Katherine Parker, Teaching Assistant Professor of Voice at UNR and the Artistic Director of Nevada Opera Theatre, says that H.M.S. Pinafore 'has really everything. You have the grand sweeping arias, but you also have the high energy dance numbers … there's also a lot of comedy, fun satire, the wicked wit of Gilbert in this, which he carried on throughout his entire career.'
The works of Gilbert and Sullivan have been influential. As Parker says, 'I don't think we'd have Jerome Kern or Gershwin without Gilbert and Sullivan.'
Parker has worked at the University of Nevada, Reno for some six years: 'I wear a lot of hats. I advise all of the classical voice students. I teach opera and musical theater students. I teach vocal literature. I get to teach everybody, whether they are a music minor, whether they're a non-major … students that are just starting out and taking voice lessons for the very first time. But voice science and vocology, which is about working with habilitating singers, whether they're coming back from injury, and getting them back to peak performance, is really where my passion is lying now.'
In her time at the University, Parker has found that 'there is such a beautiful community in Reno of aficionados for classical music and, I think, audiences that are hungry for more vocal music.'
'I'm hoping that audience come away feeling like they have been swept away on the seas of the H.M.S. Pinafore,' Parker concluded. 'There's an element of very much the topsy-turvy escapism, which I think we can all appreciate and enjoy right now, and we all need a little bit of that.'
For tickets and information on Nevada Opera Theatre's production of H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan, events.unr.edu.
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Support for 'Arts on the Airwaves' comes from The Nevada Arts Council… a state agency that provides public funding and support to artists and organizations, that benefit Nevadans in cities and rural communities statewide. More at NVArtsCouncil.org.
