Boston-area teens come together to create, expand horizons at the Opera Factory

Now in its second summer, the Opera Factory brings talented Boston-area public school students together to produce an opera. The teens are responsible for everything from learning to sing complicated classical pieces to constructing and painting scenery. (Photo: Sandra Larson)

Members of the 2009 Opera Factory design team pose in front of costume design sketches in their workshop. (Back row, from left): Herby Charmant, 16, of Lynn; Dajeh Jones, 16, of Dorchester; Quela Jules, 16, of Dorchester. (Front, from left): Glorisel Regalis, 18, of Brockton; Sakeena Shearer, 16, of Randolph. (Sandra Larson photo)

Demeyer Lauture, a 2009 graduate of Brockton High School, is looking forward to starting at Berklee College of Music this fall. He and his friend Mark Joseph, a year behind him at Brockton High, love RandB, jazz and gospel music. They’ve formed their own duo called Blaq Essence.

Christiana McMullen of Dorchester is a rising senior at Boston Arts Academy, a pilot public high school. She studies jazz and contemporary music, and hopes for a scholarship so she can pursue jazz vocals at Berklee, where she is in a pre-college preparatory program for city teens.

But for five weeks this summer, Lauture, Joseph and McMullen came to Boston’s Back Bay every day to be trained in a different kind of music — opera.
And last weekend, they sang lead roles in a fully staged and costumed production of the classic Mozart opera, “Cosi fan Tutte.”

 “It’s a different style than I usually sing,” said Lauture. “I wanted to broaden my horizons.”

The program that gave him an opportunity to do that is the Opera Factory, a collaboration between Opera Boston and the Cloud Foundation, a Boston-based organization that fosters arts development in urban teens.

“Opera training is good training. If you can sing it, you can sing anything,” said Joseph. “It will look good on college applications.”

Now in its second summer, the Opera Factory brings talented Boston-area public school students together to produce an opera. Students prepare and perform at Cloud Place, a four-story Boylston Street building that houses the Cloud Foundation.

Nine students completed a rigorous course in operatic singing and stage movement under the direction of veteran dancer, singer and actress Alexandra Borrie and composer and pianist Bill Geha.

The young singers all had at least some classical music training already, said Rachel Adler-Golden, education coordinator at Opera Boston. Lauture, Joseph and some of the others, for instance, have sung in Handel and Haydn Society chorus ensembles.

“But classical training doesn’t necessarily mean opera,” she said, “which is vocally more demanding.”

The Opera Factory aims to help a new generation discover opera, Adler-Golden said, as well as expose diverse groups to it.

 “There’s the learning about opera and also a unique opportunity to bring kids together from diverse backgrounds,” she said. Suburban and city teens who might not meet otherwise come together as a team to put on the production, she noted.

McMullen, Lauture and Joseph were among the romantic lead singers in the opera, a comedy of love in which two men test the fidelity of their fiancées’ commitment in 18th-century Naples.

Their roles challenged them to convey sorrow, humor, temptation, flirtation, love and celebration through singing and acting — all of which they pulled off with a grace beyond their age.

Meanwhile, in the same five-week period, nine other teens were honing design skills with Gronk, a Los Angeles-based scenic designer from Brazil, and Rachel Padula-Shufelt, a Boston costume designer.

Before last weekend’s three performances, the design team’s workshops were open for visitors to tour.

In the costume area, Quela Jules, 16, a Boston Arts Academy student from Dorchester, fit a wig carefully on a female singer.

Worktables around her were jammed with sewing machines, fabric bins and wig mannequins. Costume sketches lined the walls.

Jules handled her combs, brushes and pins like a seasoned professional, unflustered by visitors, cameras and questions.

A nearby easel held the period wig designs used in the team’s early research.

 “We started out looking at [the styles of] Mozart’s time,” explained Padula-Shufelt, “and then worked on modernizing them.”

It was the crew’s idea to use fabric paint on thrift-store skirts, she said, transforming them from white to neon shades of pink and yellow. For the scene where male singers pretend to be distinguished visitors from afar, the crew used patterns to sew fancy robes in a patchwork of colors.

“We went on field trips to thrift stores,” said Glorisel Regalis, an 18-year-old from Brighton. Regalis graduated this spring from Boston’s MATCH Charter Public High School and will enter Wheaton College in September.

She did some acting in middle school, but never any design work. She now has a greater appreciation for the work the crew does, she said.

“When you’re on stage, you don’t know what it takes to do the backstage work,” she said.

Lisa Barone, a 17-year-old Methuen High School senior, was one of the female leads in the opera. She said she had studied operatic singing but had not acted before.

“I had to go beyond my comfort zone,” said Barone, whose role as the maid Despina had her commanding the stage alone at times.

“Alexandra made it clear we were going to be actors, not just singers,” said Barone. Working with the highly experienced Borrie, she said, gave the singers “a celebrity’s point of view” on their skills.

Alison Kotin, the Cloud Foundation’s outreach coordinator, said high-quality instruction is a key part of the foundation’s mission.

“We go out of our way to find instructors who can give a great model of what it’s like to be a professional artist,” she said. “A lot of kids don’t get a ton of support from their families when they want to pursue art, and it’s important to see other models and mentors.”

Kotin emphasized the high level of commitment demanded of the students, who sign contracts before starting the program. The foundation pays a stipend to the teens so that they don’t need to feel financial hardship taking part in a program that takes up so much time during the summer, she said, and provides T passes when needed.

After last Saturday night’s performance, exhilarated crew members and performers answered questions from the audience and then mingled around a table of refreshments.

Several of Christiana McMullen’s relatives chatted with pride about her accomplishment. For her part, McMullen still sounded a little surprised.

“I was so focused on doing jazz for the rest of my life,” she said. “I just wanted to do something different.” She said the opera training both improved her singing voice and opened her eyes to classical music possibilities.

Penny Knight, the Brockton High School choral director who has taught Demeyer Lauture and Mark Joseph, came to see the performance. She recalled Joseph as a freshman, reluctant to even sing a solo.

On this night, she was not only proud of her charges, but also truly impressed by the caliber of the performance.

“I got chills,” she said.