McConnell to write opera for young audiences

An opera to be composed by a music education professor will introduce young audiences to the musical form while providing a work that can be performed by inexperienced singers.

Douglas McConnell, the university's composer-in-residence, is receiving a $5,000 Mississippi Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission to support his work. Additional funding is being provided by the university's Humanities and Arts Research Program.

McConnell

McConnell will compose his one-act work during the upcoming academic year, with a first production planned for the fall of 1997. Titled "Lily," it is based on a short story by contemporary writer Walter Wangerin Jr. of Valparaiso (Ind.) University.

Wangerin uses humor and drama in an allegorical tale that treats the serious issues of life and death. "He wrote the story as a way to talk about these issues with children, but the theme and the resulting opera will touch an audience of all ages," McConnell said.

One of the challenges of composition will be to write music that can be performed by relatively inexperienced singers. "Most of our students have never seen a live opera, let alone performed in one," he observed.

A full schedule of performances will allow singers to gain valuable experience at the same time new audiences become acquainted with the operatic form.

McConnell's chamber work "Songs of the Beloved" won a music composition award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. His works have been performed in this country by the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, the Indianapolis Symphony and Chorus, and the Daytona Beach Society, as well as a number of college and high school ensembles.

Overseas, compositions have been performed in Germany, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Russia. During 1991, he was an artist-in-residence for Estonia's Ministry of Culture.

With funding provided by the State of Mississippi and the National Endowment for the Arts, the arts commission provides

numerous grants to benefit organizations and artists, said executive director Betsy Bradley. The agency will grant more than $1.3 million in 1997.