This story is part of a series of 50 stories we are releasing to commemorate 50 years of opera in West Michigan. Browse more stories and follow our journey throughout the season.
Grand Valley State University President Tom Haas and Community Relations Director Pat Waring on the importance of cultural capital in West Michigan.
OUR FOUNDERS HAD A BOLD PROPOSITION: to build a professional opera company that would put Grand Rapids on the map for a very discerning audience. 50 years later, we are humbled to be the modern bearers of classical standards and modern ingenuity. Learn more.
SUPPORT OUR NEXT 50 YEARS
As an integral part of our city’s artistic fabric, it’s our responsibility to see to its continual flourishing. Please consider donating to Opera Grand Rapids to ensure our artistic excellence for the next 50 years and beyond. You’ve already made us great. With your support, there’s no limits to the height our voices can reach together. Give today.
This story is part of a series of 50 stories we are releasing to commemorate 50 years of opera in West Michigan. Browse more stories and follow our journey throughout the season.
Despite the fact that the National Endowment for the Arts is sometimes a hot political topic (the President’s current budget proposal would eliminate the program entirely), the organization itself endeavors to remain outside politics and cultural feuds. In allowing the organizations it funds the freedom of expression, the Endowment often finds itself in contentious cultural conversations.
It’s an unpalatable truth: most arts organizations simply wouldn’t exist as purely capitalistic ventures. Like almost all regional opera companies, Opera Grand Rapids is no exception. Ticket sales, while vital, constitute only a portion of the funds necessary to hire singers and staff, maintain facilities, and produce season after season of shows in the grand operatic tradition.
Our opera’s existence relies on the generosity of our donors, ticket sales, volunteers, and funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. Just like many artists and opera houses, we love what we do, but we couldn’t do it without the support of a willing public. At a time of year traditionally reserved for gratitude, we are pausing to reflect on the support we’ve received from our city, our patrons, our donors, and the Endowment.
The NEA was founded in 1965 with a goal distinct from previous federal arts programs, according to Mark Bauerlein’s book, National Endowment for the Arts: A History 1965-2008. Its purpose was not to create jobs like its New Deal predecessor programs. Its objectives were more aspirational. The Johnson administration’s vision of the program was taken directly from a quote by George Washington: “The arts and sciences are essential to the prosperity of the state and to the ornament and happiness of human life. They have a primary claim to the encouragement of every lover of his country and mankind.”
Despite the fact that the Endowment is sometimes a hot political topic (the President’s current budget proposal would eliminate the program entirely), the organization itself endeavors to remain outside politics and cultural feuds. The arts arena is, of course, a difficult place to be impartial. Art, by its very nature, attracts controversy; the same passion that elicits standing ovations from some will inevitably prompt shaking fists from others.
In 1984, the English National Company staged a production of Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera. The company, an NEA recipient, wanted to deliver a fresh take on a classic: their Rigoletto would take place in the world of the mafia, set in New York’s Little Italy. When a New York congressman named Mario Biaggi took exception to the new setting, he raised objections to NEA funding the opera, and a controversy about the program itself erupted overnight. Of course, it was never the intention of the NEA or the English National Company to disparage Italians by updating a classic Italian opera. But in allowing the organizations it funds the freedom of expression, the NEA often finds itself in contentious cultural conversations.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of recipients of NEA funds resemble Opera Grand Rapids—community and regional arts organizations that promote tourism, provide jobs, run education workshops, give residents volunteer opportunities, and increase the quality of life in their cities.
The average taxpayer contributes 46 cents to the NEA in a year. With this small personal investment, every citizen contributes to after school programs, rural art outreach, and performance companies like ours. 46 cents may sound trivial, but for companies like Opera Grand Rapids, it makes a huge impact.
Grand Rapids has benefited inestimably from the generosity of its entrepreneurs and federal funding alike: the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the West Michigan Center for the Arts and Technology, Alexander Calder’s iconic La Grande Vitesse, and OGR all owe a debt of gratitude to both private donors and the National Endowment for the Arts. We’re truly humbled to be in such august company.
Rigoletto, October 2017
While we are thankful to have enjoyed decades of sponsorship from local philanthropists, donors, and volunteers, we are also keenly aware that single artists doing good for their community often don’t have these options. That doesn’t diminish the soul-elevating impact they can have on the lives of those around them. During this season of reflection, we want to take a moment to thank those lone artists who don’t share our good fortune, yet share their talent with the world anyway.
Most importantly, we want to thank our supporters. If you’re reading this, you’re a welcome part of our world, and we’re extraordinarily lucky to have you in it. Thank you for helping make Grand Rapids a city in which we are proud to live, work, and make music.
