

So, earlier last week, I started getting notes from University of Kentucky Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey about the UK Singers, Muhammad Ali and England. They and other dignitaries hopped across the pond for the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championship, and some other events. McCorvey sent along a pretty detailed account Saturday, so I thought I’d share:

Last evening the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the UK Opera Program and Muhammad Ali were the featured guests at the Windsor Castle Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championship Gala Celebration held on the grounds of Windsor Castle. It was an exciting event as the 8 disciplines that will be featured at the 2010 Alltech World Equestrian Games were presented to the European crowd. Governor Steve Beshear and his wife Jane Beshear along with Kentucky Horse Park officials, the city of Lexington officials, WEG Board Members and many others from Kentucky were present to celebrate the gala affair.

UK Opera students were the featured performers during the evening. Held in the main arena, the singers were positioned on a stage in the middle of the large arena. Thanks to fabulous arrangements and orchestrations prepared and taped by our own Johnie Dean, the singers sang several songs during the evening.

This is one of the most important trips that UKOT has ever taken. I think that the benefits from this trip will be huge in terms of exposure, opportunities for the students and exposure of the program to a European audience. The crowd was spectacular. I served as host for the evening as well as one of the singing performers. At the end of the evening, I introduced each one of our singers individually and the crowd gave each of them an amazing ovation. It was very clear that in addition to Ali, they were the stars of the evening. The high point certainly was the introduction of Muhammad Ali. As he made his way around the stadium in an open air Range Rover (which is the Queen’s personal car and was offered by her to Ali for the occasion), we sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” before an emotional and enthusiastically charged crowd. It was a spine-tingling moment in the evenings show. I was so proud of how professional the students were. Everyone here was amazed that they were students!

The singers have been presenting two shows a day at the Alltech Kentucky Village since Wednesday. They have 4 different programs prepared which they are rotating each day. After more shows on Saturday and Sunday we will leave for Dublin, Ireland on Monday to perform at a Gala Event in the evening and then on Tuesday we travel to Ennis, Ireland and then Dromoland Castle in the Southwest of Ireland to perform. These appearances are also with Muhammad Ali. The folks in Ennis, Ireland are comparing the visit of Ali with the visit of Gandhi! Quite amazing. It’s a pretty exciting trip for everyone and a huge Kentucky success!

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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The Downtown Lexington Corporation’s Kentucky Star awards will be presented tonight to two well-known, active artists in Kentucky and a well-known entertainer from the early 20th Century.

The awards, which will be presented in a 6 p.m. ceremony at the Downtown Arts Center, will go to University of Kentucky Opera Theatre and American Spiritual Ensemble director Everett McCorvey; author, activist and playwright Silas House, and magician and hypnotist William Preston Slusher.

McCorvey, who lives in Lexington, has directed the opera program at UK since 1991. During his tenure, the opera program has risen to national prominence and UK Opera Theatre has become one of Lexington’s most popular performing arts groups. McCorvey is also a well-known tenor-soloist and founded the Spiritual Ensemble, which performs throughout the U.S. and Europe.

House, who lives in Lily, is a best-selling author of novels such as The Coal Tattoo and Clay’s Quilt. He has two forthcoming books: Something’s Rising: Appalachian’s Fighting Mountaintop Removal, due March 17, and Eli the Good, due in September. House is also a music journalist and anti-mountaintop removal activist. His second play, Long Time Traveling, produced by Actors Guild of Lexington, will open at the Downtown Arts Center April 23.

Slusher was born in Pineville in 1915 and became a self-taught magician, initially touring around Eastern Kentucky and eventually becoming known nationwide.  He also became known as a impressario, booking entertainers such as Bob Hope and Tex Ritter at Fort Meade, Maryland during World War II. He eventually helped launch some of the first summer outdoor musicals in Kentucky.

The stars will be honored with their names in stars on Main Street in front of the Downtown Arts Center.  The ceremony is free and open to the public.

• Here’s our slide show from the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Mouse over the bottom to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions. If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left for a larger version of the whole show.

Raimondo (Mark Elliott Golson, center) referees a confrontation between Enrico (David Bellamy Baker, left) and Edgardo (Jeremy Cady, right) in UK Opera Theatre's production of "Lucia di Lammermoor." Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera about a man who forces his sister to marry for money.

His sister is in love with another man — in her mind, married to him. But the brother tricks the sister into a miserable arrangement. By the time the final curtain falls, Lucia and both of the men who called her wife are dead, the husband she didn’t want dying in Lucia’s ghastly murder of him.

It’s an odd mix: bel canto singing — beautiful singing — with treachery and carnage.

The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of the Lucia, which opened Friday night at the Lexington Opera House and has three more performances tonight and next Friday and Saturday, had the bel canto part down.

But the show never felt dangerous, even as Lucia staggered around the stage with a bloody knife in her hand.

Darla Diltz as Lucia.

We are, of course, talking about Lucia’s mad scene, after she has stabbed her new, unwanted husband to death and comes into the wedding party with a blood-splattered white dress. It is a tough scene for a soprano as she has to navigate a treacherous vocal line while holding the stunned party-goers in horror for nearly 15 minutes.

Darla Diltz has one of the most beautiful instruments to come out UK’s voice school in years, her tour de force playing Violetta opposite star UK opera alum Gregory Turay’s Alfredo. And that voice is on dispaly again in the mad scene, particularly echoing Aaron Sexton’s flute. But, except for a moment where she raises the knife to one of the guests, there’s never a sense that she’s going to strike again or that the party guests are afraid of her.

