Monthly Archives: June 2017

Video: Niu Valley Middle School Residency Trailer

HOT Education is making music with students at Niu Valley Middle School this summer. Incoming 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students are producing the beloved opera Verdi’s Macbeth, which will be performed at Niu Valley Middle School on Wednesday, June 28 at 6 p.m. Enjoy this trailer for the upcoming production!

Happy #MakeMusicDay from Hawaii Opera Theatre! from Hawaii Opera Theatre on Vimeo.

The production is an extension of HOT’s Residency Program, which turns a school, grade level or participating classrooms into an Opera Production Company.  Students sing, create props and sets, and produce other elements of the opera before performing it before a live audience. The Opera Residency has become an annual learning program for the schools, and its success shows.

Hawaii's Quinn Kelsey

Quinn Kelsey on the cover of Opera News

Quinn Kelsey talks upcoming roles, the music on his iPod, HOT, and more in his Opera News June Cover Feature!

 


Quinn Kelsey started singing opera in 1991, as a teenage chorister at Hawaii Opera Theatre. The Kelsey family is musical: his mother is a classically trained singer who worked as a choir director for more than twenty-five years. ‘My sister, Blythe, and I learned a ton of musicality singing in her choirs—she was giving us voice lessons in the middle of learning the music for next Sunday. There was a point where my sister was the soprano section, my dad was the tenor section, I was the bass section, and Mom kind of filled up the alto section and conducted at the same time. And whoever else decided to come into the choir that Sunday—great!’ Kelsey did his undergraduate degree in Hawaii, which allowed him to sing with Hawaii Opera Theatre and ‘gain all kinds of exposure in an environment where I felt at home.'” – Quinn Kelsey for Opera News.

Quinn has sung around the world, including in roles for the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, and Opéra National de Paris. He is an alumnus of the original Mae Z. Orvis Opera Studio class. In 2016, he returned home to sing the title role of Rigoletto in Concert with HOT.