November 13, 15-17, 2002

Hall Auditorium
67 N. Main St Between Oberlin Inn and the Allen Art Museum.

Central Ticket Service
General Admission:
$12 public
$8 senior citizens
$8 faculty/staff/alumni
$5 all students

24-hour ticket reservation line:
(440) 775-8169.

Located in the lobby of Hall Auditorium, 67 N. Main St. between the Oberlin Inn and the Allen Art Museum.

Open 12 to 5 pm,
Monday - Friday.

Media contact:
Alice Iseminger
(440) 775-8171

Oberlin College
Theater and Dance Program
67 North Main Street
Oberlin, Ohio 44074-1191

OBERLIN, OHIO—“Opera is not only alive and well at the Oberlin Conservatory, it’s also adventurous,” praises the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Oberlin Opera Theater brings its spirited sense of adventure to Bedrich Smetana’s lively Czech opera The Bartered Bride, opening on Wednesday, November 13, at 8pm in Oberlin College’s Hall Auditorium.  Smetana’s most popular opera, The Bartered Bride is full of rousing choruses and lively dances and is often called the Czech National Opera for its celebrated characteristics of Czech music, tradition, independence, and strength.
 
The conductor is Steven Smith, assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, who joins the Oberlin faculty as music director of the Oberlin Conservatory orchestras. Stage direction is by Jonathon Field, opera director and assistant professor of Opera Theater.  The opera will be sung in English.
 
Performances of The Bartered Bride are at 8pm, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, November 13, 15, and 16, with a 2pm matinee on Sunday, November 17.  Hall Auditorium is wheel chair accessible, parking is free and hearing enhancement is available upon request.  The Bartered Bride is sponsored by the Oberlin Conservatory Opera Theater program (www.oberlin.edu/operathe) and produced in cooperation with the Oberlin College Theater and Dance Program with support from the Louis C. Sudler Fund.
 
Synopsis
Composed in 1866 and revised in 1870, The Bartered Bride revels in Czech folk tunes and melodies.  The opera takes place during a festival in a Bohemian village in about 1850.  Marenka loves Jenik, but her parents cannot consider him a  respectable suitor, as nothing is known of his family or birthplace.  They have instead promised Marenka to Vasek, the son of Micha and Hata.  Kecal, the marriage broker, offers Jenik 300 Gulden to give up his love for Marenka; Jenik agrees to the barter, but makes Kecal promise that Marenka will marry “none but Micha’s son.”  Marenka is crushed, the village is outraged, but finally Jenik reveals a surprising twist of fate that brings the story to its miraculous conclusion.  The opera sparkles in the English translation by Judith Layng, former director of Oberlin Opera Theater (1979-1996), and features jugglers and acrobats in the Act II circus scene.
 
Performers and Production Team
This production of The Bartered Bride features Oberlin Conservatory and College students double cast in the principal roles. The principals alternate performances, with one cast appearing Wednesday and Saturday, and the other Friday and Sunday. The ensemble includes Marenka (Marcy Stonikas ’02, Vera Savage ’03), Ludmila (Masters candidate Liora Grodnikaite, Kristen Leich ’03), Esmeralda (Marie Masters ’05), Hata (Karen Jesse ’04), Jenik (Joseph Holmes ’03, Artist Diploma candidate Bo Jensen), Vasek (Matthew Pena ’05, Todd Wedge ’03), Krusina (Ferris Allen ’04, Jason Epps ’03) Kecal (Isaiah Mysik-Ayala ’03, Scott Skiba ’03), Ringmaster (Nicholas Bentivolgio ’05), Micha (Michael Weyandt ’05), and the Indian (David Hughey ’03).
 
The Oberlin production team of professional staff and students includes: Assistant Music Director Alan Montgomery; Assistant Director and Stage Manager Victoria Vaughan; Managing Director and Technical Director Michael Louis Grube, associate professor of theater; Set Designer Damen Mroczek, lecturer in theater; Costume Designer Chris Flaharty, associate professor of theater; Sound Engineer and Lighting Designer Jen Groseth, lecturer in theater; and Assistant Stage Manager Caitlin Roush ’03.   
 
Bedrich Smetana (Composer) was born in 1824 in the small Bohemian town of Litomy.  He played the violin and the piano from an early age and composed by the age of eight. Early in life, he encountered music ranging from Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Liszt, to light virtuoso piano music, military band music, and popular dance music. In 1843 Smetana settled in Prague with a view to becoming a professional musician; his education at Proksch’s musical institute offered a grounding in music from Bach to Berlioz.  At this point, his own compositions became more varied: in addition to virtuoso piano pieces, he wrote his first orchestral and first vocal compositions. After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Smetana became the chief conductor at the Provisional Theatre, a prominent Czech opera house.  He held this post for eight years, during which period he did his best to promote his vision of Czech opera.  In 1874 he became almost completely deaf and had to give up his position as conductor; he devoted himself entirely to composition until his death in 1884.  Smetana’s other operatic works include The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1866), Dalibor (1868), The Kiss (1876), The Secret (1878), Libuse (1881), and The Devil’s Wall (1882). Information from the New Grove Dictionary of Music
 
Steven Smith (Conductor) is currently in his sixth season as assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, his fifth season as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, and his fourth year as music director of the Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus.  He is welcomed at Oberlin this year as visiting associate professor of conducting and music director of the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestras.  Smith’s national and international guest-conducting appearances include engagements with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Houston, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. During the 2000-2001 season, he led the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in special appearances at Carnegie Hall and at Penn State University.  Mr. Smith was associate conductor of the Kansas City Symphony from 1996-1998, during which time he received the Conductor Career Development Grant and was named Foundation Artist by the Geraldine C. and Emory M. Ford Foundation. Previous positions include music director of the San Juan Symphony, assistant conductor of the Colorado Springs Symphony, and conductor of "Epicycle: an ensemble for new music."  Smith is also an active composer.  His Shake, Rattle & Roar was commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra in 1991, and has since been featured on National Public Radio and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National and Columbus symphonies, and other ensembles. A native of Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Smith earned master's degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
 
Jonathon Field (Director) has directed over ninety productions throughout the United States and is becoming one of America’s most sought after stage directors. He has directed touring productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago of Trouble in Tahiti, Gianni Schicchi, The Old Maid and the Thief, and The Spanish Hour. For San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theatre he directed La Cenerentola and Die Fledermaus and for Seattle Opera, an updated version of La Bohème. In San Francisco he has also directed Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in the original Russian.  Over the past ten years, he has directed ten productions for the Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press “their most perceptive stage-director”. Since coming to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1997, he has directed Carmen, Slow Dusk, The Old Maid and the Thief, Roméo et Juliette, Così fan Tutte, Manon, Don Giovanni, Coyote Tales, La Cenerentola, Die Fledermaus, and The Rake’s Progress.  As the Artistic Director of Lyric Opera Cleveland, Mr. Field directed the 2002 productions of Patience, I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, and Don Giovanni, which was nominated for the 2002 Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement in Classical Music/Opera.