OUR FOUNDERS HAD A BOLD PROPOSITION: to build a professional opera company that would put Grand Rapids on the map for a very discerning audience. 50 years later, we are humbled to be the modern bearers of classical standards and modern ingenuity. Learn more.
SUPPORT OUR NEXT 50 YEARS
As an integral part of our city’s artistic fabric, it’s our responsibility to see to its continual flourishing. Please consider donating to Opera Grand Rapids to ensure our artistic excellence for the next 50 years and beyond. You’ve already made us great. With your support, there’s no limits to the height our voices can reach together. Give today.
This story is part of a series of 50 stories we are releasing to commemorate 50 years of opera in West Michigan. Browse more stories and follow our journey throughout the season.
Opera Grand Rapids Board of Trustees President Bob Evett on the balancing act between art and business, past and future, and tradition and innovation.
Bob Evett spends his time looking in two directions at once. As the President of the Board of Opera Grand Rapids for the past year, Bob shares the helm of the company with a handful of others. That job involves a series of delicate balancing acts: art and business, past and future, tradition and innovation.
He’s candid about his experience of navigating these dichotomies. Finding a balance is a challenging and fluid process, always in motion. But for Bob, the stakes were crystallized in the memory of a visit to the opera with his daughter, years ago. “Many years ago, we came to see The Magic Flute. The music was beautiful, and the story was interesting and appealing. But the nice thing about it was that I brought my daughter, who was in fourth grade at the time, and to see her face was almost magical. She was engulfed and engaged. She brought a friend, and they were just mesmerized.”
As someone who must manage aspects of budget, development, and planning, it’s crucial for people in Bob’s role to keep the emotional core of the opera experience close at hand. This means trying to step inside the perspective of our patrons.
“I think we have to maintain a balance,” says Bob. “We have to guard, protect, and celebrate traditional opera. It is the wonder and the beauty that has gotten us where we are.” There is a core audience who has grown up with a love of the classic grand opera tradition, and Opera Grand Rapids wouldn’t be relevant to those folks if we were reinventing the wheel with every performance. Performing the classic gamut of operas in a traditional way is also a service to the next generation of potential opera fans; just as in the world of theater, a radical, contemporary version of Hamlet can be wonderful, but burgeoning theater fans deserve the opportunity to see the play as Shakespeare intended, too. Both approaches can, and do, happily coexist under a single roof all over the country. That’s where the fine art of balance comes in.
Reflecting on this, Bob says, “We have to try new things. We also have to go to other venues. The outreach is important. Society is much different today than it was ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. We have to be accessible. We have to go where they are, and then we’ll get them excited about coming to where we are when we have those beautiful grand operas.”
To that end, OGR is shaking up the way people think about opera and getting outside of our building whenever we can. When a local opera fan recently turned 104, we took one of our singers to her retirement home to sing her happy birthday. We also like to give people a taste of opera in unexpected places: since 2014, we’ve been doing “flash mob” performances, where a group of performers coalesces in a public place and performs a scene from an opera like Carmen.
Singers love sharing their art with the community, whether it’s in DeVos Hall, at a local Rotary gathering, or in the public square. They also especially enjoy empowering others to participate in the art form, whether through a lifelong learning course at the local university or our Emerging Artists program.
Bob Evett
“What’s probably most important is building relationships. Passion for the art is great; relationships really make it happen.” Bob is adamant about trying to build those relationships with a wider range of people in the community. Traditional opera is very much a product of its place and time. But the art form is often just as elegant when it’s telling stories about communities historically overlooked in the opera house, and Bob says patrons are responding to that. “We’re really starting to see more diversity in our audience,” he says. It’s important to opera as a whole and to us that people of all backgrounds and demographics feel welcome and engaged. From a business standpoint, it’s important for our growth to offer something for a wide variety of people. As artists and human beings, we’re delighted to be able to offer important stories that transcend time and place, like Maria de Buenos Aires, or the upcoming I Dream.
The innovation necessary to run a successful opera company isn’t limited to artistic concerns. Innovation on the business side is often necessary as well. During Bob’s tenure, Opera Grand Rapids has managed to perform within budget, and progressively announce its season earlier in the year, which aids the rest of the staff in its marketing endeavors.
A new partnership with Toledo Opera and Opera Carolina lets our companies share resources to recruit top talent. This means that all three companies can offer a tier of production value usually reserved for larger cities, while still maintaining artistic autonomy. “We can be extremely local, but collaborate on programming. For instance, you’re able to establish longer term contracts with the principles, you can share set design and costumes. So, we’re executing as a local opera, but with the resources of three organizations, rather than one. We have the innovation to leverage quality on one hand and efficiency on the other.”
