May 29, 2009

Contact:

Helene Erenberg, 404-413-5914
School of Music

Liz Babiarz , 404-413-1356
University Relations

School of Music presents 26th Harrower Summer Opera Workshop

ATLANTA — This year’s Harrower Summer Opera Workshop, held June 1-21 at Georgia State University, will feature international opera stars Jane Bunnell, mezzo-soprano, and Mark Embree, bass baritone, as artists-in-residence.

The husband and wife team will lead master classes for workshop participants, which include 40 aspiring singers, choreographers, directors and others with a passion for opera from across the United States.

Hosted by the GSU School of Music, the Summer Opera Workshop is a three-week program that includes daily acting and movement classes, private coaching, instruction in stage makeup and stage combat, seminars and master classes with international artists.

The workshop was founded in 1988 by Irene Calloway Harrower, a renowned vocal coach and her late husband, Peter Harrower, who was a professor of music at Georgia State. More than 740 talented young artists have studied and sung together during the summer workshop since its inception.

This year’s workshop will culminate in performances of opera scenes at 7:30 p.m. June 19 and at 3 p.m. on June 21. Selections will include scenes from Bizet’s “Carmen,” Mozart's “Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro” and “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and many other operas, as well as a complete performance of Dan Shore's one-act opera, “The Beautiful Bridegroom” and the premier of two scenes from Michael Ching's “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”

Tickets, available at the door, are $20 general admission and $10 students with ID. All performances will be held at the Florence Kopleff Recital Hall, located at the corner of Gilmer Street and Peachtree Center Avenue, inside the Arts and Humanities Building, on Georgia State’s campus in downtown Atlanta.

Bunnell, a 16-year veteran of the Metropolitan Opera, has appeared in a wide variety of roles throughout the world and with companies as such as the New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera and the Minnesota Opera.

Embree has performed in Europe, Canada, Mexico and in the United States with the New York City Opera and opera houses in New Orleans, Houston, St. Louis and Seattle. In 2006, he joined his wife as a member of the voice faculty at the DePaul University School Music in Chicago.

The 2009 Summer Workshop also boasts an impressive faculty, such as W. Dwight Coleman, artistic and general director of the Georgia State University School of Music, Copeland Woodruff, acting teacher and stage director at the University of Memphis, Carroll Freeman, acting teacher and stage director at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and many other well known professionals in the opera field.

Bunnell and Embree will also serve as special guests at the Gala Opera Dinner on June 14, which has been relocated to the Commerce Club at 34 Broad St. in downtown Atlanta due to the closing of City Grill. This fundraiser for Opera Studies at Georgia State will feature a gourmet three-course dinner, accompanied by operatic performances by singers from the Summer Opera Workshop, for $100 per person. Reservations are requested by June 8.

As always, the Harrowers’ contribution will be celebrated during the workshop. Peter Harrower passed away in1988 while still on faculty at GSU.  Irene Calloway Harrower continued to participate in the workshop as a clinician through the summer of 2007. She currently resides in Atlanta and maintains a private voice studio.

For additional information, contact the Georgia State School of Music at 404-413-5914 or 404-413-5901 or visit www.music.gsu.edu.