Vocal Performance Majors- Soprano Advice?

BassDad
Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:16:21 +0000

My daughter will soon start her third year as a double bass performance major at Oberlin and she loves it there. While the place does have the “middle of a cornfield” image, there is quite a lot going on when school is in session.

Oberlin Opera Theater presents two fully-staged operas per year, in conjunction with one or another of the three school orchestras, and other ensembles as appropriate. The production photos on their website (http://www.oberlin.edu/operathe/index.html) will give you an idea of the kind of repertoire they perform and some of the production values that go into them. The eclectic and somewhat unusual programming is chosen with the needs of undergraduate voices in mind and often plays to particular strengths in Early Music and Contemporary Music at Oberlin.

They are on a 4-1-4 system there, with the month of January being devoted to individual and group projects. One or more of the group projects usually involves a slightly less elaborate, but nonetheless staged and costumed operatic performance. Most summers, they have a program called “Oberlin in Italy” in which students spend a month learning Italian from native speakers and rehearsing and performing an opera in conjunction with a local school of music. See http://www.oberlin.edu/con/summer//italy/default.html for preliminary 2008 information. My daughter participated in this program last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Oberlin is not a good fit for everyone. While it is very cosmopolitan for a small town in Ohio, it cannot offer everything that a major city does. The college is proud of its reputation for putting the liberal in Liberal Arts. I highly recommend an overnight visit while school is in session to get a feel for the place. Some absolutely love the place and others find it too isolated or too quirky for their liking. You should also be aware that they are very particular about the voices that they admit. I have seen them turn down excellent singers solely because they did not need their voice type or fach for the productions they had planned out.

My daughter also took lessons at Curtis while she was in high school. It is an amazing place, different in feel from any of the other conservatories we visited while looking at colleges (including Juilliard, NEC, CIM, Oberlin and Peabody). As I am sure you are aware, they accept perhaps three sopranos in a good year from many extremely talented applicants worldwide. Some years less than that.

As to NEC being a “dump,” I can attest that their facilities other than Jordan Hall were much in need of renovation when we visited. The dorm was perhaps the worst I have seen on any campus and the admin/classroom building was dark, dreary and overheated when we stopped by. Even some simple things like a fresh paint job and a bit more lighting would have helped a lot. Dorm prices are outrageously high for very small rooms. Of all the schools that accepted my daughter, they were the only one that did not offer any financial aid. The faculty, however, did appear to be top notch.