It’s not the Christmas season, but Augustana College’s OperX has a true gift for the community this week, by presenting a beloved opera related to the birth of Jesus.
OperX at Augustana will perform “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” a one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, on Friday, April 21 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 23 at 1:30 p.m., at Brunner Theatre Center, 3750 7th Ave., Rock Island.
It will alternate with some of the students in that production in “Stolen Scenes,” excerpts from opera’s greatest hits, to be performed at Brunner on Thursday, April 20 and Saturday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. The student musicians will perform works by Mozart, Strauss, Gilbert and Sullivan, Bizet, Delibes, Weill, Monteverdi and more.
Both programs are directed by Patrick McNally, an operatic baritone who joined the Augustana faculty last fall as visiting assistant professor of music and director of opera.
He earned his doctorate in vocal performance from University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2021; a master’s in vocal performance from the New England Conservatory, and bachelor’s in voice from Carnegie Mellon University.
They’re doing the Christmas-themed opera in the spring since the annual “Christmas at Augustana” in December is such a big event, McNally didn’t want to conflict with that in his first year.
“I’m hoping to remount this production several times, now that we’ve got in our bones,” he said recently, noting it may return in early January in future years.
“Amahl and the Night Visitors,” an hour-long one-act, was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on Dec. 24, 1951, in New York City, where it was broadcast live on TV from that venue as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was the first opera specifically composed for television.
In the story of the three kings coming to greet the Christ child in Bethlehem. When they stop to rest for the night, they are taken in by an impoverished, disabled boy and his mother. Amahl is dazzled both by their stories and the exotic treasures they carry, but the humble host will soon show them what it truly means to give with a generous heart, triggering a miraculous ending to this inspiring story, according to a synopsis.
McNally decided to separate the “greatest hits” program (also an hour long) from “Amahl” (rather combined in one), since he wants to see children attend the family-friendly “Amahl.” He doubts that kids would sit through both in one longer performance.
“I want to make both of those things available, and also it’s a bigger demand for the students involved in both,” McNally said. Everyone who’s in the “Amahl” chorus or ensemble also is in “Stolen Scenes.”
The students singing the mother or kings are not in the opera scenes. The mother and Amahl are double cast – the mother played by Sarah Walton and Jessa Simon, and Amahl by Anya Giordano and Haley Tromblee.
McNally directed it at University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2019, 2020 and 2021. “It’s an accessible opera for kids,” he said.
McNally hopes to remount the production as an annual winter tradition, with a separate spring opera.
Combining football, theater and pre-law
Among the cast is Spencer Warfield, a senior double major in political science/pre-law and Asian studies. He went to high school in Peoria and performed in plays and musicals there, including “Sound of Music” and “Anything Goes.”
“It does help to have an outgoing personality,” he said recently of acting. “I’m not afraid to be a little bit weird. As Dr. McNally will tell you, I will make choices, and some of them will stick and some of them won’t.”
McNally said he always supports students’ choices and encourages them to incorporate some of their own personality into their stage role.
“Spencer in ‘Amahl’ plays the heel – he’s a bit of the tough,” the director said. “Any moment we can see the warm, gregarious Spencer come to life in that, humanizes him. So he’s making choices that may on their face seem a little absurd, but they bring out aspects of himself in this character, who is rough and tough.
“When we see the aspects of him that are more than the tough – we get a more complex an interesting persona,” McNally said.
As an operatic baritone, he’s played a lot of villains on stage.
“The trick to playing bad guys is, no bad guy thinks they are bad,” McNally said. “They’re just trying to do what they’re trying to do. And Spencer in this play is a bodyguard, essentially. He’s got a job and he does it. What Spencer brings to it beyond the bodyguard, he’s got humanity. He just doesn’t play tough the whole way through.”
Warfield is the servant/bodyguard for the three kings in “Amahl.”
“Spencer is, if anything, the only opposing force in any of this,” McNally said. “When the mom tries to steal some of the gold from the kings, out of utter necessity, to feed her child – Spencer’s the one who steps in and stops her.”
