On Screen Arias & Operas
Jeremy Martin
Auditorium
Opera and Arias class is held in the U3A’s Auditorium to take full advantage of the excellent audio, computer and screen facilities available there. The voices and colourful personalities of the world’s greatest opera stars will be streamed in from the stages of the world as they perform across a wide range of operas and concert performances. We will also look beyond the performances that we enjoy, to explore something of the lives and dedication of the composers, conductors and singers and the hours they spend in perfecting their techniques so we may better appreciate, differentiate and wonder at their individual artistry. Attendees may too request their favourite arias, singers and operas be shared with the class.
About the Tutor:
Jeremy’s love of opera began as a teenager listening to Mario Lanza singing The Student Prince on his first ever long playing 33rpm record in 1956. From there it was a short journey to discover the great opera singers of that era – Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi, Maria Callas, Nicolai Gedda, Jussi Bjorling, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and many more. At school Jeremy sang lead roles in Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow and at university played Curly in Oklahoma for which he was awarded a scholarship for further voice training. Since then, when his working life has allowed, he has sung roles in many amateur musicals and operettas.
On reaching Noosa in 2010, his enthusiasm for grand opera was rekindled at U3A, listening to a new generation of wonderful singers as introduced by his predecessor on this course, Ralph Cadman. In the last ten years to his delight and good fortune in retirement, he has been able to attend operas at the Metropolitan in New York, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne in England, La Scala, The Arena, La Fenice in Italy, Sydney and Melbourne opera houses in Australia as well as many operas at Artscape in his native Cape Town. Perhaps the opera highlight of the last few years was attending the Gala performance of 50th Anniversary of The Metropolitan in the Lincoln Arts Centre in 2016 when many of the world’s top opera singers joined together to give an unforgettable concert performance in front of a packed and resplendently clad gala audience.