The Seoul Arts Center an arts complex located in Seocho-gu is opening a Young Artist Opera Festival at its Opera Theater from Sept. 1 to 19, performed exclusively by university students.
Selected students from Ewha’s School of Music will be the first of the colleges to perform in their own rendition of Mozart’s Nozze Di Figaro, or The Marriage of Figaro, from Sept.1 to 3.
The show will be performed by Ewha’s Orchestra and Opera choir students, conducted by Professor Park Shin-hwa (Voice).
Director Jung Sun-young said, “I believe the show’s producers and audiences will both get a lot from this, unveiling the hidden codes of the traditional stories encrypted in this performance.”
“We had begun practicing and rehearsing ever since winter, with all the cast and directors together, “ assistant director Kang Ji-hye said. “Although there were various times when the cast would express how tired and exhausting the work was, it all paid off in the end when we started practicing by adding a bit of excitement ourselves to the play.”
The Marriage of Figaro is a satirical comedy and a continuation of a plot of another opera piece called The Barber of Seville, recounting The Marriage of Figaro, for the many characters involved.
“Madang relatively connects the stage to
the audience, obstructing any such boundary lines between.”
“Personally, considering the folksy background and Korean touch to this show, the satire and wit of madangnori came to mind,”Jung said. Madangnori is a series of Korean traditional outdoor performances, in which madang can be interpreted as ‘garden.’
“A madang (performance in Korea) connects the stage to the audience, erasing boundary lines between, where the exchange and interpretation of inner feelings and thoughts is possible,”Jung said. “In order to solidize these ideals, we will perform Nozze Di Figaro, as the rising ground of the stage as our madang, the centerpiece of our show.”
For the next three years, starting this year, the Arts Center will cast this festival as their mass project, as their logo of this event, “nine prestigious opera pieces by nine prestigious universities.”
According to the Seoul Arts Center, their Opera Theater has been open since 1993 and has established the Young Artist Opera Festival as a promotional need as well as a means to discovering young virtuosos, prodigies, and maestros of all kinds.
There will be a total of 1,000 cast members and 500 staff members participating, as well as an anticipated 50,000 audience members. Two billion won will be spent in the celebration of this three-year long festival.
Kang said “I was able to work with the director, who I had met and hoped to work with two years ago, and with young and diligent students was a lot more meaningful for me.”