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SportsLet the playtime begin: 17 nights of Stageworks
Friday, June 13, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo At the Stageworks Festival concert gala on May 17, Nicole Collins performed selections from ‘‘Ragtime” and ‘‘The Magic Flute.” Stageworks Festival begins on June 13.
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So, as a special guest will bellow out at the beginning of each night, why not just ‘‘Let the playtime begin” on a new 60-foot stage at the Village Green in Indian Head?
Many young artists programs — which highlight talented performers in the early stage of their careers — are rooted in places about 30 miles from a major city. There is the Wolf Trap Opera Company, for instance, in Vienna, Va. And now there is Indian Head, which will host a new program that already ranks among the largest of its kind in the United States.
The Stageworks Festival has more than 100 participants from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. The faculty includes Broadway veterans, Grammy winners and members of prestigious opera companies.
And behind the scenes, Artistic Director Lisa Kay Morton, who spearheaded the program, makes it all sound pretty easy: She had an idea. She wanted to help her students. She made a few phone calls. She held six days of auditions for young performers between New Mexico and Los Angeles.
Morton runs Saltnote Studios in Waldorf. She has been a guest artist, conductor and lecturer for young artists programs around the world.
‘‘My primary role has always been as an advocate,” she said, ‘‘specifically as a teacher, and secondary as an agent or a mentor. And so when I was involved with my students in various programs there were certain opportunities that I wanted to be able to find, and I couldn’t always find them.”
Last summer, for instance, Morton was unhappy with the program in Europe she brought her students to. ‘‘I didn’t think their mission statement ever put students first. I thought, ‘How are you going to continue to encourage students and give them a product, a great experience, a great performance?’ ... I got into high gear before I left.”
Morton is talking about an ‘‘experience” that might change a young performer’s life. An experience that would inspire someone to make all the sacrifices it takes to work in professional opera or theater.
One of her first students, Michael Maniaci, a guest performer at Stageworks, has already made it there. Then there’s an emerging soprano, Nicole Collins, who lives in Waldorf, has worked with Morton for two years, and is still looking to break through.
Maniaci started with Morton when he was 8. By 18 he was singing in symphonies. He graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, went on to the Juilliard School and now performs with opera companies around the world.
Maniaci has garnered quite a bit of attention, not just for his talent and his success in opera at a young age, but for his unusual ability to sing into the upper soprano register without using a falsetto tone. In other words, Maniaci is a true male soprano, or, as Morton put, something of ‘‘a physical anomaly.”
Until the late 1700s, male sopranos were castrated men who did not go through puberty. Maniaci’s development was completely normal, with one exception: for some unexplained reason his larynx did not develop in a way that would cause his voice to ‘‘break” in the usual manner.
‘‘He was 11, he was 12, the voice wasn’t changing. He was 13, the voice wasn’t changing,” Morton said. ‘‘He was tall; he was a big kid with broad shoulders. He was huge.”
Nicole Collins
The first rehearsal was only hours away. During our interview, Stageworks Festival participants were flying in and arriving from all over the United States.
Nicole Collins was at home in Waldorf. By 5 p.m. she would be in a rehearsal at Indian Head Center for the Arts. For the next three weeks her days were sure to include a performance or rehearsal or both.
Collins will play Serena in ‘‘Porgy and Bess” and the evil, manipulative Queen of the Night in ‘‘The Magic Flute.” She will be in the chorus for ‘‘Ragtime” and ‘‘Carmina Burana” and might have an extra solo at some point as well.
Some talents, like Maniaci, might know they want to sing on Broadway before the first lesson. As a young girl, however, Collins only knew she liked to sing. The music and poetry she created for her family were nearly effortless. But for years she was scared of the stage. And by the time she conquered her fears in college, Collins was torn between her passion and something else ‘‘more practical.”
She used to comparing singing and acting to giving speeches. ‘‘Any kind of performance is fine,” she said. ‘‘But I didn’t know that yet. Performing on stage, any kind of performance is home. But I was comparing it to speaking, and any kind of speaking was horrifying to me.”
She finally began to take lessons at the University of Maryland. Her teacher told her, ‘‘It was as if God reached down from the heavens and gave you this voice. You have to do something with this.” It was a group class; Collins was a bit embarrassed.
She graduated from University of Maryland with a degree in English and a minor in music. A few years later she went to the University of Colorado for a second degree in music.
‘‘I tried to give up singing a couple times,” she said. ‘‘Right before I went to Colorado I had been trying to give it up. But trying to give up music was a little bit like being madly in love with someone and trying to walk away from them, feeling like something is missing every day.”
Lately, Collins has been helping out her mother in Waldorf. Both of her grandparents have Alzheimer’s disease.
She meets with Morton once each week. In practice she works on pushing herself to the ‘‘next level.”
She works on her repertoire and specific roles.
She tries to make goals and see them through.
‘‘I think that when I came to (Morton) I was looking for someone who would be a mentor and a good firm push on the back to keep me going, and she does that,” Collins said.
Her passion is opera. And her goal is simple: to perform as much she can.
‘‘There’s this feeling when you are singing opera and it’s going well,” Collins said. ‘‘I have this moment where it feels as if I am listening to it instead of it actually coming from me, where the music is just kind of all around me ... It’s just what I need to be doing”
