Metropolitan Opera – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Fri, 26 Apr 2024 10:47:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png Metropolitan Opera – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Fordham at the Met Opera: ‘Coursework Come to Life’ https://now.fordham.edu/colleges-and-schools/fordham-college-at-lincoln-center/fordham-at-the-met-opera-coursework-come-to-life/ Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:39:18 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=179532 Musical instructor Katherine Copland with students from her classical vocal instruction course at the Met Opera’s production of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X on Nov. 14. Photos courtesy of Fordham facultyThis year, more than 500 Fordham students, faculty, alumni, and staff attended performances at the world-famous Metropolitan Opera—located one block away from the University’s Lincoln Center campus—at no cost to attendees.  

Students taking classes across the broad range of our undergraduate curriculum—from music, theater, and media to political science, theology, and more—saw their coursework come to life through the Met’s world-renowned productions,” said Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center. 

First-Timers at the Opera 

Most recently, nearly 200 students attended X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, a musical interpretation of the life of the iconic civil rights leader. Among the students was Cambria Martinez, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies communications and culture. The Nov. 14 performance was her first time at an opera. 

“The closest I’ve ever gotten is listening to one song from The Phantom of the Opera,” she said, chuckling. 

Martinez attended the performance as part of the course Photography, Identity, Power. “It’s about visuals and how we can use specific artistic mediums to tell a deeper, more powerful story,” she said. “[In X] I think of the scene … an empty stage with just the chair that had fallen, and we all knew that was a symbol of [Malcolm’s] anger, his rage. … How does that simple visual mean something greater to the rest of us?” 

For Allison Anwalimhobor, a junior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who majors in political science and minors in music, the event was an opportunity to experience not only her first opera, but one that pushed the boundaries of the art form.

“Musically, it was very different because the opera wasn’t very traditional, from what I understand,” said Anwalimhobor, who attended the opera as part of a classical vocal instruction course. “It was nice to get acquainted with a new genre and style of music.”

Students and faculty pose for a group photo in front of the Metropolitan Opera.
Communication and media studies lecturer Diana Kamin with students from two of her courses: Photography, Identity, Power and Communication Ethics and the Public Sphere

A Longstanding Relationship

Fordham has long held ties to the Met Opera. Ever since the famed opera house opened its doors at Lincoln Center in 1966, scores of students and staff have attended its shows, including the men’s basketball team. Others have participated in conversations surrounding the performances, including President Tania Tetlow, who recently welcomed members of the Met’s Dead Man Walking to a poignant discussion about the opera, art, and faith. In addition, former members of the Fordham community have worked with the opera house, including Tony Award winner Clint Ramos, dancer Erin Moore, FCLC ’05, director Michael Mayer, and Bronx Arts Ensemble founder William Scribner.

Through a new initiative, hundreds of members of the Fordham community were able to  experience the grandeur of the Met Opera this year. Using funds from Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s endowment from the Mellon Foundation, the FCLC Office of the Dean, Center on Religion and Culture, and the Office of Government Relations and Urban Affairs worked together to purchase group tickets for four productions, including Dialogues de Carmélites and Champion, and distribute them to courses whose curriculum intersects with the opera. 

This fall, for example, students saw a dress rehearsal of Dead Man Walking, which is based on a bestselling memoir written by a nun who tries to save the soul of a condemned murderer. The tickets were given to courses that touch on the topic of capital punishment or faith. Students were also given copies of the original bestselling book by Sister Helen Prejean. 

Encouraging Students to ‘Embrace the Arts’ 

Students and faculty smile in front of the Metropolitan Opera while holding opera tickets.
English instructor Anwita Ghosh with first-year students from her honors writing intensive course

For Samuel Scriven, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, attending the Met Opera was nothing new. (He had already attended the Met twice.) What was different this time around was the contemporary nature of X—the avant-garde musical choices, jazz elements, and political commentary—and the groundbreaking nature of the performance itself, he said. 

