Tag Archives: Hawaii Opera Theatre

#HOTSpeaks: Singer Gets Kids Excited About Opera

Leslie Goldman wanted to sing in any way possible when she auditioned to be a singer for the Hawaii Opera Theatre Orvis Studio in 2015. So she included in her application that she was open to being considered for all performance opportunities the studio offered.

She didn’t expect that she would become one of the stars of Opera Express, but she’s fallen in love with the role.

Opera Express is a HOT Education program that brings kid-friendly versions of popular operas to Elementary and Middle Schools throughout the state. 

“I almost like it better than singing for adults,” Leslie said. “You have the opportunity to be as crazy as you want, because you’re doing anything to keep the kids engaged. You really have to utilize every little tool in your performer’s toolbox.”

This year Leslie has played both the witch and Gretel in the production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. The production also features three other adult performers and student volunteers. Opera Express will be seen by students across Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island, once it has finished touring.

Last year Opera express reached 15,400 students at 62 schools throughout the state.

Leslie shared that a lot of the students like opera because they are able to tell a story and be loud.

 “It’s exciting to share opera with kids,” Leslie said. “At first they’re kind of shocked, and they laugh and imitate you, but then you can tell they’re engaged with the music.”

She noticed that performing in the opera could even change students’ behaviors.

One student who was playing a gingerbread boy was throwing things backstage and not paying attention to directions, Leslie said. She worried that he might disrupt the performance.

But as soon as he got on stage, Leslie saw a change. The boy became remarkably more focused.

“I’ve noticed that with a couple kids. Once they get up in front of an audience, they utilize extra energy for better,” Leslie said. “It’s the ‘magic of the theatre,’ so to speak.”

HOT Education Director Erik Haines said he has not only seen opera improve student performance onstage, but also in the classroom.

And Leslie found that even she was learning something new throughout the performances.

She discovered that she had cared too much about her own ego when she had sung in front of adults. Singing in front of children improved how she performed.

“Where I’ve faltered in the past as a performer is that I would stand up there singing just hoping my audience would like me and think I’m fabulous,” Leslie said. “Whereas when I’m in front of kids, I’m just doing my job as a musician. I want them to learn about music, I want them to stay interested, and I want them to have fun. It’s not about me.”

What started as one of many boxes checked at an audition has made Leslie a better performer and has given students across the state the opportunity to experience the classic art of opera.

 “I hope my performances bring the kids a lot of joy, I hope they have a really fun time watching it, and I hope that a kid who might be interested in performing will be inspired to get up and have fun,” she said.

 

To support HOT Education initiatives like Opera Express, click the button below.

To bring Opera Express to your school, email e_haines@hawaiiopera.org for availability.

 

By Allison Kronberg

Finding Love at the Opera

#HOTSpeaks: Finding Love at the Opera

The opera stage is filled with love, passion, and lust. But sometimes all of that romance finds its way into the seats of the concert hall, too.

Sarah Bauer, 30, and Nick Yee, 36, have been dating for more than three years, and Hawaii Opera Theatre’s HOT Tuesday was their official first date.

“It’s actually thanks to HOT Tuesday that I can remember the anniversary of what we now call our first date,” Sarah said.

Nick and Sarah met when Nick was hired as a DJ for an HOT Preview event being put on at The ARTS at Marks Garage, where Sarah was working at the time. Sarah was surprised to hear several songs she liked and didn’t know, and she asked Nick to send her some of the titles.

It was music that brought them together. But opera made it official.

Nick had an extra ticket to HOT’s 2014 production of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman on HOT Tuesday, a pau hana, pre-opera event for young professionals.

“Taking her to the opera seemed like a ‘serious move,’” Nick said. “I was looking at it like there was this sort of old world charm about it. I wanted her to know that I was serious.”

It did impress Sarah. She actually had already planned on going to the opera herself.

“There was something really magical about a date at the opera,” Sarah said. “It was such a classic sort of thing that you would see in the movies.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two were interested in each other, but they were still a bit nervous. The fact that HOT Tuesday included a cocktail pre-party calmed their nerves.

