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CONTACT: Sarah Beckham-Turner, 806-651-2847, sbeckham-turner@wtamu.edu
CANYON, Texas—Out of the concert hall and into a camera phone: Students in West Texas A&M University’s opera program are still finding ways of making beautiful music together while keeping socially distant.
The program’s annual spring concert has still been produced, though now its audience doesn’t need a ticket and can watch from the comfort of their own homes. Opera instructor Sarah Beckham-Turner put together a YouTube playlist of performance videos her students shot themselves for the spring production of “Mozart Recitatives in Quarantine.”
“We had no idea when we started this semester that we were going to be given the task of preparing this show online,” Beckham-Turner said in an introductory video. “(But) we have adapted and we’re really excited to bring this to you.”
Recitatives are the musical dialogue scenes between arias, duets and group numbers in an opera. Delivering them with care is an important skill to have as an opera performer because “they can be a challenge because there’s a lot of text,” Beckham-Turner said.
As the seven students were in the middle of preparing their recitatives in class, the stay-at-home order meant to combat the COVID-19 pandemic went into effect, and — as with all other WT classes — instruction went online. So did rehearsal time.
“I’m really proud to tell you that the students prepared these scenes almost exclusively on their own,” Beckham-Turner said. “I was there for a few online coachings on Zoom, but other than that, they really did the work on their own, and I am so proud of the work that they’ve done.”
Students performed to tracks performed by pianist Steve Simpson, which in itself was a challenge. In live performances, the orchestra or the piano can follow the tempo set by the actor, making adjustments on the fly.
“(Here), we really didn’t get to experiment with that much, so (that) element of live music was out the window,” Beckham-Turner said.
Students performed recitatives from Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito,” “Idomeneo” and “La Nozze di Figaro.”
“Mozart has some serious, heavy recitatives in a lot of his compositions,” Beckham-Turner said. “I’m very proud of the work these students did in their own homes on their own time.”
Eleisha Miller, a sophomore from San Antonio, said that despite graduating online from high school, she had never done online performing besides scholarship auditions.
“As a college student, I’ve gotten so used to relying on face-to-face interactions when preparing vocal repertoire and scenes,” Miller said. “Jumping into an all online platform was a bit odd at first, but it really helped having Professor BT (Beckham-Turner) and Ashlynn (Faust, Miller’s duet partner) supporting me. They were both so incredibly understanding, and it was awesome having them at my side during this unsure time. It made the process less scary and more of a fun experience for me.”
Student performers also include Faust, a second-year graduate student and opera graduate assistant from Panhandle; Mariana Pacheco, a senior from Canyon; Dustin Wells, a senior from Tyler; Gracie Spidel, a freshman from Amarillo; Audrey Reidling, a sophomore from Plano; and Joli Goebel, a sophomore from Amarillo.
—WTAMU—