The Costumes of OKLAHOMA!

Marcy Froehlich

For the latest video episode of Behind the Curtain, I spoke with Costume Designer Marcy Froehlich about her design for Oklahoma! This is Marcy's first year at Central City Opera, and as a self-proclaimed history buff, she's enjoying spending the summer in such a historic locale. Watch the video below for a sneak peak at her designs, including her sketches and the research that inspired the costumes.

Conversations With Ken Cazan: Part Two

Below are the final two installments of my interview with Ken Cazan, stage director of Oklahoma! Here he explains what makes Central City Opera's production unique and gives audiences a sneak peek at what to expect if they travel up the mountain for this production, including a preview of the scenic design by Alan E. Muraoka.

View Part One

For continued behind-the-scenes updates on Central City Opera's Oklahoma!, follow #CCityOK on Twitter!

Celebrating John Moriarty

Artistic Director Emeritus John Moriarty is spending his first summer of retirement where he's spent the last thirty-three: in Central City.  Last night, Central City Opera celebrated his years of service during a reception at the Gilpin County Arts Association Gallery across the street from the Opera House.


Mr. Moriarty first arrived in Central City in 1978 and founded the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program. After the company ran into financial trouble and cancelled the 1982 Festival, the Board of Directors asked him to become artistic director. When he transitioned to the role of artistic director emeritus in 1998, he continued to serve as the administrator of the training program through 2011.

At the reception, Mr. Moriarty explained that before he came to Central City, he had never spent more than seven years at any one opera company. Little did he know that he'd be spending the next three decades with Central City Opera.  

One of his accomplishments in his tenure as artistic director was creating the Lanny and Sharon Martin Foundry Rehearsal Center. Until that point, the company rehearsed on the creaky second floor of Williams' Stables and any other large space in town they could rent. John Moriarty had the vision of turning Peter McFarlane's old foundry, a few blocks west of the Opera House on Eureka Street, into a brand new rehearsal center. One of the busiest and most used buildings in Central City, the facility now houses three rehearsal halls, four smaller studios, the props shop and stage management office. At tonight's reception, President/Chairman of the Board Nancy Parker announced that one of the building's rehearsal halls, previously known as "Minor" will now be named "Moriarty Hall." Now, not only will John Moriarty's legacy live on in Central City through the countless contributions he has made to Central City Opera, but also in the rehearsal hall that bears his name. 

Conversations with Ken Cazan: Part One

This week, I was fortunate enough to steal Ken Cazan, the stage director for Oklahoma! away from rehearsals to chat about the production. Central City Opera fans might recognize Ken. Oklahoma! marks his eleventh production with Central City Opera. Last year, he directed the triple bill (Gianni Schicchi, Seven Deadly Sins, and The Breasts of Tiresias) and in 2010 he directed Three Decembers. But Oklahoma! isn't his first musical theatre piece. He is an accomplished director for both opera and theatre, having directed A Little Night Music and West Side Story for CCO previously.

Check out our conversation below to see what Ken has to say about the history and the cast of this summer's opening productions. If you have any more questions for Ken Cazan or the rest of the Oklahoma! production team, leave a comment below. Stay tuned for "Part Two" coming soon!

View Part Two

Preparations Begin for the 2012 Festival

By Drew Kowalkowski, 2012 Festival Public Relations/Marketing Assistant

The curtain won't rise on Oklahoma! (Central City Opera's 2012 opening production) for almost three weeks, but Central City has already come alive with the sounds of opera. The lights are hung, set pieces are being loaded into the Opera House, flowers bloom along Eureka Street, and passersby driving up the hill are treated to the sounds of "Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin'" and other Oklahoma! songs as the company prepares for opening day.

Billboards for this year's productions hang on the front of the Opera House.

Stagehands load set pieces into the Opera House.

Amy Whitaker ,wig/makeup assistant, prepares a wig.

Lindsey Sample, props assistant, spray paints fans to be used as props.

Kelsey Livingston, gift shop assistant, models a hair accessory for sale in the gift shop, which is now open for the summer.

Behind the Lens: Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi

If you’re looking in your program for a typical production photo for the operas of the Central City Opera 2012 Festival, you won’t find them this year. No, you won’t see a sketched icon either. What you will see is a window into the soul – a reflection of all that rattles the human spirit and awakens it. Central City Opera is renowned for doing things differently, and this year (ironically) is no different. As you glance at ads for the 2012 Festival or peruse the program when you head up the hill for the summer Festival, you will no doubt be lured into the photos of legendary local photographer Mark Sink.

