<p>Oh, Don, be careful on that one; this is a classic case of “don’t believe everything you read”! Yes, for the most part, Eastman does perform the works in the language in which they were written, but it has been ages since any underclassman has done anything more than hold down the floor in one of their operas! That is because masters and doctoral students MUST perform a specific number of roles of certain levels of difficulty (or, it could be said, importance) in order to complete their degree, and those degrees have a set and much shorter, time period than the four years undergrads spend there. That is one of the things that happens when a school has a graduate school combined with an undergraduate teaching facility. For whatever reason, ESM’s Opera Theatre actually used several faculty members (and the Director of the Vocal Dept of another local college) in principle roles in their production of “Marriage of Figaro” last weekend! That raised more than a few eyebrows in the local music community, which felt that if that was needed, the school should be looking to deepen their talent-base so that only students cast. One can hope that that practice will be unnecessary in the near future.
In the past couple of years, ESM has done several shows by Sondheim and last year, did “Cabaret” (Sally was interestingly cast, since she is definitely NOT a traditionally operatic-type voice!).</p>