JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Picoplat hopes to take its opera act on the road

by

20161103

Pi­coplat Mu­sic De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion hopes to take opera in­to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

The com­pa­ny, which is stag­ing Mozart's The Im­pre­sario and a Broad­way Re­vue this week­end at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, be­lieves an out­reach pro­gramme can in­spire young peo­ple to ex­plore their artis­tic po­ten­tial in a dif­fer­ent way. It's with this in mind that Pi­coplat Foun­da­tion di­rec­tor Na­talia Dop­well is keen to take The Im­pre­sario on the road.

"The beau­ty of The Im­pre­sario is that it on­ly takes five singers, a pi­anist and a con­duc­tor, so we could take it vir­tu­al­ly any­where. We're hop­ing that maybe af­ter Car­ni­val 2017, from Lent on­wards we can do some out­reach with it, so we're invit­ing peo­ple that might be in­ter­est­ed in bring­ing this to their schools to come and see the show and see if po­ten­tial­ly it is some­thing they would like to ex­pose their chil­dren and stu­dents to."

The Im­pre­sario is called a songspiel–singing and speak­ing–which Dop­well said is the clas­si­cal pre­cur­sor to Broad­way.

"It's a mod­ern take. The text and the di­a­logues in be­tween have been up­dat­ed and we took some free­doms and brought it clos­er to Trinidad as well. The ac­tion of that opera takes place at an au­di­tion. An im­pre­sario is au­di­tion­ing two ri­val di­vas to see who will be the lead in his new opera, but they end up ar­riv­ing pret­ty much at the same time and it turns in­to a fi­as­co. So you get to ex­plore all these won­der­ful stereo­types of di­vas in the the­atre and it's hi­lar­i­ous."

Dop­well and fel­low so­pra­no Ayrice Wil­son star as the ri­val di­vas, along­side bass bari­tone Kris­son Joseph, mez­zo-so­pra­no Di­a­hann White, with Jodel Lutch­man and Kendall Reid al­ter­nat­ing the role of the Im­pre­sario. The Im­pre­sario is di­rect­ed by Helmer Hilwig, with June Nathaniel pro­vid­ing mu­si­cal di­rec­tion and UTT pro­fes­sor Hay­ward Mick­ens on the pi­ano.

The Broad­way Re­vue will com­prise the first half of the con­cert and will fea­ture the Pi­coplat Young Artists Col­lec­tive, the youngest of whom is un­der ten. She said one pur­pose of the con­cert was to give the young mem­bers of the com­pa­ny the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be cen­tre stage. Cast mem­bers in­clude so­pra­nos An­nalise Kel­ly, Shan­non Navar­ro, Do­minique Akal, An­nalise Em­manuel and Amelia Em­manuel, tenors Richard Tay­lor, Stephan Poon Ying and Jake Sal­loum, and bass Shel­lon An­toine.

"For a lot of them, this will be the first time they're act­ing with a di­rec­tor, which is im­por­tant. Work­ing with a di­rec­tor who's stag­ing you and giv­ing you cri­tique con­sis­tent­ly dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment process is some­thing that you need to get used to, as well as mov­ing on stage–not just stand­ing and singing.

"It's a dif­fer­ent prac­tice and you find es­pe­cial­ly if a young per­son's done most of their singing in the stu­dio with a teacher and in a choir, they ac­tu­al­ly have to re­learn how to move on stage. Singing with a di­rec­tor and hav­ing to move is a very dif­fer­ent skill set, so we thought it was im­por­tant to give the younger singers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that, which they don't get with the full op­eras, where they're usu­al­ly the cho­rus and so the amount of time the di­rec­tor has to work with them is very lim­it­ed. So now we're re­al­ly giv­ing them the stage and giv­ing them a re­al shot at singing."

The show will be per­formed with­out the use of mi­cro­phones and am­pli­fi­ca­tion. The songs cho­sen for the Broad­way Re­vue are clas­sics from mu­si­cals of that era like Pi­rates of Pen­zance, the Mika­do and Show­boat.

Dop­well, who per­formed suc­cess­ful­ly in Poland and the Unit­ed King­dom last year, said she en­cour­ages her per­form­ers to work with oth­er groups to get dif­fer­ent ex­pe­ri­ences. "You do not learn every­thing from one per­son; you pick up dif­fer­ent things the more peo­ple you work with. We're fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing their tal­ents–not just de­vel­op­ing a show, but de­vel­op­ing per­form­ers who will go on and do bet­ter in the next show they're in.

"When you go abroad and you on­ly have one or­gan­i­sa­tion on your re­sume, it looks like you're not try­ing. Schools want to see (more than) that, and at uni­ver­si­ty lev­el, if you don't do any­thing on your sum­mer va­ca­tion, if you don't take part in any mas­ter­class­es or any­thing out­side of school, they ac­tu­al­ly pe­nalise you when they're giv­ing out roles.

"I think it's bad for art when we try to sti­fle free­dom of move­ment. It's a bizarre thing that hap­pens in T&T, be­cause we're a tiny is­land, we just fight with each oth­er and we try to keep peo­ple loy­al to us by trash­ing oth­er peo­ple and I don't think that that works very well. I don't think it re­al­ly helps the art to sur­vive, I don't think it builds au­di­ences, I don't think it builds cre­ativ­i­ty, I think it sti­fles more than any­thing else."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored