The Community Music School at Southwestern College will produce its first operatic production with a concert version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer, an English light opera in two acts on the Southwestern College campus. The Sorcerer will be performed in Richardson Performing Arts Center on the Southwestern College Campus on March 4th, 2017 at 7:30pm and March 5th, 2017 at 2:00pm.

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The objectives of the project are to increase educational opportunity, exposure, and appreciation for the operatic art within rural Cowley County, Kansas. The project also seeks to expand economic opportunity for professional and non-professional performance artists within the state of Kansas, while also offering undergraduate students and community members enriching musical experiences in the orchestra and chorus for the production.

The selected professional artists would be asked to offer masterclasses, voice lessons, and presentations to learners of all ages through partnership with the Winfield School District, USD #465 and the Winfield Public Library. Examples of such programming include a selected reading list through the Winfield Public Library and a music curriculum specifically written to increase student understanding of opera in primary and secondary music classes through partnership with local music teachers.

The ultimate goal of educational curriculum within the public/private schools is to offer a minimum of one performance of the opera on March 2nd which is exclusively intended as a capstone experience for students to actually attend an opera free of charge. Sessions will also be offered at the collegiate level which provide personalized, one-on-one training to amateur operatic singers in vocal pedagogy, dramatic acting, and performance preparation.