Opera in Lexington is poised on the verge of greatness, thanks to the University of Kentucky Opera Program and its Director, Dr. Everett McCorvey. The opera program at UK is one component of the overall voice program, which also includes the choral and music education programs. "The reason we have an opera program," says McCorvey, "is because most major league voices want to go into opera. You can't have a very successful recital career without having some sort of opera – most recitalists are opera singers who do recitals." UK offers undergraduate and graduate degrees that are oriented toward performance or music education.

Over the past ten years the UK Opera program has gone from being less than a blip on the national and international music school map to one of the most sought after programs in the country. The presence of Noemi Lugo, Everett McCorvey and Cliff Jackson started the ball rolling, along with the addition of Stephen King and Jefferson Johnson. McCorvey believes these voice teachers and conductors planted the seeds for the future.

In 1994 Marlena Malas, the American voice coach for Luciano Pavarotti, spent a week teaching a Master Class at UK. She returned to New York extolling the quality she discovered here.

Then along came Gregory Turay, a home grown product who won the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Competition in 1995 and received the prestigious Richard Tucker Award. His voice teacher is Everett McCorvey and his vocal coach and frequent accompanist is Cliff Jackson.

Then there was the funding for an endowed chair – and Gail Robinson took up residence. "We had a really strong voice faculty but we had to have a mechanism to get the word out on the national scale," explains McCorvey. "Gail was probably the most powerful person in terms of young artists' careers in the country – she was head of the Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera and that's where everyone wants to go. She was also head of the Metropolitan auditions." Ms. Robinson's appointment to the endowed chair has paid off and the word is out that this year the UK program boasts the best crop of singers coming in to the program that it has ever seen.

According to McCorvey, the students historically coming into the program were what he refers to as "diamonds in the rough", students who required 3-5 years of work and voice development to get them to a particular quality. Now, he says, "they're already coming in with that quality and that's what is stunning."

The average age in the doctoral music program at UK is early 30's. "A voice at 18 or 20 can't do the same thing that a voice at 30 can do," explains McCorvey.

"When I came here we couldn't even approximate doing a production like Don Giovanni. I mean it wasn't even on the horizon – we didn't have voices that could do that." The 2002 production of Don Giovanni played to great acclaim. McCorvey says the production quality was in the league of a major regional opera, not a college cast.

So where does the program need to go from here? McCorvey and others are working to raise the funding for the additional facilities and faculty needed for true world-class opera department status. An additional vocal coach is high on the list of faculty needs. Currently, Cliff Jackson serves as the department's only vocal coach. Every one of the 80 students currently enrolled must work with Jackson.

Voice teachers concentrate on teaching technique. Explains McCorvey, "We teach them to make beautiful tone, to hit the high notes and the low notes. Then we send them to Cliff and he teaches them the languages, the style and performance practices."

When compared to schools with international reputations such as Juilliard, Florida State, and Indiana, McCorvey feels that UK has equal or better talent. There will be no problem attracting top-notch voice teachers and vocal coaches as funding becomes available.

When one compares the budgets of these institutions, the size of the gaps between UK's new program and the more established programs proves significant. Indiana University's budget is $100,000 per opera, and IU produces 8 operas per year. In the past, UK would mount one or two productions with approximately $25,000 a year from the University. Now because of an aggressive fund-raising campaign and tremendous support from the Lexington Opera Society, UK mounts 4-6 productions per year with endowments currently at $1.5 million dollars and rising annually.

Clearly, opera in Lexington is on the verge of international notoriety.

The Taste of O

Cultivating a passion for OPERA
A special article by Meriah Kruse