“Now we have the Met making intentional choices to put the work of Black composers on stage. That hadn’t happened in Met history until 2021,” said Scriven, a music major who attended X through the course Music in the Modernist Age

“I was really glad that [Fordham] wanted to take advantage of the fact that the opera is right next door to us—and arguably one of the best performance stages in the world for this kind of thing,” Scriven said. “I’m glad to know that they want to encourage us students to embrace the arts.”

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Ahead of Dead Man Walking Opera, Sister Helen Prejean Speaks at Fordham Event https://now.fordham.edu/arts-and-culture/ahead-of-dead-man-walking-opera-sister-helen-prejean-speaks-at-fordham/ Wed, 27 Sep 2023 19:55:25 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=177044 Sister Helen Prejean. Photos by Jim Anness.Despite the presence of a Grammy Award-winner and a world-famous composer, it was a Catholic nun who drew the most applause when she arrived at St. Paul the Apostle Church.

But Sister Helen Prejean is not your typical nun.

Her bestselling memoir, Dead Man Walking, and later its Academy Award-winning film adaptation, are the basis of an opera that will open this year’s season at the Metropolitan Opera.

On Sept. 22, days before the opening, Sister Prejean discussed her work and the opera it inspired alongside composer Jake Heggie; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is starring as Sister Prejean in the production; and David Gibson, director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Among her admirers in the crowd was Tania Tetlow, president of Fordham University, whose opening remarks highlighted how Sister Prejean’s story has transformed lives and galvanized social action.

“My father used to tell me that most people think Jesus was just kidding, but Helen Prejean took Jesus and the Beatitudes quite literally,” she said. “As a fellow Catholic woman from New Orleans, I’ve spent my life aspiring to have the courage of Sister Helen Prejean.”

Ministry on Death Row: Meeting the ‘Ambivalence in Your Own Heart’

The opera, like the 1995 film and memoir before it, chronicles Sister Prejean’s journey as a spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row and all the thorny moral contradictions that come with it. As she reflected on her story’s remarkable success and longevity, Sister Prejean pointed to her willingness to embrace contradiction as the key reason for its staying power.

“I was scared out of my mind when I first went on death row,” she recalled. “But then looking into those eyes for the first time, I went, ‘My God, he’s a human being.’ That’s what you’ve got to do on a journey. You’ve got to go into both sides and meet the ambivalence in your own heart.”

Heggie, who wrote the opera alongside the late playwright Terrence McNally, has seen it go on to more than 70 productions in countries across the world since its debut in October of 2000. Heggie believes the timeless nature of Sister Prejean’s story—and the big questions it asks—are key reasons the piece continues to resonate, as evidenced by the star-studded crowd at its Sept. 26 Met Opera premiere.

“It’s a very intimate story with large forces at work, which raise the stakes to life and death at every moment,” he said. “That’s the formula for a great tragic opera.”

A panel speaks before the crowd at St. Paul the Apostle Church.
Sister Helen Prejean speaks to a crowd of 450 alongside Jake Heggie, Joyce DiDonato, and David Gibson at St. Paul the Apostle Church

A Humbling Experience for Audiences and Performers

DiDonato, a celebrated mezzo-soprano, has sung the role of Sister Prejean four times over the opera’s two-decade history and will do so again at the Met this year. An activist as much as an artist, DiDonato plans to do her part in living Sister Prejean’s mission by singing in a condensed production of Dead Man Walking at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in the near future.

“Being able to walk in those shoes is incredibly humbling,” she said of playing the role that has been a signature one in her distinguished career. “I think it’s true for all of us that encountering this piece, you leave changed … transformed, somehow.”

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Fordham Represents at Historic Return of the Metropolitan Opera https://now.fordham.edu/arts-and-culture/fordham-represents-at-historic-return-of-the-metropolitan-opera/ Wed, 06 Oct 2021 19:56:32 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=153298 Fordham Men’s Basketball team visits the Metropolitan Opera House. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)After nearly two years of pandemic lockdown, the Metropolitan Opera welcomed guests at a Sept. 24 final dress rehearsal for Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Among them were 20 players and coaches from Fordham Men’s Basketball.

