Students and pros to perform the masters

Kristen Peterson

Friday, April 28, 2006 | 9:07 a.m.

The narrated program, "April in Paris, Rome and Salzburg," features music selected from noted operas "Don Giovanni," "Faust," "The Marriage of Figaro" and others.

Selections from Giuseppe Verdi's once-controversial "Un ballo in maschera" (the masked ball) also will be performed.

The 7 p.m. concert at the Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St., features student and professional artists, including Douglas Carpenter, baritone from UNLV Opera Theatre who recently performed as Papageno in "The Magic Flute" and Don Giovanni in last year's "Don Giovanni."

Carpenter also performed in Opera Las Vegas' "Carmen."

Guest performers include baritone Robert Tota and dramatic soprano Christine Seitz. Seitz, director of UNLV Opera Theatre, will be performing a piece from "Un ballo in maschera" that she sung in Switzerland with Stadt Theater, Bern. Seitz has also performed with the Las Vegas Philharmonic.

Admission is $35. For tickets, call 459-6353.

Art

UNLV's Annual Juried Student Exhibition is on display through May 6 at the Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery.

Touted as "always exciting and often controversial," the exhibit features nearly 60 works in various mediums by undergraduate and graduate students.

New York artist Amy Yoes, an artist-in-residence at UNLV, was juror of the show. More than 199 pieces were submitted.

The gallery is located in the Alta Ham Fine Arts building. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

Admission is free. For information, call 895-3893.

Lecture

J. Paul Hunter, noted scholar on 18th-century British literature and senior editor of "The Norton Introduction to Literature," will be speaking at UNLV's Marjorie Barrick Museum auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Thursday as part of the English department's Distinguished Scholar Lectures.

Hunter's discussion "Some Reasons for Rhyme" is taken from his current work, "Sound Argument: A Cultural History of the Anglophone Couplet."

The author of eight books, Hunter is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and professor of English at the University of Virginia.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Winner

Las Vegas' own Gibran Baydoun, of Green Valley High School, placed first in the state finals last weekend of the national Poetry Out Loud contest. On May 16, Baydoun will compete in the national finals in Washington, D.C. The contest is a collaboration by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation. For information, go to www.poetryoutloud.org.