Voices, Acting, Passion—That’s Opera!

The irresistible joy of young artists: broke, wild, passionate and in love, in Paris at Christmas. Follow the young lovers from the first spark of their amour through the harsh, bitter winter. Can their love last through the spring? Now that’s a story line.

Alumnus Jeffrey Rink conducts the Maryland Opera Studio production of La Bohème. A model of one of the sets is shown below.

If you haven’t been to an opera lately (or perhaps never), this spring’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème is an excellent choice for opera devotees (after all, it has been attracting audiences for more than 100 years) and for those new to the scene.

Ever since Madison Avenue realized opera’s commercial selling power about 20 years ago, opera stepped down from its high-brow-only stature, says the internationally acclaimed Jeffrey Rink ’77, M.M. ’80, who will be conducting the Maryland Opera Studio production at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, April 16, 20, 22 and 24 in the Ina and Jack Kay Theatre.

While symphonies and choral groups (both of which he leads) are struggling to attract younger audiences, Rink says, “Opera is the one with increasing audience nationally because it is a complete package combining music, acting and dance.”

Rink is in his 15th season as director of the Massachusetts-based Chorus pro Musica and 10th season as music director of the Newton Symphony Orchestra, as well as on faculty at the University of Massachusetts–Boston, and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass.

Having not conducted at Maryland since graduating, he regards this as a reunion of sorts. As a student, Rink served as an assistant to the University of Maryland Chorus, then under the direction of Paul Traver. So he finds it particularly gratifying that members of the University of Maryland Chorus will play student artists and another dozen members of the Maryland Boys Choir, street urchins, in addition to conducting the University of Maryland Orchestra in the pit.

Rink will be working with director Pat Diamond, a young Yale graduate known for his crossover success in both opera and theater. Diamond has chosen to move the action forward a century and to use Brassai’s famed 1933 Paris de Nuit photos that capture the seamy side of Paris nightlife as inspiration for the set. Rink finds it quite appropriate because the artist wanted, through his works, to reveal the “real” Paris of which the characters in the opera are so much a part.

Says Rink, who has conducted other productions of La Bohème, “It’s always good to put something away and look at it fresh.” —DB

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