Opera singer Ava Pine sits in the middle of the stage at the Bass Hall during a late February choral performance of Elijah. She heard the cello singing to her right. In between arias, she closed her eyes and listened to all the components of the production weave together a story like a tapestry. She melted into her seat feeling both pure joy and peace.
This is what her love for music and opera is all about-collaboration, the story, the voices linking with musical notes, the drama, costumes and the talent.
Which is why people came from seven countries and 28 states last spring to experience Fort Worth's Opera Festival. This year's festival is April 19-May 11, and general director Darren K. Woods expects more will come to feel the same range of emotions opera stars like Pine feel when she performs.
Woods has a reputation for taking an innovative approach to opera. He strategically picks operas that bring current issues to the audience and make them think. His operas have personal stories with global implications. And he's risky-Woods chooses an opera every year that's lesser known to opera fans.
"I pick things that are aggressive and thought-provoking," Woods said.
Which is why this year he kicks off FWOpera's 10-year commitment to showing operas from the Americas. He picked With Blood, With Ink by American composer Daniel Cozier and librettist Peter M. Krask after it had been circulated and rejected for 17 years. He saw something beautiful and relevant about a 17th century upper class, intellectual nun from Mexico being hushed into the corner by male authorities because she wanted to be heard. The story of this martyred nun is based on a true story.
Woods said he listened to it and "was destroyed, it was so beautiful." Plus, Woods is still angry that a 14-year-old Pakistani girl was recently shot in the face and neck by the Taliban for asking that women be allowed an education. Malala Yousufzai was lucky-she lived.
In 2008, he chose an opera about AIDS called Angels in America. He feared being fired for choosing an opera about an epidemic nobody wants to talk about, but it ended up being a hit. He said he's seen many audience members brought to tears by operas like this one.
"It is amazing. It did exactly what it was supposed to," he said about the opera.
Woods always knew he wanted to be a general director for an opera house. He quit singing at the height of his career with New York City Opera to start his new journey to his current position. He adores opera because "it is the synthesis of every single art." It is scenery, costumes, ballet, singing and theatre. It is also a study of the times and history. This is why he wanted to be involved in every aspect of it.
"I get to make it. I get to find the singers. I love putting all the balls in the air and watching them all coalesce into a beautiful story," Woods said with fervor.
Woods" love for opera and new talent inspired opera singers, and stars in two of his 2014 Spring Festival operas, Sean Panikkar and Ava Pine, to find their vocation as opera singers.
"I would not be an opera singer without Darren. I love that man," Panikkar said. When I saw the level of world-class teaching he was giving his students, I was blown away…I fell in love with every aspect of the opera."
Panikkar met Woods at Seagle Music Colony, a summer vocal training program in upstate New York. He picked Panikkar out of "a pile" of students and nurtured his talent. He later convinced Pine to attend after he heard her sing in 2002 at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Fort Worth. At first she turned him down, but after years of working in a cubicle marketing the technology for the first handheld email phone, she came knocking.
After all, the self-proclaimed "stage animal" has been singing since she was a little girl. When her father wasn't working as an ER physician, the singer/songwriter was performing at local venues in their hometown of Fredericksburg. Ava got to sing with her father's band, and at 8 years old she ended up on the front page of the local newspaper.
At Seagle, Panikkar was exposed to the complex and harmonious collaboration behind the opera. As a civil engineer major, he was fascinated with the design and building of the set, how it all came together with the musical instruments, the voices and costumes. The whole creative process fascinated him. He also loved the acting and the drama.
"I would rather do anything at all in music [after that summer], so I dropped out of civil engineering senior year [and finished music]," Panikkar said.
The drama and story also intrigue Pine. Like literature, opera is the study of human nature. Everything the characters go through-despair, pain, unrequited love, joy, new beginnings, reunions and epiphanies-the audience goes through. The opera opens the audience's eyes into their own world of pain and joy. And for Pine, that is very cathartic.
"In opera you can really express how you feel in a big way and belt it out…it's really fun to step into someone else's world," Pine said.
At a young professional leadership meeting in Woods" home, the opera stars of Così fan tutte by Mozart, Kathryn Leemhuis and Paul Scholten, talk to a living room full of people. Leemhuis said that like Pine, she's even cried when performing. Some moments are so moving, they bring her to tears. It is not uncommon for opera singers to get lost in their characters.
"I don't want to play that I'm sad for you; I want to be sad for you," Leemhuis said. "It is exhausting physically, emotionally and vocally, so I want to go to bed for three days."
They had the whole room of young professionals roaring with laughter about the quirks of opera and their relationship on and off stage. Leemhuis and Scholten met seven years ago performing as lovers in Così fan tutte in another city. They fell in love and are getting married three weeks after the festival.
While Così fan tutte is a traditional opera that's been performed for hundreds of years, operas like With Blood, With Ink by Daniel Cozier and Silent Night by Kevin Puts are contemporary operas. Woods transitioned the FWOpera's performances into just one spring season in 2007 because it allowed them to introduce more modern shows. They can package it with classics like La Bohème. People are less inclined to see an unprecedented opera, but at the festival they can see both in one weekend.
He makes a good point-people from the metropolitan area aren't going to come just to see something new; they will want both offered. And someone from New York isn't going to come to Fort Worth to see La Bohème, but they will come to see something unusual.
"We are always discovering new talent. It is their chance to see the next big star," Woods said.
This is what makes Fort Worth's spring festival unique.
"I like taking risks with young singers because somebody has to. I have no doubt that something will say, "commissioned by the FW opera," and it will be played for 100 years," Woods said.
He's recently expanded his love mentoring young singers to composers with his Frontiers program, which started in 2013. This program hears selected librettist and composer teams from the Americas. Eight of the chosen operas are presented in the McDavid Studio across the street from the Bass Hall. Twenty-minute excerpts from these upcoming operas are sung at the festival. Woods hopes to see emerging opera stars born from this program.
Panikkar is excited about coming back to Fort Worth. He said most opera festivals are outside or in other untraditional atmospheres. Panikkar appreciates the traditional and intimate setting at Bass Hall.
"It is one of the jewels of our opera company. The acoustics are perfect [and] it is so well designed. I am really excited about coming back," he said.
Toi, toi toi, or in boca al lupo, as they say in the opera world. Laymen's translation: best wishes to the FWOpera Spring Festival.
Scarlett Fashions
It's the creative process and drama that also intrigued fashion designer and Project Runway star Austin Scarlett, who designed all of the costumes for the professional world premiere of With Blood, With Ink.
"To experience opera really touches every emotion…every little wrinkle of the mind is stimulated," Scarlett said.
Scarlett has never been terribly interested in ready-to-wear styles. He's intrigued by the workmanship and detail that goes into couture and costume design. As a history buff, he loved researching the plot of this opera, which takes place in 17th-century Mexico.
"Opera is one of the greatest forms of creative collaboration. I work with librettists and watch the musicians bring [the story] to life. Then you have the designers and directors that all create this masterpiece of human art," Scarlett said.
While he's dabbled in costume design and music festivals on a smaller scale, this will be Scarlett's first full opera commission. He loves costume design because he tells a story through his designs. He had the most fun designing the nuns. "Especially baroque nuns…they are dramatic," he said. "They have specialized plaques around their necks and extravagant headdresses. Their robes, along with the archbishop, have flair and volume."
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