“At HOT Tuesday, you’re able to talk to the person that you’re on the date with, have a couple drinks, relax, have something to eat, relax – you know?” Sarah said. “And you have this great conversation starter for yourselves afterwards.”

Nick appreciated that Sarah enjoyed the opera.

He was looking for someone cultured, he said, and he thought he just might have found that in her.

“I was so starstruck by her,” Nick said. “Every time she opened her mouth she said something really beautiful and well thought out and very musically enlightened.”

But Nick had one more question for Sarah. He introduced it after the opera production, when the two were at a nearby bar.

“‘Do you like jazz?’ It’s a simple question, but it’s a very loaded one,” Nick said. “Within jazz, like opera, there’s a lot of subtlety, there’s a lot of messages, and there’s a lot mixed into it. Basically, it’s asking someone, ‘Do you speak the same language I speak?’”

Sarah did. She spoke it so well, in fact, that she surprised him. On a date not long after, Sarah even played an album for Nick by one of his favorite jazz artists, but he hadn’t yet heard the album.

That was when he knew she was a keeper.

That ‘shared language’ is the glue that’s kept the couple together.

“What’s made it last so long? It’s shared interests, it’s teamwork, it’s mutual support of each other, and it’s communication, bolstered by a mutual love of the arts,” Nick said of their relationship.

Nick and Sarah now live together and also work together at Hawaii Public Radio.

When asked if they have plans for Valentines Day, the two said they’re letting each other off the hook this year because they have busy days at work.

It didn’t take long, however, for Nick to admit that he had plans after all. Nick will be starting a new position as the host of a music program on HPR that day, and he plans to play two hours worth of music that reminds him of Sarah.

Maybe even an aria from The Flying Dutchman will slip in.

Even though they won’t be going on a Valentines Day date, Nick and Sarah know they always have a date night in their future at the opera.

“We’ve kept the tradition of HOT Tuesday alive, and we love it. It’s one of our favorite nights out,” Sarah said.

 

The next HOT Tuesday will take place on  April 25 before the HOT production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Call the HOT Box Office to book your date night today.

(808) 596-7858.

Boston Natives at Hawaii Opera Theatre

#HOTSpeaks: Opera Goers from Boston Value Aloha

These academics from Boston have a message for those considering seeing an opera: It’s not “high-brow.”

Boston Natives Marty and Phyllis Albert have attended at least one Hawaii Opera Theatre production in Honolulu almost every year for two decades.

This year the two attended André Previn’s opera adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday, HOT’s opening night.

“Marty and I were totally open-mouthed, and I’m speechless,” Phyllis said of the production, “by the amazing, unbeatable quality of the performance of Streetcar last evening.”

Marty Albert is a cognitive neurologist and professor of neurology at Boston University Medical School, and Phyllis Albert is a historian at the Harvard University Center for European Studies.

The pair spend their winters on Kauai and travel to Honolulu for one week each year.

“We always time that week with one of the HOT operas,” Marty said. “We call it our culture fix.”

The academic snowbirds have great respect for Hawaiian culture, and they love the welcoming feeling of aloha among locals.  The Alberts’ experience with the staff at HOT productions exemplifies the sentiment, they said.

“It is not trivial, this concept of aloha spirit,” Marty said.

The couple makes a point to visit the HOT box office in person each year for their “annual hug” with one of the staffers. Additionally, they also appreciate HOT Artistic Director Henry Akina’s in-person welcome at each production they’ve been to.

And despite their academic titles, they fit in well with the local “aloha attire.”

“We don’t dress up,” Phyllis said.

“That’s who we are – professor or not, Harvard or not,” Marty echoed.

Even in Hawaii, though, many people enjoy dressing up to go to an opera.

Phyllis and Marty support anyone’s choice to dress formally if they want to. But they don’t agree with the classification of opera as a “high-brow” art.

“Opera was meant for the masses,” Phyllis said. “It wasn’t meant for a small group of people specially prepared or dragged to it by some well-meaning grandparent or teacher.”

So on the opening night of A Streetcar Named Desire, the two entered the Neil S. Blaisdell Concert Hall in their usual, casual clothing.

Next year they plan to do the same.

