View our latest Opera Always! video: Birth of a COVID Opera

As readers of The Guild Voice will recall, during the 2020–2021 academic year we are supporting local opera students and bringing opera to the community in a different and COVID-safe way, since we cannot present our usual live previews of Arizona Opera Co. productions. Our student intern, DMA candidate Rebeckah Resare, under the direction of OGSA Previews Chair Susan Lane Stokes, presents her third video of this academic year, again featuring some of the most talented voice students at UA’s Fred Fox School of Music. 

The newest project comes in the form of a mini-documentary. On top of all her other DMA requirements, Rebeckah is writing an opera! She is the librettist and the composer is her fellow student Zach Bramble. Theater professor Claire Mannle is supervising the project, and the co-Artistic Director is Marie Teemant. Through interviews and musical numbers you will have a front seat on the creative process in the evolution of a new opera.  The work is tentatively titled, “Notes on a Pandemic, Masked with Hope.”

Rebeckah describes the opera as follows:

We follow the life of five different people and their experiences during the pandemic. They talk about going to school, teaching and furloughs, the joys and mishaps of online dating, being separated from family and a little of what we’ve seen in hospitals. They express fear, anxiety, stress, hopelessness, and then hopefulness. They express a need for compassion and love, inclusion, prayer, patience and peace to endure together.

The preview video contains an introduction by Rebeckah, interviews with her and Zach conducted by UA Opera Theater Director Cynthia Stokes, and selections from the opera performed by  baritone Suyoung Lee, mezzo Diana Peralta, and tenor TJ Simon. The accompanist is Bonnie Bird.