The team’s arrival was part of Coach Kyle Neptune’s off-court strategy to encourage a culture that values the student-athletes’ full development as well-rounded young men, as well as great players.

“There’s not a lot of places in the world they have these types of high-level experiences and while they’re here, we want to make sure that they have a chance to experience them,” Neptune told Forbes magazine in an article covering the trip.

Coach Neptune with a Met Opera usher (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)
Coach Neptune with a Met Opera usher (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

Indeed, a Met opening is about as high level as culture gets in New York, and the 2021 fall season has been like no other. In the preceding months, the city saw the worst of the pandemic and was rocked by the killing of George Floyd, which led to dozens of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Institutions across the city reopened with works commissioned by Black artists, and the Met was no exception. For the first time in its 138-year history, the Met featured an opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard, as well as a Black librettist on its stage, Kasi Lemmons. The opera is based upon the memoir by Fordham Sperber Prize-winner and New YorkTimes columnist Charles Blow. In addition, the entire cast (singers and dancers) of Fire Shut Up In My Bones is Black.

“It’s just the age we’re living in. Things are changing now,” senior guard Antonio Daye said of the historic moment.

The team enters the lobby. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

As the they entered lobby the team climbed white terrazzo stairs that snake up toward the Met’s multiple balconies.  Once inside the plush red velvet interior that seats an audience of nearly 4,000, the men gaped at the scalloped gold-leafed ceiling as the famed sputnik chandeliers rose signaling the start of the show.

Team members settle into their seats before the show. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)
Team members settle into their seats before the show. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

“This definitely was my first time at the opera. We don’t have anything like this in Florida,” said junior Antrell Charlton later. “This opens up our minds. We all come from different places. I’m from Florida. We have Rostic who is from Ukraine. Abdul, he’s from Africa. Chuba he’s from New York,” he said, naming his teammates.

In addition to the Met, Neptune has taken the team on outings to dinner on Arthur Avenue, a paintball excursion in the Bronx, and a boat trip on New York Harbor.

Patricia Clarkson, FCLC '82, arrives at the Met Opening Night Gala on Monday, Sept. 27. (Photo by Rommel Demano/BFA.com)
Patricia Clarkson, FCLC ’82, arrives at the Met Opening Night Gala on Monday, Sept. 27. (Photo by Rommel Demano/BFA.com)

Senior guard Darius Quisenberry said that the off-campus excursions were key to creating team chemistry on the court.

“We’re just going to different places most guys that are in college don’t get to experience,” said Quinsenberry.

He added that between school and practice it’s hard to get to get to know team members and coaches, even though they spend so much time together.

“It’s good to be able to have time with each other off the court and to be seeing a different side of the coaches as well, their different personalities,” he said. “Everybody has a different mentality on the court then they do off the court. Our coach is showing us how well-rounded all the other coaches are and how we can be, too.”

On seeing the team in the lobby, one audience guest, Terrence Diable, FCLC ’15 , shouted out “Go Rams!”

Diable, an alumnus of Ailey/Fordham program, is now part of the Harlem-based Limón Dance Company. For him, the Met’s return conjured a host of feelings. He said that he hadn’t attended a live indoor performance since the pandemic began.

Diable arrives at the final dress rehearsal of "Fire Shot Up in My Bones.
Terrence Diable, FCLC ’15, arrives at the final dress rehearsal of “Fire Shot Up in My Bones.” (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)

“I was filled with this excitement being back in the space, seeing all my friends and colleagues, old bosses, new bosses, future bosses,” he said later. “It was so nice being back with people. I got into the arts because of what happens in the theater in front of an audience in real time.”

Diable said he enjoyed watching “so many legacies come together and unfold.” From the young boy soprano, Walter Russell III, who came from Diable’s childhood alma mater the Harlem School of the Arts, to the choreography of Camille A. Brown, Diable said the new opera was a landmark for Black culture.