“[HOT has] consistently had high quality productions,” Marty said. “I give credit to the energy and commitment of the people who try to put it together.”

And the true aloha that was cultivated among those same people greeted the couple again with a warm “Hello” from Henry Akina.

“To have an opportunity to connect with the staff, that’s sort of aloha,” Marty said. “It’s a welcoming feeling. It’s very different from the big city and the concerts in Boston.”

Jill Gardner on Blanche Dubois: “You have to really sing it!”

Tennessee Williams’ character Blanche Dubois from his famous play A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the hardest female roles to act on the stage.

A National Public Radio article describes it as being “like climbing Mount Everest, both physically and emotionally demanding. Actresses talk of losing their voice, suffering bouts of depression or having anxiety attacks while playing the part. Yet they covet the role.”

Opera singer Jill Gardner can relate.

“To play the role of Blanche and to go through what she goes through is emotionally very taxing,” Gardner said. “And, operatically, you have to be able to sing it! It’s not just about portraying it. You have to really sing it.”

She’ll be singing the role of Blanche in André Previn’s opera adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, which Hawaii Opera Theatre will open this weekend. Blanche Dubois, the story’s main character, is a Southern belle who travels to New Orleans to be with her sister after losing her ancestral home and job. A conflict between Blanche and her sister’s husband unfolds with tragic consequences.

The role of Blanche is new for Gardner, and this weekend’s production will be her debut performance.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge unlike many of the other roles that I’d done,” she said. “Blanche is complicated, because she’s just so fragile and so vulnerable, and in the end she really suffers such a horrific fate that is unlike other characters that I’ve played thus far in my career.”

The last time Gardner performed with HOT was in 2013 to sing Puccini’s Tosca – a role that she has sung 15 times now.

In contrast, singing Blanche for the first time makes Gardner feel a sense of vulnerability, she said.

That vulnerability was an essential part of Blanche, though, Gardner found.

She studied different actresses to discover what they brought to the role. Vivien Leigh exemplified vulnerability, Gardner thought, and Jessica Tandy perfectly embodied the culture of a Southern woman. Her favorite performance was from Ann-Margret, who she felt embodied Blanche’s sensual energy.

A couple topics she didn’t need to educate herself on were Blanche’s Southern upbringing or family values.  Gardner grew up in North Carolina, and she was also the oldest of her siblings.

“I was so happy to embrace my own culture within it,” she said. “I’ve never felt like I was far away from the heart of the character in that way.”

Gardner was thrilled to take on the role when HOT offered it. But like many of the actresses and singers before her, she found it took a toll on her.

After five days of intense rehearsing, Gardner said she felt overwhelmed.

“After that first week I just felt that I was lost,” she said. “It’s hard, too, because you have to walk her walk with her. I want to constantly take care of her because she’s so fragile. Going through Blanche’s journey during this opera was… rough!”

But Gardner has drawn inspiration from the Italian opera heroines in her repertoire to find the motivation needed to conquer Blanche’s role, and to do so with positivity.

Gardner searched for Blanche’s redeeming qualities, and found that she admired the complex character’s appreciation of joy, light, and the beauty all around her. Previn’s music, she said, highlights these attributes.

“If I keep that in mind, along with the intention that I will always fight to the end, that’s what balances everything,” she said. “That positive intention helps me to feel like I’m not being undone by [the role].”

Gardner feels empathy for Blanche, she said, and she hopes that audiences leave the concert hall with a desire to show empathy to others in their lives.

And despite the challenging nature of the role, she hopes to sing it again.

“I really do hope to return to this role,” Gardner said. “I love it in its complexity, I think that the music is so beautiful, and I do think it fits me very well.”

By Allison Kronberg

The Lives of Tennessee Williams and André Previn

HOT will open the doors to André Previn’s musical transformation of the classic Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire on January 27.

The production — and the phenomenal success it represents — is a tribute to how music can complement theatre, and vice versa.

 Williams wrote with authority about the challenges faced by the characters in his play, such as depression and substance abuse. His work is distinctively his own.  But André Previn’s rich life experiences and love of jazz predisposed him to be up to the task of reinterpreting the dark and emotional motifs of the American classic for an operatic audience.

They are two very different artists — the playwright and the composer. Yet, when one compares the two men’s lives, there are interesting commonalities. And the result is a fascinating, posthumous collaboration in the form of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Early Life
 Both Williams and Previn had happy childhoods, through Williams was born 18 years earlier. Williams grew up the son of a shoe company executive and a southern belle in Columbus, Mississippi. Previn was born in Berlin, Germany to a wealthy family. But both artists lives were soon upheaved. When Williams family moved to the city of St. Louis, Missouri, he became unsatisfied with life. He took to writing to provide an escape from city life and his parents’ dysfunctional marriage. The threat of World War II and Nazi rule, on the other hand, is what forced Previn out of his peaceful youth. He and his family fled to Paris in 1938, and Previn devoted his time in the city to studying at the Paris Conservatory of Music.

 As both creators were beginning to recognize their talents, they faced obstacles. In 1929 Williams began studying journalism at the University of Missouri. But his father ended his education after learning that Williams’ male love interest attended the same school. Williams became a shoe salesman at his father’s company soon after, and his hatred of the labor contributed to his chronic depression. Previn’s studies in Paris were cut short when his family announced their move to the United States. No one in the family spoke English. Previn gave music lessons at home to earn money, but he wasn’t content with the role.

 Finding a spark of passion would bring both of the men closer to their dreams.

Flourishing Careers
 Williams moved to New Orleans at the age of 28 and fell deeply in love with the city, which would prove to inspire much of his later work, including A Streetcar Named Desire. He began submitting his plays to local contests, and word of his talent spread. He landed an agent not long after. Previn, who had again taken up studying composition, became infatuated with American jazz. His unique understanding of both classical music and jazz drew admirers. He wrote a musical score for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and signed a contract with the movie studio at just 18 years old.

 And so the artists’ careers began. Williams spent years writing and traveling the country before his first critically acclaimed play, The Glass Menagerie, hit the stage in 1944. The play won Williams a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and brought him fame. A Streetcar Named Desire opened two years later, earning him another a Drama Critics’ Award and his first Pulitzer Prize. Around the same time, Previn was receiving accolades as well. As MGM Musical Director, he adapted hit songs for films and composed original scores for musicals and other dramas. He was nominated for sixteen Academy Awards and won four. In the late 60s and early 70s, Previn was pulled again by classical music and began recording with the London Symphony Orchestra and also became conductor-in-chief of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

 But some of the same issues that plagued the characters of A Streetcar Named Desire, such as depression, addiction, and adultery, would eventually present themselves in the two men’s public lives.

Challenges
 Williams had fought depression his whole life, and writing was his salvation. But even writing couldn’t ease the pain of losing his best friend to cancer in the 60s. The decade also brought the harshest criticism of his work by the press. Though he continued to write, he became more and more dependent on alcohol and drugs to cope. In 1969, Williams’ brother hospitalized him. That same year, Previn was dealing with problems of his own. While Previn was married to his second wife, he had an affair with actress Mia Farrow, the ex-wife of popular singer Frank Sinatra. She gave birth to their twin sons in early 1970. Previn left the Houston Symphony Orchestra and he and his wife divorced due to the misconduct. Previn married Farrow afterward, but they also divorced after about a decade.

 Both men never faltered in their craft, even with the setbacks.

Lasting Achievements
 After Williams was released from hospitalization, he began feverishly writing again. Over the next decade or so, he wrote plays, a memoir, poems, short stories and a novel. But In 1983, Williams’ addiction caught back up with him, and he died in a New York City hotel room surrounded by bottles of wine and pills. Despite the abrupt and heartbreaking end to his career, Williams went down in history as one of America’s greatest playwrights, winning four Drama Critic Circle Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died, perhaps, not recognizing his full impact on the stage and the screen. Previn, on the other hand, has lived to see his full life’s work honored and his earlier missteps reconciled. He toured throughout Europe and the United States as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and continued to compose throughout the 70s and 80s. In 1982, Previn married and had one child. Additionally, he formed the Andre Previn Jazz Trio, which toured in the early 90s. In 1998 Previn received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his career as a conductor and composer at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in Washington, D.C. Now 87, Previn is known as one of the most versatile musicians in the world.

The opera adaptation of the classic American play A Streetcar Named Desire is the result of the combination of Williams’ and Previns’ rich life experiences, unique perspectives, and monumental talent.


To see the work of these historic artists come to life in Hawaii, click the button below.

By Allison Kronberg

Sources:

Tennessee Williams Biography


http://www.biography.com/people/tennessee-williams-9532952#synopsis
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pe-Pu/Previn-Andr.html

Press Release: HOT Announces New Director of Fundraising & Major Gifts

HOT is pleased to announce that Kevin Takamori has been named Director of Fundraising and Major Gifts. His responsibilities will include leading efforts to increase fundraising and establishing a legacy giving program.

“Over a 25-year career in fundraising, supporting the arts has always been one of the most rewarding areas of focus for me,” Takamori said. “I am thrilled to join the Hawaii Opera Theatre, which not only brings the world’s best opera to Hawaii each year, but also engages more than 25,000 keiki across Oahu and the neighbor islands through its nationally recognized educational outreach programs.”

Born and raised in Honolulu, he is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, the University of Hawai‘i, and Harvard University.

Takamori’s fundraising career began at Harvard, where he managed the alumni travel program during Harvard’s historic $2.6 billion capital campaign.  After 15 years in Boston, he returned to Honolulu to lead the University of Hawai‘i’s alumni relations program. He also served as Development Director for Hawai‘i Arts Alliance, where he helped to expand private support through increased major gifts, event fundraising, and grant writing.  Most recently, he worked as Director of Development at Hawai‘i Pacific University, where he successfully secured major gifts and grants for HPU’s Oceanic Institute, Athletics program, Performing Arts, and student scholarships.  

Additionally, In 2003 Takamori was named a “Harvard Hero” for outstanding work in development and alumni relations, and in 2007 he was selected for the Pacific Century Fellows Program for future leaders of Hawaii.

HOT General Director Simon Crookall said he expects Takamori will build on HOT’s successes in fundraising in the local community and looks forward to having him on board.

#HOTSpeaks: Senator Supports Opera

Most people know Hawaii state Senator Josh Green for his role as the Majority Floor Leader or his work with healthcare legislation, but not many know that he is also an opera lover.

Green purchased tickets to Mozart’s The Magic Flute for himself and his wife last year. With the start of the Hawaii State Legislature session right around the corner, #HOTSpeaks had a chat with him about his experience at the HOT production:

Why did you choose to purchase tickets to a HOT production last year?

In general, I love opera, and I wanted to support our community. I had also heard good things from close friends, in the Case family specifically. It just was a nice night out for my wife and I.

My wife went to A Midsummer Night’s Dream after, and she loved that too. I bought her and her girl friend tickets for their birthday. I couldn’t go because I had to watch the kids that time. But we try to go every year.

What did you think of the HOT Production of The Magic Flute?

It was beautiful. Going to opera is very different from our normal days, so it’s a treat. And we have young kids, so we don’t have a lot of evenings out for ourselves, so that is also a treat for us.
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Why do you, or do you not, believe arts are valuable to support in Honolulu?

I think they’re critical to support. I grew up in a family that served on the boards of museums, symphony orchestras, and opera companies on the mainland, so for me art was very central to what my family participated in. To be able to access it in our smaller market of Hawaii is terrific.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh has really good programs with very well endowed arts. That’s mainly because of the industrialists that settled in the Pittsburgh area who built major symphonies and operas.

Now that I’m established a little bit more, I figured it was time for us to participate in the arts here. A lot of legislators, when they start out, the only things they participate in are the social services and charities. But being able to invest in the arts really adds to what a city can bring.

Your work in the legislature has to do mostly with health issues. Do you believe the arts can contribute to a person’s health and wellbeing?

I’ve seen people develop nice programs where music, particularly, is very therapeutic. And there are a lot of individuals out there that become hospital-bound with a chronic illness, so we try to bring healing things into their lives, and sometimes that just means music in a hospital setting.

Do you think opera has a place in the arts in Hawaii, and if so why?

