Utah Festival Opera - In The News

You've got to see this!

Stephanos Tsirakoglou sings "A un dottor" from The Barber of Seville...absolutely hilarious!
2008 Carnevale Operafesta

Don't miss Stephanos Tsirakoglou this summer play the hilarious comic buffo role of Doctor Bartolo in Rossini's The Barber of Seville with Utah Festival Opera.

Utah Theatre revival 'in neutral,' waiting for more funding

By Jay Patrick
The Herald Journal
April 24, 2010

A vision of grand revival is still alive for a big dead spot on Center Street.

Renovation of the Utah Theatre at 18 W. Center St. was first planned to be done by the summer of 2008. Two years later, there's still a long way to go.

"We're in neutral at the moment," said Michael Ballam, general director of the Utah Festival Opera, which was given the theater in 2006 by the late Larry H. Miller.

A subsequent $1 million award from the state Legislature and a $500,00 grant from the George S. and Dolores Eccles Foundation got renovation work going but the sour economy has put the brakes on progress - big donors closed their pocketbooks with the downturn, Ballam said.

At this point there's no telling when the approximately 80-year-old art deco theater will open. Inside, it looks and smells like a subterranean chamber - gray, dim, musty, empty. The opera company is using it for storage.

But some serious work has been done: a sort of open tower above the stage, called a fly system, where scenery can be lifted out of sight has been built, as has an orchestra pit and an extended stage. About $2 million has been spent. Ballam would not say how much more money is needed.

Along with a lack of donations, a big unexpected expense also has taken a bite out of the budget - when digging a pit to accommodate the slew of pipes, bells, whistles and drums of a 1930s Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, workers hit water - a lot of it. Making the structure so it could withstand the 300 gallons spewing out every minute cost $500,000, said UFOC Managing Director Gary Griffin.

Despite the snags, Ballam said he's confident donors will return and the job will get done. When it does, Ballam and Griffin said they see the overhauled 350-seat theater pepping up downtown year-round and further establishing Logan as a primo summertime theater festival city. Silent films, classic movies, concerts and theatrical performances will show there. A film last screened at the Utah in December 2007.

"We'd like Logan to become a destination," with showgoers sticking around town for a week spending money, Griffin said.

Downtown business leaders like Joe Needham share the hope.

"It will definitely add a dynamic we don't currently have," he said.

Needham, a former Municipal Councilman and a member of Logan's Downtown Alliance, said the theater could help liven up the district, which is heavy with offices and light on after-dark entertainment options. "There's really no better use for that building."

While standing in the gutted Utah Theatre cavern Thursday, where faded turquoise decorations high on the walls stood out in the shadows, Ballam said, "Can you see the potential? It really could be something magical."

Original opera: Second-grade style

By Alicia Greenleigh
The Salt Lake Tribune
March 31, 2010

Education » Heritage students pen "We Are All Friends" with aid from Utah Festival Opera.

Layton » Heritage Elementary didn't wait for the fat lady to sing. Instead, 29 second-graders got busy and wrote an original production, "We Are All Friends," which they performed recently for their peers and parents.

The pint-sized opera stars dreamed up the story and lyrics for their opera about plants, animals and bugs found in the garden -- something they were studying in class. Students have worked on the project on-and-off since October.

It all began when Leslie Bertram, a Heritage Elementary second grade teacher, took a workshop from Utah Festival Opera on how to create an opera with students. Teachers learn the ins-and-outs of an opera, the terminology and how to build a story arc. This year, 150 Utah teachers were accepted into the workshop.

"We try to teach the teachers how to let the kids come up with their own work," said Susan Ames, education director for Utah Festival Opera. "This gives [students] the opportunity to create just by being themselves. They don't have to be a math whiz or popular, or worry that they're giving a right or wrong answer."

Ames said teachers who attend the workshop get help from Utah Festival Opera mentors who work with students in the classroom to help brainstorm ideas for the story and characters, libretto (or lyrics), music and set design.

Bertram said three mentors came to help throughout October. One mentor, for example, asked students how they would sing certain lines, and recorded them singing into a tape recorder. Afterwards, the mentor wrote a score based on the melody in the kids voices, and complied a CD of the music and kids singing. Students listened to the CD to practice, and after a short break, started working on the choreography and staging a week before they performed "We Are All Friends."

"It was thrilling for me to see [my students] grow and to see them all work together," Bertram said. "The kids had such a great sense of ownership, pride and accomplishment after finishing the opera."

In addition to creating the story, the students got to choose which characters they wanted to play. Parker Stringham, 7, decided to be a weed. When asked what he thought was the best part of the production, he said "singing and getting mowed down to make room for the flowers."

Natalie Kruitbosch and Jillian Scott, both 8, were flowers. They wore a green shirt and pants to denote stems and a pink straw hat to represent petals.

Their friend Jessica Stringham, 7, was a bunny and sang a solo in the opera. "I got to do it because everyone decided I was the loudest."

Bertram said the project brought out the best in each student.

"For some it really was a metamorphosis to be able to stand out and build self-esteem," she said. "It was a lot more than just a cute little play. It was a great process to see some good change that might not have happened without the arts."

