A Brief History of the OAC
The Opera Academy of California (OAC) is a non-profit charitable and educational organization, founded to educate new audiences about opera, and to give promising young singers an opportunity to polish their craft. We believe that bringing quality performers and appreciative audiences together will broaden the number of people who become passionate about this wonderful form of musical theatre.
| Please support our organization and its mission with your donations. |
Opera Appreciation Classes
2005-06 Inaugural Season
We opened the Opera Academy in June of 2005 with an opera appreciation class for audiences on "The Queen of Spades" just prior to the San Francisco Opera's presentation of this Tchaikovsky classic.
We have also developed a tradition of performing opera scene programs that feature emerging singers. Each program contains an educational component for the audience, with the scenes discussed briefly before presentation. This makes the art form approachable to people who are just learning the repertoire or interested in advancing their understanding of various composers. The Maid of Orleans
We held another opera appreciation class for audiences on "Maid of Orleans" in June, 2006, just prior to the San Francisco Opera's presentation of this Tchaikovsky opera.
|
Programs and Performances
2005-06 Inaugural Season
"Spooky Times" was our first opera scenes program in October, 2005. A special program for Halloween, the program celebrated witchcraft and the supernatural as it is depicted in the operatic tradition.
Mozart's Impressario
OAC presented a performance of Mozart's "Impressario" at the East Bay Chapter of the San Francisco Opera Guild's Annual Gala in January of 2006. The new General Director of the San Francisco Opera, Mr David Gockley, was in the audience. He was very complimentary of the performance.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Mozart!
 Iin rehearsal of Così fan tutte, 1989.
"Happy Birthday, Mr. Mozart!" was a tribute to Mozart's 250th birthday, a program of excerpts and scenes from five Mozart operas that we performed at the Magic Theater, Fort Mason, in San Francisco in May of 2006.
A master class that's open to the public!
In March of 2007, we presented, "Gems of Russian Opera," a performance and a master class for singers that was open to the public. This was a great opportunity for opera aficionados to get a behind-the-scenes peek into the work that singers and directors put into the "effortless" dramatic performance you see on the stage.
We performed Winter Season in Opera, a special Opera Scene Evening, featuring, for the first time in the same program, scenes and arias from both La Boheme by Leoncavallo and by Puccini. Also performed were arias from famous but rarely performed Russian operas Christmas Eve by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tsarina's Slippers by Tchaikovsky based on the same story by Nicolai Gogol.
Children's Program
Most recently, OAC's training program for children culminated in performances of a Children's Opera Program with scenes from Russian and French operas.
The Opera Academy of California has also performed small scene programs for individual parties and fund raising events. This furthers the opportunities for young singers to expand their performing repertoire and brings opera to people who might not have been likely to attend a performance. We are also proud to be part of the re-creation of opera as an intimate art form. |
