‘Opera Scenes’ Brings Music Academy of the West’s Vocal Fellows to the Forefront

Evening Includes selections From ‘Madama Butterfly,’ ‘Falstaff,’ ‘Don Pasquale’ and More

A scene from 'Opera Scenes' at Hahn Hall, June 27, 2025 | Photo: Phil Channing

One of the beauties of opera is that there’s so much high drama, and as Friday night’s presentation of Opera Scenes proved, not much story preamble is needed to get into the emotional resonance of a theatrical excerpt.

Staged by Lehrer Vocal Institute directing fellow Vanessa Ogbuehi, this charming evening of recital style scenes opened with the high energy fun of Act 1, Scene 2 of Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi. Up next was “Dove son? Son partiti … Soave sia il vento” from Così fan Tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Then Verdi was back, with a performance of “Walter e Wurm, Scena e Duetto” from Luisa Miller.

A scene from ‘Opera Scenes’ at Hahn Hall, June 27, 2025 | Photo: Phil Channing

The contemporary opera The Hours (Act 2, Scenes 7 and 8) by Kevin Puts, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the 2002 film directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman (who plays Virginia Woolf, whose 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway is a central plot point) was well performed, but I found it a bit jarring as I read the English subtitles projected above the stage.

The Act 2 Finale from Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti was much more to my taste, as was Donizetti’s “Soli noi siamo” from Lucrezia Borgia. Giacomo Puccini’s “Chi sa? … Io so che alle sue pene non ci sono conforti … Addio fiorito asil” from Madama Butterfly was the most familiar piece of the evening for me, and I found that one particularly delightful.

The final scene was “To leave, to break,” a quintet from Vanessa by Samuel Barber. The vocal intricacies were again quite impressive, as were all of the performances that night. The vocalists, some of whom sang multiple parts, included: Josie Larsen, Stella FitzGerald, Jamie Felix-Toll, Ruoxi Peng, Zihao Liu, Zhenpeng Zhang, George Jiayi Baolin, Emily Margevich, Julia Holoman, Antonia Sofia Cáceres, Qirong Liang, Joshua James Klein, Joshua Berg, David Kahng, Amber Rogers, Irakli Pkhaladze, Yulin Wang, Jack Burrows, Anastasia Minashvili, and Xinshu Li. Vocal Piano Fellows included: Anson Ng, Ava Linvog, Tony Stauffer, Gabriele Žemaitytė, Yueqi Zhang, and Eric Head.

There are more opera events on the program for the Music Academy of the West’s summer festival: Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Lobero July 18 and 20, and LVI Love & Laughter — which is a reimagining of Ned Rorem’s Four Dialogues and William Bolcom’s zarzuela-inspired Lucrezia — on August 5 at Hahn Hall.

For more information on these and other MAW Summer Festival events, see musicacademy.org.