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Area students take part in Castleton Festival
More than 20 students from the Center for the Arts in Manassas recently participated in a series of operas at the Castleton Festival in Rappahannock County.To the delight of Anne Ridgeway, the center's theatre arts director, Castleton organizers approached the center for assistance filling a children's chorus for its production of both "La Boheme" and "L'enfant et les sortileges."
"It was a wonderful opportunity for the students to broaden their horizons and to appreciate what it takes to perform an opera," Ridgeway said.
For some of the students who performed in the center's May production of the Sound of Music, it meant stepping out of one performance and into rehearsals for another.
Rehearsals for the operas began in early June, under the direction of Milos Repicky of the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Repicky worked with the students at the center, teaching them the songs they would sing, both French and Italian, by saying the lines and having the students repeat after him.
Working backwards from the end of the acts to the beginning, he readied them for their first trip to Castleton where they learned the staging for the parts they would play.
"He said if we started hard it would be easy at the end and he was right," said Brooke Miller, 10.
Students said Repicky really got into the music and felt he related to them easily.
"He always made it feel fun and his method was really productive," said Lexi Frilles, 12, of Haymarket.
David Capen, a 14-year-old Gainesville resident, said the most challenging part of learning lyrics in a foreign language was knowing what emotion to put into the words.
"It was hard to know the right emotion during the rehearsals, but when we got on stage and interacted with the other characters, it helped me realize the kind of emotion I needed to sing with," Capen said.
Once prepared with their songs, the students were bused out to Castleton Farms, the home of acclaimed Maestro Lorin Maazel and and his wife, Dietlinde.
The 600-acre property has been the Maazel's retreat for 23 years—a home they now share with others every summer.
Maazel, who previously conducted for the New York Philharmonic, is a composer, and opera writer, and the current music director of the Palau de les Arts "Reina Sofia," in Valencia, Spain.
In 1997, the Maazels founded the Chateauville Foundation to "nurture young artists, foster collaborative artistic enterprise, and create opportunities within the community for share culture experience."
"We had this long ugly barn and we didn't know what to do with it," said Dietlinde Maazel of an old chicken house on the property. "Then we got the idea to turn it into a theater."
The couple built a 120 seat theater on the foundation of the chicken house and began inviting famous musicians of their acquaintance to come and perform.
"We discovered locals who had never been to a classical performance...and an enthusiastic audience," she said.
Gradually, the concerts turned into opera residencies and "one thing led to another," she said.
Now in its third year, with a new performance tent capable of seating several hundred, and international talent on hand, the Castleton Festival offers Rappahannock County and its surrounding communities a cultural experience that is both artistic and educational.
"Things take on their own life," Dietlinde Maazel said. "We never set out to do this, we just wanted a country home to return to one day."
She believes the experience is particularly important for children, who perform along side opera professionals, as well as advanced voice students participating in the Castleton Artists Training Seminar.
"They are the audience of the future," she said of the Center for the Arts students and others selected to sing in the children's chorus.
"[We need to] convince young people that opera is a wonderful medium and it can be fun, and lively, and modern...in the best sense, it's story telling supported by music," she said.
Like any other program in the arts, Castleton depends on donations and doesn't generate income for its founders, but Maazel said she and her husband can't imagine life without it.
"I see this love for learning and they are like sponges, whatever you tell them, they are so keen to swallow and that is incredibly rewarding," she said.
For many of the students, the Castleton Festival is their first introduction to opera.
"I'd never seen an opera before, but this was amazing and it makes me want to do more operas," said Miranda Dixon, 13, of Gainesville.
"I'm always excited to try new things," Dixon said. "It was a big step for me."
The festival introduces not only young performers to opera, but also their families, said Dixon's mother, Kathy.
"We'd never seen an opera before and now we've seen two...it made us all love the opera," Kathy Dixon said.
"It was all new...it made me want to play an instrument," said Nathan Yannarell, 10, of Bristow.
"It makes me want to keep singing," said Miller of the experience. "It was a lot of fun."
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