Your Westmont by Scott Craig (photography by Brad Elliott) Scott Craig is manager of media relations at Westmont College
Music, Theater Double Our Opera Pleasure
Jessica Lingua stars in The Marriage Contract
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Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi
estmont’s music and theater arts departments present two, one-act Italian operas offering performers and audience members a chance to enjoy two different stories with varying musical styles. Gioachino Rossini’s The Marriage Contract and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi will be performed together February 28, March 1 and 3 at 7 pm at the New Vic Theater in Downtown Santa Barbara. Tickets, which cost $20 for general admission/$15 for students and seniors, may be purchased at newvictheater.com. John Blondell, professor of theater arts and stage director, and Michael Shasberger, Adams professor of music and worship who directs the play’s music, are building off recent successes of The Pirates of Penzance, Dido and Aeneas, Die Fledermaus, and The Magic Flute. “I am immensely looking forward to the development of these pieces,”
Blondell says. “I love working with these young performers, and the pieces are starting to cohere in marvelous and unexpected ways.” The two operas are incredibly different musically, though they are often paired as a double bill. “Gianni Schicchi was written as part of a trilogy of stories by Puccini, who paired it with a tragedy and a drama,” Shasberger says. “Our pairing puts two of the most engaging comic, one-act operas together from two of the greatest operatic composers of all time, Rossini and Puccini. It’s fascinating how both composers deal with the challenges of true love and the tension between avarice and virtue. They are comedies, so of course virtue wins.” The Marriage Contract, which was Rossini’s first opera written when he was 18, features a new, original libretto, which Shasberger translated. “The operas are about one hundred years apart in musical style, so it is
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exciting to hear the singers working in the very different styles of storytelling,” Shasberger says. “It’s been exciting to craft a brand new singing translation for the Rossini opera, as none has been published before to make it available for performance in English. The story really comes alive, the jokes are funny and the characters have a great immediacy in this new setting.” Blondell is also looking forward to returning to the New Vic. “It’s an intimate, beautiful, warm environment, and our students love to play there,” he says. “I think it’s great for our students, and also great for local audiences. Our students get to play in a downtown theater, and our audiences get to interact with our students in a beautiful downtown location and setting.”
Conversation Examines Liberal Arts, Race
“Still Dreaming: Race, Ethnicity and Liberal Arts Education,” the 19th annual Gaede Institute Conversation on the Liberal Arts, gathers a national audience to explore how the liberal arts can promote more inclusive teaching, scholarship and institutional practices February 27-29 at Westmont. The plenary sessions are free and open to the public. See the schedule at west mont.edu/institute/conversations or call (805) 565-6124. “We’ll ask in what ways a liberal arts education in the past and present has fostered racial privilege and how it can cultivate racial justice,” says Chris Hoeckley, director of Westmont’s Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts. Highlights of the conference include plenary talks by Estela Bensimon of the University of Southern California, Rudy Busto of U.C. Santa Barbara and Louis P. Nelson of the University of Virginia, as well as a special chapel address by Reggie Williams of McCormick Theological Seminary.
“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The promise of a liberal arts education has always been its integrated vision of our learning and our lives,” Hoeckley says. “A vision informed by the widest possible perspectives, nurtured by a posture of humility and listening, and equipping us to contribute to healing the world’s deep wounds. That promise rests on the inclusion of voices from the ethnic and racial richness of our own society and beyond. Sadly, full inclusion has been slow in coming and, at many institutions, remains an aspiration more than a reality, to everyone’s detriment.” Previous Gaede Institute Conversation topics include “High Anxiety: Liberal Arts and the Race to Success,” “Knowledge in Crisis: Liberal Learning in a ‘Post-Truth’ Age,” and “Liberal Arts for a Fragile Planet.” The Gaede Institute, created in 2001, promotes the continued vitality of the liberal arts tradition in American higher education. In May 2006, Westmont renamed the institute former president Stan Gaede.
Music Faculty to Perform House Concerts
Westmont music professors have brought back the popular Select House Concert Series, performing four chamber concerts on Saturdays, March 21, April 25, May 30 and June 20; all at 3 pm in homes to be announced once tickets have been purchased. Individual concert tickets, which go on sale beginning March 1 at westmont.edu/music, cost $50 each or $160 for a four-concert package. All proceeds support scholarships for Westmont music students. “The attendees last year were delighted with both the wonderful settings and the intimate connection with the music-making of our wonderful faculty artists,” says Michael Shasberger. “The range of performances creates an exciting series of concerts featuring solo artists and chamber music on a variety of instruments and voices. Last year the series sold out quickly.” Cellist John Saint’Ambrogio will provide a historical survey of cello music with focal points from Bach, Rachmaninov and Saint Saens on March 21. Soprano Nichole Dechaine, accompanied by pianist Bev Staples, will perform beloved art songs and arias on April 25 in the Santa Ynez Valley. Tenor Bryan Lane, accompanied by French hornist John Mason and pianist Erin Bonski-Evans, performs pieces by Britten and Schubert on May 30. Flutist Andrea Di Maggio, bassoonist Paul Mori, and harpsichord accompanist Neil Di Maggio perform an afternoon of Baroque classics on June 20. •MJ 20 – 27 February 2020
