The Vocal Performance Major
As a vocal performance major you will receive thorough technical training, comprehensive in repertoire and styles from the early Baroque to the present. Your training will be brought to fruition through combined work in the studio, outstanding diction classes, and diverse repertoire classes.
Through studio classes and recitals, faculty will assist you in developing the preparedness and poise requisite for professional public performances. Your class work is augmented with masterclasses taught by such renowned visiting artists as Elly Ameling, Barbara Bonney, Jane Eaglen, Renee Fleming, Hakan Hagegard, Warren Jones, Thomas Quasthoff, and Pierre Vallet.
Through the efforts of all members of the vocal performance faculty, from studio faculty to the combined forces of NEC’s Opera Studies program, you will leave the Conservatory with an education that enables you to meet and exceed the demands placed on you, a young artist in the 21st century.
Vocal Pedagogy
Studies in vocal pedagogy are open to graduate-level students. For more information, contact Mark St. Laurent.
Opera Studies and the Opera Major
NEC's Opera Studies faculty offer a comprehensive training program for the aspiring singer-actor. The two-year course of study includes regularly scheduled classes in stage movement, diction, stage techniques, stage make-up, and Alexander technique as well as coaching in arias, scenes, and roles.
A training-oriented program, its goals are long-term. Work in the program is intended to provide you with the tools necessary for development that will continue beyond the prescribed course of study. Besides work in the classes, you are encouraged to develop self-reliance in your work, a code of professional behavior, and a sense of professional ethics. Training in audition technique and sessions in resume writing and repertoire selection take place alongside work in scene and role analysis.
Graduate Opera Studies
The Opera Studies Program is open to all full-time graduate students, although on rare occasions, with their studio instructor’s permission, an exceptionally gifted undergraduate is admitted. Placement occurs after matriculation. A maximum of two years participation in Opera Studies is permitted for each degree/diploma program.
The Opera Studies Program is a multifaceted ensemble course for singers with coursework in diction, acting, movement, audition techniques and stage make-up. Diction and stage make-up are required in the first year. Acting, movement and audition techniques are required for each year that a student is enrolled in Opera Studies and appropriate assignments will be made after fall auditions which are required of all students and take place during orientation week each year.
Although the focus is training, with an eye to the future, public performance is considered an important component of the training plan. Opera Studies presents two full productions (one each semester), a chamber opera or review in Jordan Hall, an outreach opera, and six programs of opera scenes with piano accompaniment every academic year. All full productions are double cast and titles are chosen to feature the particular talents of each new class and to include as many Opera Studies singers as possible.
Recent past productions have included Cavalli’s Egisto, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, and The Magic Flute, Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, and La Bohème, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, J. Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Adamo’s Little Women, and Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke.
Undergraduate Opera Studio
The Undergraduate Opera Studio (UGOS) offers an introduction to performance skills in opera and musical theater and is open to all undergraduates. The program coordinates acting and vocal masterclasses, basic stage makeup techniques, and musical coaching and staging that culminates in performances of scenes in the first semester and a complete one-act or full opera in the second semester.
Students may register for 1.0 credit or 0.0 credit. Co-requisite for 3rd and 4th year students is the Undergraduate Opera Seminar OPERA 411/412. (1st and 2nd year students are required to take a 1-hour Acting Class with a faculty member. This requirement can be waived by permission of instructor for more advanced students or students can audit the Undergraduate Opera Seminar, OPERA 411/412.)
Some recent graduates of the program
Dean Anthony, Jennifer Ayres, Suzanne Balaes, Benjamin Brecher, Janice Creswell, John Fanning, Andrew Funk, Denyce Graves, Theodore Green, Jill Grove, Kathryn Honan-Carter, Julia Kierstine, Andrew Krikawa, Marquita Lister, Lester Lynch, Wright Moore, Samuel Mungo, Paula Murrihy, Rod Nelman, Christopheren Nomura, Ann Panagulias, Keith Phares, Jessie Raven, Lisa Saffer, Linda Watson, Ji-Young Yang
2010-02-08
CLAUDE DEBUSSY