The performance did not shy away from the complicated issues facing Black men, and Black men from the South in particular.

“It really addressed this super hetero masculine identity that’s considered the correct way of life,” said Diable, citing a show-stopping number where the lead character, a star basketball player, pledges a Black fraternity.

It was during that Act III scene that the team members, who had been up since 5:30 a.m., roused back to an upright position in their seats. After the curtain fell, the team filed out into the bright sunlight on the plaza.

“That was long!” was the consensus commentary.

Sophomore center Rostyslav “Rostic” Novitskyi was one of the few team members who had been to the opera before, back in his native Ukraine. He said the Met opera house was “pretty nice” in comparison to the one back home. And while he found the experience similar, there was one distinction with this trip.

“Here we’re together with the team, we’re like a family, and I think it’s going to help us be together on the court,” he said.

Terence Blanchard, the first Black composer to be featured in the Met’s 138-year history, receives rapturous applause on opening night. (Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Opera)

 

 

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Jeremy McQueen’s Dance Collaborative Celebrates Black History https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/choreographer-jeremy-mcqueen-celebrates-black-history-through-dance/ Fri, 24 Feb 2017 16:04:36 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=64787 Last year, dancer and choreographer Jeremy McQueen, FCLC’ 08, made good on a longtime dream: He founded the Black Iris Project—a ballet collaborative that produces works celebrating diversity and black history. The group has performed original works with an educational component, including MADIBA, a ballet McQueen created that is based on the life of Nelson Mandela. In April, the Black Iris Project will perform the piece as part of the Ballet Across America program at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..

FORDHAM magazine caught up with the Ailey/Fordham BFA graduate fresh off three Black Iris performances for schoolchildren at the Town Hall in Manhattan in early February. He’s currently at work rehearsing Garden of Dreams, an original piece featuring young dancers from the American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School that will premiere on Ballet Across America’s opening night.

Tell me about the new piece you performed at the Town Hall. How did the young audience react?
Every year, the Town Hall does a Black History Month program that enables public school children from all five boroughs of New York City to experience the arts for free. I created a ballet that outlines the story of five influential artists from the Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Augusta Savage, Dizzy Gillespie, and Arthur Mitchell. Most had some connection to Town Hall. I collaborated with a poet named Savon Bartley, who created amazing narration about how these artists were able to express themselves and find solace and comfort. And how they inspired others.

We also took some time to introduce the students to ballet. We taught them some pliés and some physical exercises as well as the language of ballet. I taught them a little about theater etiquette. I told them if they liked something, they could clap, and I said if you see something that you really like, you can shout “bravo.” I was not expecting it, but anytime a big lift happened, those kids were shouting “bravo!”

The Black Iris Project (photo by Matthew Murphy)

What was the inspiration behind the Black Iris Project?
Shortly after my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend. I fell in love with this painting by Georgia O’Keeffe called Black Iris III. Around the same time I had this application for the Choreographer of Color award due at the Joffrey Ballet. I decided to take the combination of everything that was very strong in my life and incorporate it into a proposal for a piece I called Black Iris. When I won, I got to produce it (in 2013) with the Joffrey trainees in Chicago. It ended up being in tribute to my mother, my godmother, and my aunt—three really strong women.

In 2015, I unexpectedly lost my job as a dancer at the Metropolitan Opera. That was what really propelled me to light the fire. I set a goal to produce a new ballet that is rooted in black history—which became, specifically, a ballet about Nelson Mandela.

I also wanted to see how this could become an education tool. We’ve been doing free performances, we did one at Summer Stage in Central Park, and we did a panel discussion at the Schomburg Center where people were able to come and see a preview and hear more about the history of Nelson Mandela. I developed a MADIBA curriculum that I teach in schools. I combine ballet with gumboot dance, which was started in the mines in South Africa—teaching students the idea of expression and communication through movement, and giving them some context as to where these movements come from.