We’re very fortunate to have a committed Board populated by people like Bob, who can use his experience with decision making at the corporate level to lead Opera Grand Rapids into the future. As we take the opera to new places (sometimes literally), Bob will be behind the scenes and in the audience, weighing decisions about the shape of opera to come.
OUR FOUNDERS HAD A BOLD PROPOSITION: to build a professional opera company that would put Grand Rapids on the map for a very discerning audience. 50 years later, we are humbled to be the modern bearers of classical standards and modern ingenuity. Learn more.
SUPPORT OUR NEXT 50 YEARS
As an integral part of our city’s artistic fabric, it’s our responsibility to see to its continual flourishing. Please consider donating to Opera Grand Rapids to ensure our artistic excellence for the next 50 years and beyond. You’ve already made us great. With your support, there’s no limits to the height our voices can reach together. Give today.
This story is part of a series of 50 stories we are releasing to commemorate 50 years of opera in West Michigan. Browse more stories and follow our journey throughout the season.
The next time you hear the glory rising from the orchestra pit, spare a moment’s thought for the man behind that sound, who pours himself into his piano.
The goal is to keep the sound from dying, always. The piano and the man playing it both have their limits. Coaxing forth the sound of an orchestra from a single piano is a partnership between man and instrument; where the piano isn’t up to the task, the man must pour in more of himself. “If you just play a solid chord, the sound begins to dissipate right away, whereas if you do tremolo, you can sustain a fortissimo chord for a whole measure, or three measures,” says Robert Byrens.
As the rehearsal pianist for Opera Grand Rapids, Robert is the engine room of the opera’s musical apparatus. For weeks of rehearsals, which can last eight hours in a single day, Robert must represent the whole of the orchestra with his piano. That’s where the tremolo comes in. “You shake your hand to play a full chord, and not have the sound die like it would on the piano if you play a solid chord.” This intentional quivering is one of many grand gestures Robert makes to approximate the sounds of a full orchestra, so that the singers in rehearsal can build their performances over his music, hour by hour. It’s impractical to have an entire orchestra play at every rehearsal, so opera companies retain rehearsal pianists like Robert to stand in for the orchestra during rehearsal. Channeling dozens of musicians for eight hours can be exhausting, intellectually and physically.
“In order to stay really relaxed and be able to play all that time, you have to develop a skill of playing with the most effortless style that you can,” says Robert. “You can’t play in an intense, vigorous style for eight hours without really sore arms and a really sore back. Over the years, I’ve learned to relax as I play even more.” But sometimes the music doesn’t want you to relax. Hours of navigating intense passages occasionally send even the most seasoned pianist home to ice his arms or get a massage.
Robert Byrens
“It can be laborious,” he says. The score for OGR’s recent performance of Rigoletto, for instance, is three hundred fifty-seven pages long. It’s a herculean task that can take its toll after twenty-four years. Robert freely admits that the physical part of the job has gotten more difficult with time. But he explains this with a warm smile; he conveys the sense of contentment common to people for whom the terms “career” and “art” are interchangeable. “It’s one of the joys of my life. I love doing it. It’s been a great run so far. I’m looking forward to many more years.”
As challenging as his role can be on a physical level, the rehearsal pianist’s greater challenges are intellectual ones. One his main functions is “orchestral reduction”—that is, distilling the dozens of instruments in an opera into a piano piece that is recognizable as the source material, without omitting anything essential. Sometimes this means interpreting a smaller chamber orchestra for a Mozart opera; sometimes, it means trying to make a mere ten fingers do the job of a thousand. “It can be a very large orchestra for Strauss or Wagner where I’m trying to duplicate a hundred instruments. Obviously, I can’t do that,” says Robert. But when he’s doing it correctly, the listener gets the sense of the piece just the same. It’s a trick that clever composition and deft performance play on the ear.
Developing the skills to learn and interpret complex music in this way takes years of practice. Even a veteran like Robert spends long hours on his piano bench in the months preceding a production. “I’ll spend several months preparing an opera. I don’t come in and sight read at rehearsals. I do lots of work prior to the first downbeat, and I like to feel really well-prepared,” he says.
Since their skillset is so unique, rehearsal pianists are invaluable to an opera production. Without someone to play the music, there can be no proper rehearsal. The essential nature of the job is another reason Robert treasures it. “I like being the structure and support that the rehearsal needs, in the musical sense,” he says.
