What has 350 costumes, Barbie, the Eagles, Disney and opera? Only one show.
It’s the first full week of May at the University of Kentucky. What has been a metropolis of activity for the past eight months has downshifted into summer mode.
Graduation ceremonies are complete, most of the student population has dispersed and the campus has settled into a state of relative quiet.
Quiet, that is, except for a pack of voices that commenced to singing as soon as the school year concluded.
That’s because rehearsals were under way for “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” UK Opera Theatre’s annual celebration of song that extends well beyond opera.
“We started the Monday after graduation,” said UK Opera Theatre director and Grand Night executive producer/music director Everett McCorvey. “Now, five weeks later, we’re opening. That’s by design. We do it quickly because we want our students, our community members, everybody involved, to have that sense of how it feels to put a high energy show, a high-stakes show, together in a short period of time. Once rehearsals start, there’s no stopping. We go for five weeks.”
What is UK’s ‘Grand Night for Singing’?
In terms of a mission, Grand Night was initiated as a means for opera and theatre students to explore a diverse repertoire that regularly reached into various areas of popular music, including show tunes, movie-associated songs and multi-genre radio hits.
Sometimes, two or more of those categories converge. Among the songs to be featured in this year’s “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” which opens this weekend at the Singletary Center for the Arts, is “Roar,” a 2013 Grammy-nominated hit for Katy Perry that was reborn as part of the stage musical “& Juliet” nearly a decade later.
“I freelanced for five years in New York,” McCorvey said. “But I didn’t call myself an opera singer. I called myself a performing artist. I was involved in all parts of the business. I did Broadway musicals. I did small parts in movies and was involved with different cabaret shows. I was just doing it all. That’s something I didn’t learn in college. It was what I learned after I got to New York. In college, I was on the opera track and was convinced I was going to do opera, which was totally fine and great. But when I got to New York, I realized, ‘My goodness, there is so much more we could do in the performing arts.
“When I came to UK, I wanted to make sure our students had that broad level of experience in as many facets as we could create. That’s so when they finish here, they are aware there is more than one way to have an excellent and fulfilling career in the arts.”
Who will be performing?
While “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” is a performance vehicle for opera as well as non-opera theatre students from freshmen to doctoral levels, it also includes performers with no academic affiliation at all. In that sense, it is very much a community undertaking.
“We’ve got some community people involved who are working various jobs, but just have a love for performing. They may not have a lot of opportunities to perform, so we open this up to them. Students have to be at least 16, so that opens up some possibilities for upper level high school students. We have three or four high school students in the production this year. But also have several pre-med students. We have nurses and doctors who work at UK Healthcare. We have lawyers. It’s a real variety of people. In five weeks, they create a really beautiful community they will be a part of for the rest of their lives. That’s something that really excites me.”
What kind of music will they sing?
“It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” of course, takes its name from the Rodgers & Hammerstein composition featured in the 1945 movie musical “State Fair.” The UK production began 32 summers ago as an affiliation between the opera and theatre departments and has been stewarded for much of that time by the same core team. Director Peggy Stamps, conductor Robert Baldwin, associate music director Tedrin Blair Lindsay and set designer Robert Pickering have been involved for two decades or longer. McCorvey has been at the helm since the event’s inception.
Such continuity hasn’t led to complacency, however. Along with “Roar,” this year’s Grand Night program stretches into songs from Disney’s “Aladdin,” “Barbie” and even a medley of hits by the Eagles. There will be plenty for the classicists, as well.
“What we’ve been really trying to do is find those themes that speak to each generation,” McCorvey said. “We’ve got a lot of people from the Rodgers & Hammerstein generation, so we’ve got to make sure we honor those people in terms of making sure we have music by Rogers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe or some of the classics. But we also recognize that in order for us to continue to grow, we’ve got to have music from some of the current shows out there that the young people may know about or may be grooving to on the radio.”
All of this leads to an inevitable question. Exactly how grand has “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” become over its 32-year history?
“Well, we have over 350 costumes in this show, so we have a whole staff to put that together. Our costume designer, Melissa Gilbert, is on the faculty at Transy (Transylvania University). This is her second year working with us on costumes, but we also involve the costume department at the UK theatre department.
“There are a lot of moving parts to this show and all kinds of kinds of challenges. You know, when I talk to the dean about Grand Night, he always gives me the analogy of a small wedding to think about. Because there are no such things.”
‘It’s a Grand Night for Singing’
When: June 7, 14 and 15 at 7:30 p.m.; June 8, 15 and 16 at 2 p.m.; and June 9 at 6 p.m.
Where: Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St.
Tickets: $20.59-$68.52 through scfatickets.com.
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