A self-declared renegade in the photography world, Mark Sink does not tiptoe around social boundaries with his subject matter or models. Having crossed paths with the legendary Andy Warhol and many of the best-known photographers of our time, Sink unabashedly captures the world around him. Behind the lens, Mark brings raw human emotion and reaction to the audience in moments when they don’t expect it and with no apologies. An extremely modest visionary, he decided to co-found the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver over a casual discussion at the local community garden, believing that Denver indeed needed to have a forum for art that creates dialog and encourages debate.

For those of you who attended last year’s SinFest, an event during the 2011 Festival where attendees progressively experienced the seven deadly sins, you saw the exhibit of black and white photos from Mark Sink and other local photographers. Printed in large format (3x4 ft) in black and white, the images surrounded the audience on the walls in Williams’ Stables. It was difficult for onlookers not to confront the subject matter or feel the message as they were enveloped in the human response to sin.

Interestingly, this season Mark’s modern look at the world comes through the lens of both a digital camera and a camera used during the turn of the century, the setting of both Oklahoma! and The Turn of the Screw. Using a technique called collodion wetplates or tintypes, Mark and his partner Kristen Hatgi, a very talented photographer in her own right, photographed his subjects for our shoot with a wooden large format view camera with a lens from the 1860s. The initial shot was set up using a digital camera, followed by the tintype photo with the wooden camera.

Tintype photographs are made by taking a piece of aluminum and coating it with collodion, then placing the the “tin” piece in the wooden camera and creating a direct positive on a sheet of metal. Check out the collodion wetplace process here.

The image itself is actually reflected upside down on the viewer of the camera; because of the developing and the background, the dark underexposed negative appears as a positive.

To create the photos for this summer’s production, Mark was provided with ideas and sketches from our creative team Boska and brought his own vision to the table. Working with models from the art community and some hands at CCO, Mark and Kristen sought to produce images that evoked the feel of the era and an insider’s look at the life of the characters who make the storylines.

Over the period of a few weeks, we held four photo shoots with Mark and Kristen creating the perfect images for the four operas in the 2012 Festival. As a creative team, we managed to capture moments that evoke an emotional response to the productions.

As you leaf through the program this summer, notice the honesty brought to the opera images. Perhaps the element which is most attractive about Mark and Kristen’s work is that it touches upon the human spirit that is brought to life on the stage of our Festival each year. With all of the complexities involved in creating a world-class production, the goal is to connect with the audience in an extraordinary way. Mark Sink’s images provide the first gateway.

Central City Opera Celebrates Benjamin Britten

We're very excited to share the recently digitally-remastered clips from our 2002 production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Britten was born in 1913 and the "centenary" celebration of his works spans the 2012 and 2013 seasons of performing arts companies around the world.

Central City Opera has a rich tradition of producing the works of Benjamin Britten, which have a wide appeal for audiences. The composer himself is quoted as saying, "I write music for human beings." Central City Opera presented the North American premiere of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana in 2001, followed by this glorious production of Midsummer in 2002. Britten's work has since been performed on the Central City Opera stage in 2005 with the regional premiere of Paul Bunyan and in 2008 with productions of The Rape of Lucretia and Curlew River (the latter performed by our apprentice artists). This summer, we're proud to offer a new production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw, opening July 14th.

To whet your Britten appetite, here are four video clips from A Midsummer Night's Dream (2002):

Clip 1 - From Act One

Clip 2 - Tytania and Bottom

Clip 3 - The Rustics Perform

Clip 4 - Finale

In Paul Curran's Director's Notes for the 2002 production he wrote:

I have been lucky enough to work on the DREAM with two of Britten's own assistants: Steuart Bedford and Roderick Brydon. They have both made me look ever deeper into the music to see the piece more clearly. "If you can't see why I wrote (the music) that way, then don't conduct it" was Britten's advice to the young Steuart Bedford. "Play it again, I can't hear the colours. If there are no colours, there's no opera," another gentle encouragement. The colours of the opera and story are all in the orchestration; "every note counts, there is nowhere to hide in this score" - again, Britten to Bedford.

Steuart Bedford, mentioned above, conducted Central City Opera's 2005 regional premiere of Paul Bunyan and will return this summer to conduct The Turn of the Screw. Bedford was featured in the July 2011 issue of Opera News as "a peerless interpreter of the operas of Benjamin Britten." [The article is also available as a PDF.] Central City Opera presents The Turn of the Screw for the first time this summer with just six performances. Mark your calendar to join us on July 14, 18, 21, 29 or August 4 for this rare treat!

You may also wish to view 5 video clips from our 2001 production of Britten's Gloriana.