Absolutely. I’ve always, in my mind, coupled the symphony and opera with the arts – that’s how I grew up. In Hawaii, we don’t have a large population, but I think that with a small amount of philanthropic support and more awareness, we can have a very full opera company.

We want to be as supportive as we can, because it’s nice to have an opera company here.

Do you plan on purchasing tickets to another Hawaii Opera Theatre production in the future?

Oh, for sure. I hope to go every year.

#HOTSpeaks: HOT President Jim McCoy

A Former Navy Commanding Officer’s Voyage with Opera

It was opening night of the Hawaii Opera Theatre’s production of Puccini’s Tosca in 2006.

As Baron Scarpia, the opera’s villain, sang his famous aria Va, Tosca! (Te Deum) in the setting of a Roman church near the end of the first act, the accompaniment swelled. A full choir belted at fortissimo, the orchestra jerked their bows along the instruments’ strings with vigor, and pressurized air resonated through the pipes of an organ.

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Underneath a lavish, golden robe and mitre cap stood retired U.S. Navy Captain and Hawaii Opera Theatre Board President Jim McCoy. He had volunteered to play the non-singing role of the Cardinal.

It was his first on-stage opera performance.

Years later, standing in a room surrounded by naval memorabilia, Jim held a photo of his performance in Tosca and smiled nostalgically.dsc00745

“I’m not a musician. I’m not a musicologist. I’m just a passionate opera lover,” he said. “And having a role in Tosca – my favorite opera – was a thrilling experience.”

Preparing For Voyage

Jim grew up playing classical music on the piano, and he said it was natural to make the transition from classical music and the pop music of the day to opera.

“It was easy to listen to a Rodgers and Hammerstein song from Oklahoma or The King and I and then hear something from La Bohème, for instance, and say, ‘There’s a lyrical similarity there,’” he said.

Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, Jim was exposed to opera through television. Opera singers were often guest stars on popular television series like The Ed Sullivan Show or Your Show of Shows.

And the year that he began high school coincided with the introduction of 33 RPM vinyl records. The long-playing records revolutionized private opera listening, since listeners no longer needed a tall stack of breakable 78 RPM records to listen to a complete opera.

Jim began renting vinyl records of opera soundtracks and librettos from the Mill Valley Public Library in California when he was in high school. Latin and French classes in school helped him read the librettos – the words of the opera – while listening to it.

Before long, he was hooked.

“Opera, with its plots and characters and their arias and so forth, reaches an emotional depth that is deeply moving,” McCoy said. “I love all forms of classical music, but opera is special.”

Out At Sea

Classical music aside, Jim was a career Navy man.

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“When I was growing up, I never had any desire to do anything else but go to the Naval Academy and be a naval officer,” he said. “And that’s what I did.”

Jim commanded two ships and a squadron of 12 ships during his 30-year naval career.  When these ships deployed to the Mediterranean or North Atlantic, port visits introduced him to opera houses in Italy, France and Spain.

When on shore duty in the States, he saw opera performances in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, San Diego and San Francisco.

“It’s thanks to the Navy that I saw all those shows,” he said.

Back On Land

After retiring in 1990, he assembled various memorabilia from the three at sea commands.  There are photos, paintings, models, pennants, flags and awards that pay tribute to the many tough judgment calls he had to make, the stormy seas he faced, and the leadership skills he learned.

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Jim’s naval ships had docked, but his voyage with opera was far from over.  He has been traveling on opera tours to Europe since 1998 and has seen productions at many of the most important opera houses on the continent.  He believes these experiences give him credibility when he asserts that HOT stages world class opera.

In 1997, a new opportunity with opera presented itself: Jim joined the HOT Board of Directors.  He has been on the Board ever since and has served as Treasurer and President.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera, presented Jim with a National Opera Trustee Recognition Award for his dedication to promoting HOT in 2015.

“I had no idea that was coming,” he said. “But that was very gratifying.”

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But his favorite moment with HOT was still the moment that he stood on stage in 2006, surrounded by the music of the opera he had discovered as a teenager.

That night, as the powerful sound vibrated the stage, Jim bowed and blessed the chorus, then turned to bless Scarpia, and finally he turned to face the thousands of people in the audience.

