The Buzz
UK Opera Theatre: it's "Town and Gown"!
Everett McCorvey, Professor of Voice with the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, gives us the inside track on Grand Night of Singing at the Singletary Center.
"The show started 16 years ago with one performance of music by Rodgers and Hammerstein and has now grown this year to selling out 6 performances of 1500 seats. We have over 60 performers in the show. Between the cast of over 60 and the orchestra of 40, there are over 100 people on stage for this performance.
The cast is made up of both University of Kentucky students, students from at least 5 other schools and community members from Lexington. We even have one member who is currently commuting from West Virginia!
The "Town and Gown" cast rehearses daily for 5 weeks to put this show together, all created from scratch. We listen to about 500 songs from almost 100 singers then tailor each song to fit the singer. In order to do that, we have an Orchestrator and Arranger with whom we work to write all of the charts for the show. We spend hundreds of hours collectively per week working on this show.
"Town and Gown" is a word which we use a lot because UK Opera Theatre is a “Town and Gown” opera company.
Although housed and established at the University of Kentucky, the program is also the city’s opera company. We have a board (The Lexington Opera Society, Inc.) and they do a lot of our fundraising and awareness raising about the program. That’s where the "Town" comes in.
The University is the "Gown" (as in academic regalia) portion of the organization and that’s where we get the name “Town and Gown.”
The show is fun for the entire family and many people come more than once! So come once and then come back and bring your friends!
The last show is Father’s Day, so what a GREAT Father’s Day gift to DAD!
Presented by Alltech Fortnight Productions in cooperation with:
