The Toledo Opera visited to share details on their community outreach programs

At 11, 11 minutes after the hour I mentioned earlier today, the Toledo Opera would be in. They're here. I've already posted their picture up on Facebook if you want to see all the lovely faces of the folks who are going to be doing this. And a quick reminder that their opera round schedule continues.

Now, we missed last week, which was Wednesday the 9th. On the 16th, this coming Wednesday, they'll be at Wildwood. On Saturday the 19th, they'll be at the Hamburg Township Library. Not even sure where that is, but we'll find out.

And on Wednesday the 23rd, they'll be at Wildwood once again. When they're at Wildwood, it's at 6 o'clock in the evening, all right? Now, one of the things they do is they go out and introduce you to the opera. Now, I know a lot of you are very familiar with opera from Bugs Bunny. This is different, all right? This is like real opera, all right? And in fact, when you go to listen, you'll hear things like this.

This is from Act II of Tosca. In fact, this is Jenna singing, I believe. God, that's got to hurt Jenna. Charlie's on the piano.

This is visi dell'arte, which means the love of art. I live for art. I live for love. Jenna, Charlie, and Jenna are in the studio along with Rachel.

Rachel, thanks a lot for coming in. Appreciate it. Jenna, Charlie, thanks for coming in this morning. Thanks for having us.

You all know number three, right? Rule number three. Pull, grab it. You can grab that microphone, Jenna, and get it real close to you. There you go.

Now, Jenna, that was you singing, right? Yes, sir. How long have you sung that piece? How often do you do that? Visidarte, I've only done for about a year now. I recently covered the role in Delaware, so it's a rather new one for me. So do you travel the country then? I sure do.

All right. Now, why is that? Because I know that we have guest singers come in. Do opera companies around the country not have, like, Well, like, you know, the symphony has everybody right here. Is it different for opera companies? Do they pull you in from all over? Most of the time, yes.

Residencies like here with Toledo Opera are actually pretty rare. Really? Most of the time, opera singers are only in places for maybe two weeks at a time. You do a single show, a couple performances, and you're out. Now, did you know that when you decided to become an opera singer? There's a lot of things I didn't know when I decided to become an opera singer.

Okay, like what? I'm curious. Well, for example, yes, how much time you spend on the road, but how much time you have to stay silent. Like you said, like that's some heavy singing. And imagine doing it over a hundred piece orchestra.

Yeah. We spend so much time on our voices singing that when you're not singing, you have to zip it. So this is unusual for you to actually show up on a radio show and spend some time talking. I'm excited.

Nobody ever gets to hear me yap. Well, you have an open floor if you want to get up. So why did you decide to get into opera, knowing that you were going to be traveling, that there wasn't going to be a set place you could lay down roots and things like that? What caused you to do that? I think it is such a complete art form. It is so powerful.

And one thing that makes opera different from a lot of other art forms is most of the time we don't use mics. We don't use amplification. So there's nothing between you and the music and the people listening to it. And I think there's something so beautiful about that.

Now, did you have to, how long did it take for you to learn? Because most of them are in Italian, right? There are very few that are in English. Well, there's... Or. Is that changing? It's changing.

Okay. Big time. So you have your main languages, Italian, French, and German. Do you know all three? I'm supposed to.

Oh. I'll take that as a yes, maybe. Depends on the day. Okay.

But English opera is growing rapidly, and you can hear a lot of that in our opera around town. You get a lot of English arias, but also opera's cousin, music theater. We do a lot of Golden Age music theater, which Charlie really specializes in. Okay.

So what do you guys consider Golden Age musical theater? Golden Age is. Of course, classic Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma Sound of Music. Of course, their contemporaries, Lerner and Lowe, such as Camelot. So those musicals that came out of the mid to late 40s up until like the late 50s, early 60s are really what we consider to be the golden age of the musical theater canon.

Please tell me you do Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I have not done it. Come on, Charlie! West Side Story? Oh, I love West Side Story. Ah, yeah! You and I are going to be very good friends, Charlie.

So is that part of, do they consider that part of the canon of the Great American Sound Book, too? Oh, absolutely. Do you include that? Yeah, most of those. Standards do actually originate from musical theater. All right, so when you go out to do Opera Round, like you're going to be doing this Wednesday, Wildwood Preserve Metro Park, 6 o'clock, are you doing it in the Manor House, Rachel? No.

