Alex Strand reported this story on assignment for the Vermont Community News Group. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
Neve Bruno stands center stage, dressed in an elegant black dress. A recording begins to play, and she breaks into Mozart’s “Un Moto Di Gioia Mi Sento.” Delicately yet powerfully, she enunciates each word and note.
Bruno, a Stowe 15-year-old in the Vermont Youth Opera Company, is performing in a masterclass in front of a member of the Opera Company of Middlebury. It’s an opportunity for the budding young vocalist to learn from a professional singer. And such opportunities are more available since the Middlebury and Vermont Youth operas merged this fall, creating additional resources for Bruno and other youth opera members to master the operatic arts.
“We are really excited about these new relationships,” says Youth Opera Company instructor Sarah Cullins, “Young singers [will] get all these benefits.”
Vermont Youth Opera is, as Cullins describes it, “an interscholastic varsity singing team” for high schoolers from across Vermont. As those in a varsity sport do, the opera members train intensely and practice constantly to hone their craft. The program prepares students for a professional career in the arts, Cullins says
Wanda Sullivan, a former youth opera member and intern, attends Boston University and studies vocal performance. She not only balances college classes but also weekly vocal lessons and performances for juries. Sullivan attributes her initial interest in the music world to joining the youth opera in her senior year of high school.
She also applied to college programs in musical theater but settled on vocal performance, building on lessons and an internship with Cullins. In the internship, Sullivan learned not only the art of performance but also other jobs within the music world. She posted on social media platforms, handled scheduling, developed spreadsheets and constructed programs.
“Hopefully other students in Youth Opera Company are able to have similar opportunities going forward, because of the merger,” Sullivan says.
The youth opera has stirred a similar love of vocal music in Bruno, who has been a company member for a year and a half. The merger will give her the chance to work with actively performing opera singers, many with decades of training in the art, she says. “Being able to even hear them and watch their shows and productions is very exciting.”
The youth opera already offers a multitude of opportunities to students. For the young artist program and project serenade, the group sings for retirement homes and schools — in addition to its fall and spring productions. The merger allows for more professional activities, such as the masterclass for which Bruno performed her Mozart piece. A member of the professional cast of Glory Denied, the Middlebury opera’s most recent production, gave Bruno tips on pronunciation and other singing tactics after her performance.
Beyond the youth opera, Bruno immerses herself in voice work. For the past two years, she has participated in a self-proclaimed “audition season,” when she applies to summer programs. Lena Bruno, Neve’s mother, says she admires her daughter’s consistent dedication.
“She’s working really hard,” she says. “Even when she’s doing homework, there’s opera on in the background.”
Neve Bruno has spent the past two summers, first at Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan and this year at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass.– both highly competitive music programs – in vocal training. At Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, she sang with the musicians before an audience of 15,000 with 95-year-old John Williams, one of the most well-known U.S. composers — who wrote the scores of such films as “Jurassic Park” and “Star Wars” — conducting.
As far as her singing takes her, however, she stays true to her Vermont beginnings.
Cullins and Sullivan say that musical opportunities in Vermont are harder to come by than in cities with music conservatories. “When you come from Vermont, you might be a big fish in a small pond,” Cullins says, so preparation for a more competitive environment is crucial. That’s where the merger between the two opera companies will help – exposing students and vocalists of all ages to the professional, competitive and global world of opera.
As Sullivan points out, “It’s a really unique opportunity in such a small state.”
The Vermont Youth Opera has performances of “From Spain, With Love” from November 30th to December 3rd, and a performance in Burlington on New Year’s Eve. Admission is by donation.
For more information, visit youthoperavt.org and www.ocmvermont.org.