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Thursday, July 22, 2010

OPERA CAMPS PRESENT FINAL PERFORMANCES

This summer, The Mason Gross School of the Arts Extension Division and Opera New Jesey offered a weeklong summer camp experience coupled with musical instruction at opera camps where singers as young as 7 years of age heard and sang their first arias.

Now, tomorrow night (Friday, July 23), both groups will present their final performances.

  • Opera New Jersey will present a full production of a children's opera, Brundibar, composed in Czech by Hans Krasa in 1938, on the eve of the Holocaust. A brother and a sister have no money to purchase medicine for their ailing mother, so the children compete with the organ grinder, making music for money and helped by the children and the animals of their village. Needless to say, the organ grinder is not pleased with the competition and gets nasty. The opera gained resonance when it was performed by the inmate children at Theresienstadt (Terezin) outside of Prague, a camp that was filled with musicians, writers, actors, composers—Jewish intelligentsia interned in what the Nazis called Paradise GhettoBrundibar will be performed at McCarter Theatre's Berlind Theatre in Princeton at 5:30 PM. Admission is free. Visit opera-nj.org for more information.
  • Rutgers Summer Opera Camp will present scenes from various operas, including Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the cigarette girl scene from Bizet's Carmen, among others. The performance will take place at the Rehearsal Hall, Room 104 at the Mason Gross Performing Arts Complex, 85 George Street in New Brunswick at 7 PM. Admission is free. For more information, visit http://www.masongross.rutgers.edu/.