His blessing fell upon the crowd just as the final dramatic chord was struck, and the heavy velvet curtain fell.

“I was the cardinal,” he said, “and it was very grand.”

Active duty, retired or dependent military personnel receive 20% off on all single tickets to Hawaii Opera Theatre productions.
Call the HOT Box Office at 808.596.7858 for more information.
Mahalo for your service.

 

#HOTSpeaks: Baritone Sings to Honor His Father

“If I sing, you are the music.
If I fly, you’re why I’m good.
If my hands can find some magic,
you’re the one who said they could.”

Leslie “Buz” Tennent sat in the Hawaii Opera Theatre rehearsal hall and read aloud the lyrics to “If I sing” from the musical Closer than Ever. The song inspired the name of the November, 2016 concert event with Hawaiʻi Public Radio.

The sold-out tribute concert commemorated the centennial of Buz’s late father and mentor, Arthur Tennent (1916 – 2004). Due to the concert’s popularity, Buz performed a reprise last week at the Mystic Rose Oratory as a benefit for the Hawai’i Vocal Arts Ensemble.

Arthur was an accomplished lieder and artsong singer, and a renowned choral conductor, voice teacher, actor, and author. “He generously shared with me his abundant gifts,” Buz said of his father. “I just thought it would be worthy to give back what he gave to me.”

At both concerts, Buz sang songs his father used to sing and that his father taught him, accompanied on the piano by HOT Education Assistant Eric Schank. Buz was also featured as a soloist at the HOT Opera Ball last year.

As a professor of voice at Chaminade and a private voice teacher, Buz’s life currently revolves around performing and teaching, but that might not have been the case if his father had never pegged him as a baritone and encouraged him to sing an aria in front of a crowd with his high school orchestra.

“He wanted me to sing,” Buz said. “And he was a tremendous teacher.”

Arthur humorously helped his son navigate the complexities of music theory, like the difference between “bel canto” and “can belt-oh,” while gracefully addressing more serious life issues, like coping with rejection.

“He taught me the idea of never giving up, to persevere and persist, and that it’s how we react to circumstances that matters – not that we get discouraged or knocked down, but that we stand up and just keep at it,” Buz said.

As a supportive father, Arthur went to all of Buz’s opera performances, he said, though he wasn’t particularly an opera lover, himself.

But while Buz was pursuing a Master’s in Voice at Manhattan School of Music in New York, Arthur joined Buz for a father-son debut concert at Carnegie Hall, where the two performed “The Pearl Fishers” duet from Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles.

dsc00803-2“We had a great time singing together,” Buz said. “We blended well together, and our voices were somewhat similar, albeit mine a little deeper.”

After leaving New York, Buz spent 12 years singing opera in Germany. But he returned to Hawaii in 2003 when he learned that his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer to care for his parents and place his father in hospice care.

That year, Buz decided to follow further in his father’s footsteps and start teaching. Until then, he had felt reluctant about pursuing voice teaching, even though his father called it a “noble art.”

“I think he was gratified that I did take up teaching, because I resisted it for a while,” Buz said.
In the last several months of Arthur’s life, he was able to see Buz take up his love of teaching.

“I think that meant a lot to him,” Buz said. “All of these things that I put into practice now as a teacher, I learned initially from him.”

The last time Arthur saw Buz sing live was at a Diamond Head Theatre production of the musical Ragtime in late 2003. He passed away in May of 2004, and Buz’s Mother died of cancer four years later.

“I don’t believe in closure. I just believe in acceptance,” Buz said. “There’s always that hole there, but you just learn to live with it. And you honor their memory.”

When he sings, Buz finds that acceptance. He continued to read the lyrics of “If I sing”:

“I never told you.
It took time ‘till I could see
that if I sing you are the music,
and you’ll always sing in me.”

Buz paused. Though his eyes began to well up, he smiled as he read the last lyric:

“Yes you’ll always live in me.”

 

Use the audio player  below to listen to a recording of the Buz and Arthur Tennent singing “O Mimi,  tu piu non torni,” Marcello and Rodolfo’s Act 4 duet from Puccini’s La Bohème.