That's yet to be determined. We go inside if it rains, but it's really nice to sit out on the front lawn under the sky. But, you know, Mother Nature is not always cooperative. So our friends at the Metro Park let us use their indoor spaces when we can.

All right. Morning showers, it says right now. So you should be cleared for the afternoon. What's the performance when you go out and do Opera Around? What does that include? Either anybody.

Opera Around Town is really, I'd consider, sort of a compilation of maybe opera's greatest. Hits, I'd say. We do selections. Now, when you say greatest hits, I didn't recognize Vista Arte.

All right. So what is opera's greatest hits? John, do you want to describe more of that? The Barber of Seville? Come on. Everybody knows that one. Right? The Barber of Seville.

Songs you hit it right on the head all the bugs bunny you said it's different but in reality it's not that different people that grew up on that cartoon and cartoons like it will hear a lot of pieces they've heard before a lot of pieces they hear in commercials a lot of pieces they hear in popular culture they just didn't know where they came from even the wedding march comes from an opera. Oh i didn't realize that a little low and grin now the uh The one that they show on America's Got Talent all the time. What is it? Nessun. Nessun Dorma.

Nessun Dorma, yes. Okay. Do you do a little bit of that? Because obviously you can't do the whole opera when you go out on the road like this. We do pieces just like that.

So that's your tenor national anthem right there. Okay. And so I personally do not do it, but we have a lovely, lovely tenor that. Maybe one day we'll get to do it at an opera around town.

Oh, sweet. Now, when you take the kids out, and I'm going to call them kids as they're so much younger than me, How many people go out? So obviously Charlie goes out because somebody's got to play the music, right? And who else goes out? We have five resident artists total. We have Jenna, of course. We have our mezzo-soprano, Carolyn Friend.

We have our tenor, Jeremy Doe. We have our bass baritone, Timothy Kruger, who is actually a Finley native and went to BGSU. And then we have Charlie, who's also a he's from Cleveland. So he's from the area and he just finished his degree at BGSU as well.

Oh, awesome. I Ziggy Zumba. So, Jenna, now you're soprano, right? Yes, sir. Just like regular soprano.

So if you want to get into the semantics of it, I'm what you call a dramatic coloratora. I specialize in singing super high, super loud, super fast. That's what I wanted to know because she just ran through like a bunch of, you know, Bezos and all this stuff. So give me like the ladder from highest to lowest.

So at the top, you have your soprano. Okay. And then that varies depending on how loud you can get. And then below that, you have- Are you like the loudest? I'm on up there.

I wouldn't say I'm the loudest, but catch me in 20 years. Or when you're yelling at your kids. Well, there's always that. Or my cat.

Who knows? And then after that, you have your mezzos, and that's our wonderful Caroline. And then you move on to our guys, where you have your tenor, and that's Jeremy. And then you move on to your baritone slash basses. It depends on the day, really, or how early in the morning.

Or how many cigars they had the night before. Really? Or whiskeys. And then that'll be Tim. Okay.

And all of that goes into the full opera, and there will be full operas. In fact, if you go to the website, like I said, Toledo Opera, All right. Verity's Aida actually will be coming up in October the 16th and 18th. The details are online.

They can get tickets online, right? They can. They can. Now, is this is this part of because as you scroll down through, you're going to see opera education, opera in the community, all of those kind of things. Is this all part of your outreach to bring opera to the masses? Well, we're the masses.

To the masses, to the unwashed masses. Well, you know, Toledo Opera has almost a 70-year-long history in the region, and we really consider ourselves Toledo's opera company. And that being said, we're so much more than what we do on the main stage. We do two main stage productions, but if we were to put every single education and outreach program on our website for tickets— You'd be scrolling for 10 years trying to get through the season.

We have opera around towns. We have opera cabarets. We have public performances of our educational program, Opera on Wheels. We have a preschool program with opera.

Is that the Three Little Pigs thing that I see online? Our preschool is called An Opera is a Story. I'm not sure which production we're doing this season, so TBD. But the Three Little Pigs is our opera on wheels outreach program. It's kind of our cornerstone of our educational programming.

It's almost as old as we are. And that's really what the resident artists spend the bulk of their time doing at Toledo Opera. They will put on this fully staged costume sets, props, adapted children's opera, and they will go out into community schools throughout Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio and We see about 22,000 students every single year, and they'll perform The Three Little Pigs, you know, maybe up to three times a day for these little kiddos. All right, hang on.

We're going to continue in just a moment with the Toledo Opera. You can go to ToledoOpera.org if you want to get information.