In addition to shining a spotlight on black history, you wanted the Black Iris Project to offer roles for people of color. Why was that important to you?
When I was young I went to a magnet school that was very diverse. But when I went to my after-school ballet class, I was one of very few black kids. I felt very alone sometimes. When I attended summer ballet intensives, I felt the same thing. I found myself really connecting with the one or two black students that were in the program with me. And I would hear things about black [ballet]students in other schools. I dreamed of this social network that would bring all of us together in one room. I wondered how we could make that dialogue even greater, and talk about how we work through challenges and how we can change the narrative.

And it’s been awesome. We’ve worked with 25 dancers from different companies. And not only black dancers. We keep our narrative true to the story. Like in the Nelson Mandela story, in order to see that racial segregation, you have to see the white voice present as well.

One of the reasons I didn’t want to create my own company (the Black Iris Project is a collaborative) was that I didn’t want to take [black dancers]away from their companies and create my own bubble. It’s important for them to stay where they are and create that diversity. If I take them, all we do is segregate ourselves.

The Black Iris Project is appearing in the Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America, a program celebrating diversity that is curated in part by Misty Copeland, the first African-American principal ballerina with American Ballet Theatre. How has she played a role in in your success?
All of this [the creation of the Black Iris Project] was happening at the same time as Misty Copeland got promoted to principal dancer. Everyone wanted to talk about ballet and diversity, and why it had taken so long for Misty to be promoted. It was a hot topic. I felt like that momentum just kept pushing me forward.

I’ve known of Misty since I was a child. I trained at ABT for a summer so I always kind of knew who she was. As I started to develop the Black Iris Project I reached out to her. She and her team were immediately supportive. She’s been so gracious about using her platforms to elevate others and bringing awareness to those who may face challenges similar to hers. For the Kennedy Center program, she got to pick three ballet companies to be featured, and she selected our collaborative as one of those. It’s very surreal.

A scene from the premiere of MADIBA at New York Live Arts in July 2016 (photo by Matthew Murphy)

How did you come to create a ballet about Nelson Mandela? What aspects of his life do you convey in the piece?
I stumbled upon a piece of music called Madiba, about Nelson Mandela, written by a black composer for a full symphony orchestra. I reached out to the composer to see if we could collaborate, and the next thing to do was see how I could make it a ballet. The composer had various landmarks within the score, what he believed were inspirational moments in Nelson Mandela’s life, but I created more of a narrative. That took a lot of work; to simplify the legacy of Nelson Mandela into 22 minutes is extremely hard!

We focused on his whole life, from his birth to his death, including aspects in the middle that show the division of the classes and the division of the races. We show that fight, that struggle for freedom, for equality. We show how at one point, he did become violent. We show those 27 years he spent in prison, in isolation, and how he continued to write. And we showed him as still hopeful, how he still dreamed of the day that a black man could become president of South Africa.

How did your time at Fordham inspire your work?
Fordham inspired me in the sense that it provided me the educational platform that I stand on. It’s one thing to just be a dancer, but to be a dancer who is knowledgeable about the world—that really empowered me to create work that has an impact on all sorts of people. Dancers tend to live in our own little bubble because dance requires so much discipline and focus. Fordham really helped make me a little more well rounded in terms of seeing the bigger picture, globally, and that is something that has really stayed with me in creating this collaborative.

In today’s world, where race played such a big part in the presidential campaign, and minorities and immigrants continue to face new challenges, how do the arts play a part in making statements about these issues?
With the Black Iris Project, we are standing on the shoulders of people who have done this before—so many artists and civil rights activists, so I feel like we are continuing to build on a legacy. I feel like it’s a huge undertaking, but it’s completely necessary. Art is a medium that makes such an impact. I also think it’s extremely empowering for artists to express themselves during this time. For me, I’m not the type of person to go to a rally—I use my art to express my frustration or my protest.

One of the great things about the Town Hall program is that all the students who came could enter a poster contest about what they saw and write a short essay about it. Right now, especially, people are really finding inspiration from artists, with Instagram and other social media to share art forms. That can impact so many people very quickly.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Nicole LaRosa

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