By Stacie Boyls | Arts and Life Writer
Baylor Opera Theatre will stage the Texas premiere of “Notes on Viardot,” a contemporary opera by composer Michael Ching. The production is a collaboration with the Baylor Symphony Orchestra, and tells the enthralling life story of 19th-century singer, pianist and composer Pauline Viardot, a forgotten musical genius once praised for her incomparable talent by Franz Liszt and now rediscovered through Ching’s modern lens.
The opera will be shown at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and 3 p.m. on Sunday at Jones Theater in the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $15 and available for purchase on the Baylor Events page. Students can receive recital credit for this event.
Houston senior Alexia Rivera, who plays Older Pauline, said learning a modern opera with little prior performance history was a daunting task. Ultimately, it helped her grow as a performer, forcing her to develop the role’s performance details on her own.
“Michael Ching wrote the role to have two different voice parts so it could either be a soprano or mezzo, but while learning the role, they only had recordings of a soprano, so I had to learn the entire mezzo role on its own,” Rivera said. “That was my first time really having to fully learn a role on my own without depending on inspo from other voices to have an idea of what I’m singing.”
Houston senior Nalani Defensor, who plays Maria Malibran and Claudie Viardot, agreed with her fellow castmate that the lack of reference recordings proved to be a challenging feat. However, the experience offered a unique chance to learn the musical language of a living composer while interpreting the standard excerpts hidden throughout the production in tandem.
“This is also my first time learning an opera that isn’t just in the standard repertoire or canon of operas that are usually performed,” she said. “It was also really interesting learning how to put his style in combination with the operatic excerpts that he took from the canon. Meshing that all together and making it make sense in my brain was really difficult for me, but now I’m very aware and can understand the modern composer’s language.”
Ching will be in attendance on the Friday production, offering a preshow discussion on the opera, Rivera said.
The opera traces Viardot’s life from her childhood in the Regency era all the way to the end of her life in the early 1900s. The storyline details her familial, artistic and musical experiences, Rivera said.
Defensor said the opera challenged her artistic capabilities of striking a balance between respectful representation and artistic interpretation of real-life historical figures.
“For me, the hardest part was the acting because … in a Mozart opera … you have to disengage completely with yourself and act as Pauline Viardot or as Maria Malibran with as much integrity as you can without knowing much about this person while being time-period appropriate and not disrespecting the real person that is Pauline Viardot,” Defensor said.
Rivera also noted the impact this opera has had on her, a woman working in the arts, providing her with a relatable and successful figure to admire.
“She was very overshadowed; nobody really knew about her,” Rivera said. “But just hearing this opera and learning what she was about, knowing that she was so real, like a normal person — I feel like you don’t think that of composers and famous singers often. But especially as a woman, just being given someone to look up to … Women have always been making a way for themselves in the world.”
Defensor said she encourages audience members to attend with their minds open and hearts full.
“It’s relatable and it’s funny and it’s also sad,” she said. “You will laugh and you will cry. It’s so real.”