His love of music began very early. His mother is also a pianist and singer; he has early memories of skipping his nap time as a young child to sit underneath his mother’s piano and listen to her teach singing lessons. A few years later, he would go on to join a boys choir. Not long after, he took up the viola, which he played in symphony orchestras for twenty-six years. He plans to pick up the instrument again in retirement. For now, his focus is solely on his duties at Opera Grand Rapids and at Grand Valley State University, where he is on the music faculty.
As you read this, Robert may well be immersed in the score for his next opera, preparing to take up the pleasing burden of the one-man orchestra once again. The sore arms and musical puzzles won’t scare him away. He loves being part of the Opera Grand Rapids family. And while he may never say so, he has reason to be proud: he brings an enviable grace to one of the company’s hardest jobs. The next time you hear the glory rising from the orchestra pit, spare a moment’s thought for the man behind that sound, who pours himself into his piano.
OUR FOUNDERS HAD A BOLD PROPOSITION: to build a professional opera company that would put Grand Rapids on the map for a very discerning audience. 50 years later, we are humbled to be the modern bearers of classical standards and modern ingenuity. Learn more.
SUPPORT OUR NEXT 50 YEARS
As an integral part of our city’s artistic fabric, it’s our responsibility to see to its continual flourishing. Please consider donating to Opera Grand Rapids to ensure our artistic excellence for the next 50 years and beyond. You’ve already made us great. With your support, there’s no limits to the height our voices can reach together. Give today.
Composer Douglas Tappin shares his inspiration for the new opera I DREAM
Douglas Tappin
“As I imagined his life, I saw something clear. There was a plight—people in this country with a plight. It was something he saw and experienced in childhood as he grew up in the South.”
– Douglas Tappin
I wrote and composed the libretto and score of I DREAM while living in Atlanta, reading accounts of the Civil Rights Movement, and talking to many individuals who had been a part of it, including members of Dr. King’s family and some of his closest friends. The experience was so visceral and so profound that I felt, literally, compelled to tell the story—one of the greatest stories in human history and, more particularly, a great American story of recent history. In order to portray about 30 years of Dr. King’s life in a two-hour period, I needed all my resources as a musical-dramatic writer to set it as a Rhythm & Blues opera. I am using that term partly because that is what I set out to do, and also because I appreciate the need to label something, to define it, even though it is really just seamless storytelling using music and drama combined.
At the core of the story is a plight that is one of injustice—the plight of the poor, the needy, the orphaned, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the stranger, the captive, the hated one, the ones whom are persecuted. But in the face of that plight, and the most remarkable thing to me about the story, is the way people chose to confront it by using love, which is astonishing. And, not just a theoretical concept of love, but love that was walked out in a strong, practical way.
The focus for I DREAM is the thirty-six hours leading up to Dr. King’s assassination on April 4th 1968, and a series of dreams, reminiscence, and premonitions in respect to his life leading up to that point—right to the fateful moment on the balcony of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel. It is an exploration, a challenge and an articulation of the villain and the hero within the heart, humanity and façade of a man. I DREAM is a work that effectively bridges classical and popular traditions in its composition and orchestration.
In the Classical Tradition Orchestra of 70 musicians; the realism of Verismo with a primacy of dramatic purpose; on the scale of Grand Opera—a prioritization of immense production values and tremendous, moving music; a strong sense of local relevance, a vast cast, a significant movement and dance aspect, powerful confrontations, opulent duets, and weighty choruses; through-composed—each scene flowing evenly and naturally into the next, blending recitative, aria and arioso; establishing, developing and resolving themes and motifs; and appropriately featuring full vocal ranges.
In the Popular Tradition 21st Century artistic and theatrical sensibilities and consciousness as to duration; two acts lasting roughly two hours; written in English; subject matter: popular, relevant, accessible and universal; form: familiar song, melodic, and rhythmic structure; style: a fusion of contemporary, gospel, soul, spiritual, blues and jazz; rhythm and blues instrumentation—featuring piano, keyboard, Hammond B-3, lead and acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and drums; pace: relentlessly moving towards an escalated conclusion; selected moments of dialogue.
I set out to create something artistically excellent (musically, lyrically and as a matter of production) and entertaining—a powerful, moving, and inspiring operatic experience that is definitive, memorable, and enduring. Additionally, I wrote and composed I DREAM to honor the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movement he inspired, to unite diverse individuals and institutions in understanding the prophetic message of Dr. King, and to remember Dr. King’s dream in the midst of contemporary culture, in a way that moves those who experience I Dream to live that dream by loving as Dr. King did.
-Composer Douglas Tappin
January 15 | 7:30 PM | Fountain Street Church
SEMI-STAGED OPERA | UNBOUND | DRAMA | ENGLISH | FAMILY
This story is part of a series of 50 stories we are releasing to commemorate 50 years of opera in West Michigan. Browse 