And the scene is hardly set, as David Bellamy Baker isn’t convincing as such a meanie that he would force his sister to submit to a life of misery. He only really has a sense of urgency when directly challenged by Diltz.

He too has had great successes, such as an empathetic Schaunard to Jeremy Cady’s Rodolfo in La Boheme last fall. Now Cady, once again employing romantic lead sweetness as Edgardo, does fix Baker’s Enrico with a death stare that means business in their big confrontation. He also pulls off one the biggest challenges in the tenor repertorie: successfully following the mad scene.

There are some other outstanding performances from the supporting cast, including Mark Elliott Golson II as a commanding Raimondo and Luther H. Lewis II as a deliciously slimy Normanno. Gavin Wigginson is a strong and gregarious presence in his one scene as Lucia’s doomed groom.

Director Richard Kagey has designed a strong traditional setting for the show, and the UK Symphony sounded as sharp as it ever has in the pit. The chorus was also in top form, bringing some of the best moments of the show, including the scene where they are supposed to be celerating Lucia and Arturo’s marriage and instead see an ugly confrontation between Edgardo and pretty much everyone else.

The show just wasn’t a compelling package, and the lack of drama, of any emotional spark was surprising, considering one of the primary strengths of UK Opera during its ascendancy has been acting. It has been a company sending singers into the world with the knowledge that opera today needs more dramatic flair to draw in new audiences. It has been the company that brought us shows like Don Giovanni with the Giovanni-Leporello combo of Mark Huseth and Corey Crider, a Carmen that, by all rights, should be a precursor to Brandy Lynn Hawkins doing the title role again and again and again, and last fall’s total package Boheme.

This is a company that has always remembered theater was part of its name. Let’s not forget that.

This show was double cast, with the cast reviewed performing again March 13. The other cast performs March 7 and 14.

• Did you see the other cast? Tell us how it went by commenting below, or chime in on the performance reviewed.

For the day-after-New Year’s Weekender, Scott the editor asked me and the other Herald-Leader critics to weigh in on what we are looking forward to in 2009. Here’s my list of local arts events.

Gil Shaham performs Valentines Day at the Singletary Center.

Violin virtuosos: Early in the year, we will receive visits from two of the hottest ­violinists on the planet: Joshua Bell in recital with pianist Jeremy Denk on Jan. 26 at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville; and Gil Shaham performing with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, on Feb. 14 at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Either one of the guys coming to town would be a big deal. To get both violin ­virtuosos less than a month from each other is huge.

Silas House’s new play: In 2005, the Kentucky author made his debut as a playwright with The Hurting Part, a play with the familiarity of characters close to our homes, sketched with great drama and wonderful language. In April, Actors Guild of Lexington is scheduled to present House’s second stage effort, and it will be interesting to see whether a new Kentucky playwright is indeed emerging.

TBA’s first season: In April, we will learn who is going to take the baton for the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra and lead the orchestra into the future. After 37 years of George Zack on the podium and two years of a search for a music director, it will be fascinating to see how this person settles in, what he or she will program, and what sort of public face he or she will bring to the Philharmonic.

River of Time: In 1999, University of Kentucky music composition professor Joseph Baber wrote An American Requiem, a powerful choral and orchestral work that seemed a bit like putting Ken Burns’ The Civil War into a classical composition. River of Time, Baber’s opera set to be premiered by UK Opera Theatre in the fall, will mine the same period, telling the tale of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in Kentucky and the impact of his presidency.

The economy: Do I look ahead to this with anticipation or dread? It all depends on whether the country’s financial status continues to deteriorate or starts to turn around. Either way, it will dictate what arts groups do in 2009-10, and a severe financial downturn could irrevocably alter the arts landscape in Central Kentucky and across the nation.

Here are a few other things I’m looking forward to on the national stage:

New movies from Kentucky’s A-listers: Johnny Depp and George Clooney are notably absent from the awards race this year, but 2009 sees both with fresh, intriguing projects. Depp’s highest profile film has him playing gangster John Dilinger in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, due in July. Clooney is starring in Men Who Stare at Goats, the feature film directoral debut for his Good Night, and Good Luck co-writer Grant Heslov, a film about a U.S. military unit that uses the paranormal against its enemies. Depp and Clooney have other projects coming as well.

Other movies: We’re back with that old saw that Hollywood can’t make anything but sequels these days, and there are plenty this year, including a new Transformers and Harry Potter. A few reach farther into the past, and I am intrigued to see how Star Trek (sans Shatner) and Terminator (sans the Governator) fare with new visions.

Alan Gilbert taking over the New York Philharmonic: Like here in Lexington, New York’s leading band will get a new conductor starting in the fall. Unlike the recent line of venerable old conductors that have conducted the NY Phil, Gilbert promises to bring a new profile to what should be, but often is not, one of America’s leading orchestras. BTW, the NY Phil comes to Danville with outgoing conductor Lorin Maazel March 5.

Sean Watkins and Jon Foreman are Fiction Family.

Jon Foreman’s new project: The Switchfoot frontman’s solo EP’s were some of last year’s best music. He starts 2009 in collaboration with Nickle Creek’s Sean Watkins for Fiction Family. Speaking of Christian rock, I am also looking forward to new music — finally! — from Rebecca St. James.

The Obama administration: We haven’t heard a Presidential candidate or President-elect talk about the arts nearly as much as Barack Obama. His campaign included an arts platform, and both his campaign and transition team featured arts policy advisors, so it will be very interesting to see what kind of action this translates into. We’re talking about this more this weekend at le blog and in Sunday’s Herald-Leader Arts+Life section.