Every year, Westmont College gives students a chance to perform in a fully produced opera with live music. Westmont’s Music Department Chair Ruth Lin directs a small orchestra, and performers across multiple majors and areas of study are chosen in an open audition early in the school year. This year’s production, directed by Christina Jensen, is Gilbert and Sullivan’s lively fan favorite, Pirates of Penzance.
These kinds of creative performance opportunities, says Lin, are an important part of a liberal arts education. “Many of our students love music, but they’re not music majors,” she says. “And some of them have never been to an opera themselves.” The student performers come with a range of choir or musical theater experience, but for some, opera can feel intimidating. To get the production in fighting shape, the company comes back to Westmont early from winter break for an educational performance intensive affectionately called “opera boot camp.”
The Pirates of Penzance orchestra features 18-20 musicians on one side of the Porter Theater stage. While the original production was set in its time of writing (the Victorian era), Westmont’s production will be set aboard a cruise ship. “The stage itself is the deck of a 1930s luxury liner,” says Jensen. “We’ve also poured a lot of attention and detail into the costumes, making sure they’re bright and colorful.”
The Westmont student opera has become a popular campus event, and many students return to the experience year after year. This production also has a student assistant director and cast members who learned their parts during a fall semester abroad. “This is mainly an educational experience,” says Lin. “What matters most is that our students get a good experience and gain some understanding of opera. Hopefully they will take the opportunity in the future to either be in one, go see one, or be supportive of one.”
See Pirates of Penzance on the Westmont campus January 23 and 25. See westmont.edu/boxoffice.