Two feature stories in the Cache Magazine, two weeks in a row!

If you missed them, Utah Festival Opera was featured recently in two articles in the Cache Magazine, two weeks in a row!

By Emilie H. Wheeler

Photos by Alan Murray

February 5, 2010

By Wesley Meacham

Photos by Braden Wolfe

February 12, 2010

Ballam: 2010 opera season high in return, low in expenditure

By Jennie Christensen
Cache Valley Daily
February 9, 2010

Last year at this time Utah Festival Opera founder and general director Michael Ballam feared there would not be a 2010 season. The sour economy had caused corporate and foundation contributions to dry up. Cache County helped out, Ballam says, and the audience contributed about $200,000 more than they have ever done before to save the upcoming 2010 season.

On KVNU's Crosstalk show Monday, Ballam said the UFOC has an exciting season coming up, a season he calls "high in return and low in expenditure."

"We have determined that some of the shows do better than others," Ballam said. "We have always traditionally done about the same number of operas as musicals.

"This year we're doing more performances of the musicals, fewer of the operas so that they will be full houses all of the time. That will help in the expenditure because of the artists involved.

"And beyond that we're starting something I have been interested in doing from the beginning, called an Academy."

Ballam says this started last year with him teaching a course on the history of musical theater and opera. The Academy will expand this year and one of the classes will be about choral conducting taught by Utah State University Music Department Head Craig Jessop, whose American Festival Chorus will also present two performances during the opera season.

Behind-the-scenes tour of opera an eye-opener

By Bruce Smith
The Herald Journal
January 31, 2010

Behind-the-scenes tour of opera an eye-opener (click to view article)

UFO Conductor Karen Keltner featured as January's Artist of the Month by San Diego News Network

By Valerie Scher
San Diego News Network (SDNN)
January 1, 2010

Conductor Karen Keltner: January's Artist of the Month

As San Diego Opera’s resident conductor, Karen Keltner is usually heard but not seen. For her, life is the pits — more specifically, the orchestra pit, where she guides opera performances and is nearly out of view of the audience.

“After a performance,” Keltner says, “there are still people who are surprised to find that I’m a woman because they only saw about the top four inches of my head.”

Being barely five-foot-three may have something to do with it. More likely, it’s the fact that women are still a rarity in the conducting world. Keltner — a resident of University Heights who defines her age as “flirting with the far side of 50’s, even 60″ — has proved her staying power.

2004 UFO Artist Tamara Mumford featured in The Met's Opera News

By Tristan Kraft
Opera News
January 2010

Sound Bites: Tamara Mumford

Tamara Mumford's career seems to be in perfect balance: she has been able to combine an enviable international performance schedule with the demands of a new family. Her golden, full-bodied tone makes her voice difficult to categorize; for the moment she is poised between the mezzo-soprano and contralto camps.

A graduate of Utah State University's Caine School of the Arts and the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, the twenty-eight-year-old's Met engagements this season include Dryade in next month's Ariadne auf Naxos, First Serving Woman in last month's Elektra and Third Lady in Zauberflöte and the Abbess in Suor Angelica, both last fall. She made her Met debut as Laura in Luisa Miller in 2006 and days later stepped in for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in a Richard Goode Perspectives Series concert at Zankel Hall. In 2008, she appeared as Solo Madrigalist in Manon Lescaut at the Met, then as Ottavia in Robert Carsen's Glyndebourne L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Last season she sang Flosshilde in Met Ringcycles, essayed Britten's Lucretia at Opera Company of Philadelphia and Purcell's Dido at Glimmerglass — and took enough time off to have a son, Brian, now a year old. "Other artists have said this before — that having a baby has made them a better artist," she says. "But I really feel like it's true."

None of Mumford's success affects her witty, pragmatic disposition. She relates how her pregnancy caused some re-evaluation of her schedule: "I couldn't very well play the page boy in Salome, eight months pregnant. It was a little funny, because my entire second trimester was in England, and Nerone, Ottavia's husband, says, 'My wife is frigid and barren' — and I was showing pretty well by then."

When asked about her prowess in contralto parts, she responds, "I feel really comfortable singing really low. In fact, growing up with my sisters, a lot of times I would sing the tenor part. This [past] spring I sang Lucretia, which sits pretty low, and that's a piece that I feel like I could wake right up and sing, or I could be sort of sick and sing it — it's just one of those kind of parts." She applies the same intuition to higher-lying roles. "I'm twenty-eight, and it's too early to define for sure where my voice will sit eventually. But definitely I wouldn't sing Cherubino. In fact, it would probably kill me."

Who knew this guy loved opera?

By Erica Hansen
Deseret News
Saturday, October 24, 2009

"After all, you know this guy," the well-known ad slogan reads. But did you really?

Unless you attended the Utah Festival Opera in Logan this summer, you'd likely be surprised to find out that the festival owes a big part of its existence to Utah sportsman Larry H. Miller, owner of the Utah Jazz, Miller Motorsports Park, 41 car dealerships, movie theaters and more.

Miller's donations to the festival, worth millions of dollars, were usually made anonymously, with Miller saying "we're blessed enough to be part of this."