Thursday, March 10, 2005 | 8:20 a.m.
Everything had come to this moment.
After six weeks of rehearsal, Christine Seitz was on the floor of the opera room at UNLV's Beam Music Hall with two casts of "Don Giovanni" looking down at her.
Clutching a yellow note pad, she demonstrated to the character Commendatore how to properly land after a fatal stabbing and, more important, how to drop his sword so it doesn't roll from 17th-century Seville into a present-day orchestra pit.
On this, the first of two full run-throughs, it was all about the details. The company had whittled away at the laborious beginnings and all that a lengthy opera entails. Costumes were unpacked; the scrim had arrived. The matter of connecting the lines, maneuvering the swords and articulating the footwork was at hand.
The production, accompanied by the UNLV Symphony Orchestra (with super titles projected above the stage) is the only full-scale opera the company will present this year. Opening Friday at UNLV's Judy Bayley Theatre, it is possibly the only full-scale opera Las Vegas will see this year.
While other cities have professional opera companies offering full seasons, large operas, elaborate sets and grand halls, opera has yet to take root in Las Vegas.
Opera Las Vegas, a group of established singers, offers opera highlights at various venues and Nevada Opera Theatre brings occasional productions to the stage - however sporadic they may be. But Southern Nevada lacks a local company offering full-scale Verdi, Mozart and Puccini operas season after season.
"This has always been a little surprising to me," said Seitz, the director of UNLV Opera Theatre, who arrived at UNLV in 2002 after serving on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and at Luther College in Iowa.
"A lot of people in town are clamoring for opera," Seitz said. "I get one or two calls a month from people who just moved here and want to know where the opera is." This weekend it's at UNLV in the hands of graduate, undergraduate and doctoral voice majors who have been rehearsing since January to present the two-act opera based on the seductive womanizer Don Juan.
"I'm thrilled to be seeing TDon Giovanni' on this campus," said Isabelle Emerson, chair of the UNLV music department and president of the Mozart Society of America. TDon Giovanni' is big-time Mozart. It's tough. The music is tough. The stage is tough. This is a major work here. They're not doing Gilbert and Sullivan."
Of the 70 or so voice majors enrolled in the university's graduate and undergraduate programs, roughly 30 to 40 students participate in the UNLV Opera Theatre, which they take as an elective ensemble.
"For the vocal students, the opera is the big thing," Emerson said.
There is, however, no degree program for opera. The time and work students invest in opera is in addition to their regular courses and lessons. Seitz said some of the vocal students at UNLV would like to pursue opera as a career. For this, she said, they want to get as much exposure as they can.
"It's a very competitive world," she explained. "They have to be very good and able to learn music very completely. There isn't a set career path for being a professional singer. One of my goals has always been, not just to do really good productions, with student singers, but to help student singers do the productions."
Under the direction of Seitz, a dramatic soprano, UNLV Opera Theatre has presented "Suar Angelica," "Gianni Schicchi" and "Die Fleidermaus." In April it will present a concert version of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible."
Seitz has dreams of presenting "The Barber of Seville," "The Magic Flute," "Carmen" even, and such 20th century operas as "The Ballad of Baby Doe" and "Susannah."
"There is, of course, a lot of opera that is too taxing on young singers and their instruments," Seitz said. "We can't do 'Aida.' We can't do 'Rigoletto.' We can't do Wagner.
"When in your 20s your vocal chords are still growing, making adjustments and bodies are getting strengthened. The voice doesn't reach the final stage of development until 30s and 40s."
Opera house
For some of the singers in "Don Giovanni," this is their first performance in a full-scale opera. Others, particularly the women, all of whom are at least graduate students, have had a handful of roles. Then there is the other segment of students who are experiencing live opera for the first time, having had little exposure to it in Las Vegas.
Though Nevada Opera Theatre aims to present two full-scale productions a year and an opera festival at Lake Las Vegas, financial problems and other issues have darkened its reputation. The company plans to present "Die Fleidermaus" in June at UNLV, but nothing has been finalized.
Insiders blame the lack of a proper venue (as a concert hall, Ham Hall doesn't work well for opera) and the high cost of productions as to why there is no successful company.
"Opera, by its very nature, is costly," Seitz said. "If you do a great job of selling tickets, you've only covered 30 to 35 percent funding of that project.
"Just raising money to get a show on the stage is a huge undertaking. The cheapest cost you could take on would be $200,000. It's a very difficult business. It takes constant attention."
Even the university struggles. Since arriving at UNLV Seitz has formed the friends group UNLV Opera Amici, composed of members and donors from the university and the Las Vegas community.
"I've been raising about $1,500 to $2,000 a year through that group," Seitz said. The larger of that amount, incidentally, nearly matches what the university has budgeted for the Opera Theatre over the past two years.
Though amounting to only 2 percent of the Department of Music's annual budget, the university has taken its opera seriously.
"The minute I was hired they already had an opera date," said music professor Carol Kimball, who founded UNLV Opera Theatre in 1972. "We gave two performances that November.
"In the early days we used a mix of students and competent town people to sing. We gave two one-act operas. We gave a beautiful production of 'Hansel and Gretel.' "
At the time there was no graduate program and Paul Kreider, at student of Kimball's who would be among a long list of directors for UNLV Opera Theatre, had to go to the University of Arizona to get his master's degree, Kimball said. But that has changed.
"We have talented students and the addition of a doctoral and master's program has made it possible to choose more challenging repertoire for the students," Kimball said. "Opera is a very expensive genre to put on and it not only needs support from the audience, but from the university."
Going professional
Seitz doesn't see the lack of a professional and consistent opera company in Las Vegas hindering recruitment at the university. But it does mean less exposure for students who are studying opera.
"I have kids in this production who have never seen an opera," Seitz said. "They've never felt what the effect is in a live performance."
Also, Seitz said, having a professional company would allow talented voice students the opportunity to sing in a chorus of a production.
But students such as Amy Hunsaker, who is working toward a doctorate of musical arts, said she's not too disappointed with the opera community. Now in her early 30s, she moved to Las Vegas when her husband accepted a job here.
"I considered some other schools," said Hunsaker, who is performing the role of Donna Anna in Saturday's performance. "This department is smaller than major universities, but the teachers are well respected.
"I love it because I can get more one-on-one."
For this reason Doug Carpenter, a 20-year-old sophomore performing the swaggering and arrogant Don Giovanni Friday and Sunday, said he turned down an opportunity to study at Indiana University, known for its opera program.
"I wouldn't be doing a lead role at Indiana University," said Carpenter, a graduate of the Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts. "I get so much attention here."
La Wanda Spicer, a graduate student performing Donna Anna in the Friday and Sunday performances of "Don Giovanni," moved to Las Vegas from Washington, D.C. Her first degree was in art history. Her second undergraduate degree was in music with an emphasis on voice.
"I think this is a good place to get focused," Spicer said. "There's not a lot of distraction."
Spicer, who had a small role in "Suar Angelica," said she originally wanted to sing jazz, but was lured in by classical music and has now had two years of classical training.
"I still sing jazz, but my primary interest is classical," Spicer said.
Though Donna Anna is Spicer's first big role, she has seen large productions while living in New York on a semester exchange program.
As for students having the opportunity to attend professional operas in Las Vegas, Emerson said that groups have tried and continue to try to put together companies.
Seitz says that she believes we'll see it will happen "with the right amount of structure."
As for UNLV opera, Emerson said, "We're doing on a shoestring budget, but we're doing it.
"Imagine, we're doing a full-fledged Mozart opera in Italian in Las Vegas."
