Reviews

GSA Vocal Department Chair Alan Fischer Retires
By John Campbell

Alan Fischer has retired as Chair of the Vocal Music Department of the Governor's School for the Arts after twenty-five successful years. A teacher's success is partially measured by the success of their students and Mr. Fischer goes out on a high note: six of his GSA students are scheduled to sing at the Metropolitan Opera next season. The Met season opens with Gershwin's Porgy and Bess with Ryan Speedo Green. Frederick Ballentine and Aundi Marie Moore (September 23 opening). Philip Glass' Akhnaten with Chrystal Williams and Will Liverman opens November 8 and will be featured in the Met Live in HD in theaters on November 23. Mozart's The Magic Flute opens December 5 with Will Liverman. Danielle Walker sing with the Met Opera Chorus this season.

Anthony Tommasini, in his review of Porgy and Bess in the New York Times, September 24, 2019 writes: "Ryan Speedo Green as the fisherman Jake, Clara's husband and the tenor Frederick Ballentine, as the dope-peddling Sportin' Life could not have been better.”

Mr. Fischer, a native New Yorker, began his singing career at age six as a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera Children's Choruses. After graduating from the New York City High School of Music and Arts he won a Goldovsky Opera Institute scholarship and graduated from City College of New York. With fifty character and supporting roles in his repertoire he has appeared on opera stages in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hawaii, at the Spoleto Festival US and often at Virginia Opera.

Fischer(as he's known to graduates and faculty)also became an accomplished teacher specializing in opera character development and audition presentation. Beginning in ninth grade he puts students on stage to sing as soloists, chorus and opera characters, helping each student gain confidence and stage poise. He has done a remarkable job of leading a team of a number of dedicated teachers over the years, including the late Robert Brown and the new Vocal Music Department Chair Shelly Milam-Ratliff.

Personally, we owe Fischer a debt of gratitude for all of the operas he has staged and conducted at GSA and Tidewater Opera Initiative. Seeing opera live is the best. Over the years the list has grown long: Amahl and the Night Visitors, Ballad of Baby Doe (Will Liverman as Horace), Puccini one-acts Gianni Schicchi and Suor Angelica, the Menotti operas The Medium and The Old Maid and the Thief, Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and many productions of Mozart's most popular titles, including The Impresario

Alan's uncanny ability to choose repertory that challenges budding singers to greater achievement was once again highlighted in this year's opera, The Marriage of Figaro. Were are pleased that he is staying on as a consultant and will conduct Rossini's Cendrillon (Cinderella), sung in French, spoken in English, May 23 & 24, 2020.

GSA: Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
March 8 & 10, 2019, ODU University Theater
Review by John Campbell

Alan Fischer was director and conductor for this charming, full-length student performance by the Governor's School for the Arts, sung in Italian with English recitatives and surtitles. Written to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, this opera uses contemporary plots and flesh and blood characters. Figaro is a servant of Count Almaviva who is hankering to bed Susanna, his wife's maid who is to be married to Figaro before the day is over. The plot offers a revolutionary situation of servants confronting their master—after all, this was 1786.

This year's graduating class members, including their roles were: a serious, smiling Donte Thompson (Figaro), Brooke Jones (the spunky bride Susanna), Jaelin Mitchell (the cheating Count Almaviva) and Hannah Ramsbottom (the page boy Cherubino who is infatuated with Countess Almaviva, sung by Lauren Miles (not a senior), Justin Estanislao (Dr. Bartolo), Noah Harvy (Don Curzio) and Eryk Nicolay as the drunk gardener Antonio, are also not seniors.

The acting in this fully staged opera was convincing and the chorus was as good as one is ever likely to hear—the enthusiasm and the sharp, clear voices of young, well-taught singers.

GSA: Amahl and the Night Visitors
Monticello Arcade, Norfolk,
December 15, 2019, 4 & 7 pm
Review by John Campbell

It was an immersive sound spectacular with the strings arrayed around the second floor balcony inside the Monticello Arcade when the 50 plus Governor's School for the Arts Orchestra played Adagio for Strings Op. 11 (1936) by Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Jeff Phelps conducted from the right side of the balcony with the enthralling melody encompassing the audience on the first floor below. A rhapsodic, ascending musical phrase is repeated, inverted, expanded and embellished before rising to a brittle climax, then fading into silence. “The gradual buildup and slow release of tension gives the work an inexorable quality of eloquence, of both tranquility and grief.”

Then followed the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors by Barber's life-partner Gian-Carlo Menotti(1911-2007), who wrote both the story and the music based on his childhood experiences in Italy where children receive gifts from the Three Kings, not from Santa Claus. He was also inspired by seeing Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Adoration of the Magi at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in November, 1951. Written as the first-ever opera for television, it was broadcast on TV on December 24, 1951 and for many years thereafter on NBC, which commissioned the work.

In this production Amahl is a girl, unlike the original where he is a boy. A smaller orchestra of 7 woodwinds, 11 strings, percussion, harp and piano are on the ground floor with a raised platform behind where the singers performed, with room for the dancers in front of the orchestra. This arrangement provided vivid orchestral colors though the singers' words were occasionally covered. While the Eastern themed music with tambourine was played, dancers Mira Gaede and Tatum Finn circled around the entire audience, ending at the front of the hall where they began.

It's a simple story of a crippled child, sung by Gabrielle Pinkney as Amahl, and her devoted mother, sung by Saniyyah Bamberg, who live in poverty among the shepherds near Bethlehem. On this starlit night Amahl tells her unbelieving mother about a star with a long tail (a comet) and as they settle in for the night there is a knock on the door. Amahl answers, finding a king. There is humor as she revises her story from one, to two, and finally three kings. King Kaspar was sung by Noah Harvey; King Melchior in silver was sung by Eryk Nicolay and King Balthazar was sung by Justin Estanislao in a gold robe. Naomi Watkins was the page at the first performance (Meghan Ewing sang the second performance), looking after a fairly deaf King Kaspar. The kings are following the star.

Amahl goes to invite her fellow shepherds to see the kings. Soon the 35-member shepherd chorus arrives, bringing refreshments for the kings and singing a welcome song, as beautifully as any choir of angels. After the shepherds leave, the kings' gifts for the child they seek are placed on the floor. While the kings rest, Amahl's mother attempts to steal “a little gold for her crippled daughter” and is caught. She's defended by Amahl who asks Kaspar for a healing stone from his treasure box. He provides one and Amahl is healed and decides to accompany the Kings to give her crutch to the Christ Child. Off they go, singing with joy.

Again the orchestra gathered on the balcony for Fantasia on Greensleeves (What Child is This?) (1934) by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Two flutists, Alyssa Reichard and Jayna Deeb remained on the stage below near the harpist (guest artist Alexandra Mullins) and began the music, soon joined by pizzicato strings from the balcony as the hall was filled by the glorious sound of the entire orchestra.

After last year's successful Messiah, Shelly Milam-Ratliff, the new chair of the Vocal Music Department, had the concept of using the space inside the arcade in this way and it worked beautifully. Jeff Phelps led the polished, exquisite orchestra. Ms. Suzanne Daniel had prepared the chorus and Emily Coyle was stage manager. Joni Petre-Scholz prepared the dancers.