The haunting photo of the five explorers in a tableau, two sitting in front, three standing behind, projects on the bright white back wall of the stage. These are the proud Englishmen of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition. They are at the South Pole, and, though they realize they have been beaten by Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his party, Scott decides to take the photo anyway, the Union Jack hoisted behind them. It is 1912. The photo, an actual record of this historic moment, is faded. The men gaze straight ahead, seemingly expressionless within their massive parkas.
Westminster Choir College is not just for choirs anymore. Especially since the merger with Rider University, the Choir College has expanded its performance opportunities beyond the choral field. There is now a particularly strong emphasis in the vocal department on operatic training (especially under the leadership of current opera department head Daniel Beckwith), and some of the most recent crop of students had a chance to demonstrate their training this past weekend in a set of two operas by very different composers but both from the early part of the twentieth century. The central opera of the evening was Puccini’s comic Gianni Schicchi, usually paired with another of Puccini’s one-act operas, but in this production performed with a very unusual and difficult work.