Warfield is a defensive lineman on the football team and has sung in the Augustana Choir (tenor and baritone). He played the gorilla in last fall’s “Cabaret,” and was in “The Threepenny Opera.”
He got a scholarship for theater and choir. Among the “Amahl” cast is Soryn Richter, who is adept at fencing and stage combat.
“This is the kind of student that Augustana always loves to see,” McNally said. “We have so many opportunities at this institution – we do a musical, an opera, we’re doing scenes; we’re having a cabaret night coming up. There are so many performance opportunities.”
“This school excels at so many things – be it theater or academics or sports,” he said. “It’s a real liberal-arts institution, in a way very few places can actually say.”
“I love stage combat,” McNally said, praising Augie theater professor Jeff Coussens’ class. “It’s one of those things I didn’t get taught until I started getting out into the world performing and then I found, I had to learn it to keep myself safe. It’s a joy and having people come in with different skills like that, there is a bit of combat in ‘Amahl.’
“The fact that I have someone who comes in with an understanding of his body and body awareness, is huge,” McNally said.
“It was great having taken Jeff’s class, and at least knowing the terminology and the choreography,” Warfield said. “I took it with one of my best friends, not a theater kid at all, and he had an absolute blast.”
“Having a breadth of knowledge and adaptability is way more useful in the long run than being able to do your one area of chemical engineering, or whatever it is,” McNally said. “Finding things that you’re passionate about, linking in to them and getting better at them – that’s a skill set that will serve you throughout the rest of your life.”
Warfield had considered that before he came to Augie, since he also was accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.
“Navy was going to make me be one thing all the time and this was going to encourage me to be everything all the time,” he said of Augustana.
“Augustana and football at Augie really gave me the opportunity to not just be my athletic self, but to be my artistic self, and be my academic self, and be myself in general.”
Warfield only sings for about 90 seconds during “Amahl,” but he’s on stage for most of the run time. For him, the main connections between football and opera performance are attention to detail and the camaraderie of teamwork.
“Singing takes coaching and practice, and the people to the left and right motivating you,” he said. He thinks of McNally as a coach, similar to his football coaches Steve Bell, Dick Maloney and Aaron Call.
“I love a team, I’m a team-oriented human being, so the opportunity to be part of a collective while also pursuing my own individual excellence is really important to me,” Warfield said.
He’s planning to go to law school at Drake in Des Moines, where he’s been accepted and will focus on the legislative program. Warfield expects to run for office after school.
Augie’s “God of Vengeance”
As if his schedule wasn’t busy enough, Warfield also has a lead role in Augie’s Black Box Theatre play, “The God of Vengeance,” to be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 27-29 and at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 30.
This was the first Yiddish drama performed in translation across Europe and America. The play is about a Jewish brothel owner whose daughter has a lesbian relationship with one of her father’s prostitutes.
The producer and the cast were arrested and found guilty of obscenity charges when the play came to New York in 1923, but verdict was overturned on appeal. The Augie production is directed by Synth Gonzalez ’23.
In “God of Vengeance,” a realist play from the early 1900s, Warfield is evil, whose daughter runs a whorehouse. In “Amahl,” he’s more larger than life, and comic relief, he said.
Warfield is impressed with the student-directed “God of Vengeance.”
“They’re running this show like I’ve had with any director – the product is coming along so well,” he said, noting his schedule is packed.
Warfield is also on the executive board for the school’s Student Government Association, and is rehearsing the two plays simultaneously (which don’t overlap).
There are a number of “Amahl” cast in “God of Vengeance” as well.
McNally (who has a long list of opera performance credits) was originally cast as the title role in Opera Quad Cities’ “Don Giovanni,” scheduled for June. But McNally got a better offer (higher paying) to sing the big baritone role in Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri” for St. Petersburg Opera in Florida.
“Opera Quad Cities is wonderful and I’m sure I’ll find a way to get involved with them as time goes on,” he said.
For tickets to the upcoming Augie productions:
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