April 13, 2005

Area students finalists in Verdi Opera competition

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       Traverse City will be well represented at the 11th Annual Italian Songs and Arias Vocal Competition, sponsored by the Verdi Opera Theater of Michigan.
      Held Sunday, May 1, in Clinton Township, seven of the ten finalists are from high schools in Traverse City or the Interlochen Arts Academy. Contestants will include Emma Grettenberger, a sophomore at Central High School and Maggie Mallery, a senior at that school, plus Ashley Pearce, a senior at West High School. Interlochen students are Catherine Ott-Holland, Carlton Ford, Jermaine Jackson and Alexandria Clark.
      In the few weeks left before the event, the students are perfecting their songs with their private voice teachers. Mallery, who played Belle in last fall's school production of "Beauty and the Beast," said the two Italian love songs she will sing are like Italian soap operas.
      "I'm singing through it once a day just to get it in my head," said Mallery, who will study vocal performance and journalism at Albion College next year. "I love singing in Italian, probably more than in English. The words are beautiful and just flow."
      The students will present their Italian songs before judges at the Italian-American Culture Club in Clinton Township. Judges will be notables in the opera world, including George Shirley, professor of music at the University of Michigan and Karen VanderKloot, founder and director of community programs for the Michigan Opera Theater. The third judge is leading mezzo-soprano, Irina Mishura, of the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
      The ten finalists were culled from 45 applicants around the state, the greatest number who have ever entered the competition. "It was a pleasant surprise to us, we really felt that this was the best crop of singers we've ever had so the competition will be hard," said John Zaretti, president of the Verdi Opera Theater of Michigan. "Each year, they [the students] select more and more challenging works so we are looking forward to it. I think it will be very, very competitive and a great concert itself."
      As in previous years, Traverse City will dominate among the finalists; last year five students from West High School attended. "Wow, Traverse City is amazing, every year they have a lot of good students," Zaretti noted. "In fact, they have had the most students in the history of the competition."
      Pearce is the 19th finalist from West High School to compete in the event since the high school opened eight years ago. Two previous students brought home first-place finishes and Pearce is pleased to represent her school.
      In addition to her private teachers helping with her songs, she hopes to sing them to her fellow Chorale members before the competition. Pearce, who was in the school's production of "West Side Story" last spring, has been singing on stage since she was six and said she rarely gets nervous before a performance.
      "I'm going to sing two Italian songs, opera arias: one by Mozart and the other a kind of in-your-face approach of a boy played by a girl," said Pearce, who will study next year at Central Michigan University. "I'm big into theater here at West, so that's a plus; I just finished advanced theater last semester."
      As one of the few sophomores to compete in the event over the years, Grettenberger was surprised to make the final cut. She sang for five years with the Northwestern Michigan Children's Choir and joined the choir during ninth grade at East Junior High. Her teacher at Central, Jeff Cobb, suggested that she send in a tape to the competition.
      "One of my pieces is somebody who's pining for another and the other one is love in pain," she said. "I usually sing more classical music and these are classical Italian songs."
      Russ Larimer, choral director at West High School, noted that many people assume the students will be singing opera because it is a competition sponsored by the Verdi Opera Theater of Michigan. However, the student singers mainly present Italian art songs, which to the casual listener are usually indistinguishable from opera.
      "In fact, most of the time they are discouraged greatly from doing opera just because there are so many things they can mess up - physically, like muscle memory - at their age," Larimer said. "There are certain things that are reserved for the professionals."