As #GivingTuesday approaches, I’d like to ask that you consider including Act Too Studio Opera Workshop in your year-end giving! Now in its third year, the workshop has grown from a week-long intensive into a year-long, student-driven entity, and it’s honestly been a wonder to behold.
Not only have our teens learned to love opera, but they are constantly impressing me with their own brilliance as interpretive artists. As we begin work on 2016’s summer Monteverdi project, students have already become intimately involved in the creative process, brainstorming ideas for the new narrative we’re constructing, providing feedback on English adaptations, offering up costume concepts, discussing their characters, and analyzing the music and text. When I watch these students in action, I’m absolutely floored.
Meanwhile, the passion for classical singing has exploded studio-wide. In a recent lesson with a not-quite-13-year-old student, I had the pleasure of listening to her explain to me how the accompaniment to a standard Italian aria supports the text. This ability to think deeply about music not only advances our young singers as artists, but also advances their humanity, as they strive more and more urgently towards real understanding of the human condition through the minds and hearts of some of our species’ finest storytellers.
In an era when the arts have become increasingly a luxury item available only to those with considerable financial resources, we at Act Too Studio are intensely dedicated to making our Opera Workshop programming accessible to all our teens. To that end, we are tasked with seeking funding through local businesses and individual donors. In the early half of 2015, we raised nearly $8000 to fund our spring and summer programming. For 2016, we must raise even more. Please consider us this #GivingTuesday!
 You can donate by credit card online here:Act Too Studio Opera Workshop If you prefer, you can also donate by check. Checks should be made payable to Fractured Atlas, with “Act Too Studio Opera Workshop” in the memo line. Please contact us for our mailing address. |
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Matching? Did you know that many companies match donations from employees to nonprofit causes? That means your donation can go twice as far! From now until December 15th, 2015 you can go to doublethedonation.com to find out if your company will match your donation. Just type in your employer’s name and access the appropriate matching gift forms, guidelines, and submission instructions.
Act Too Studio Opera Workshop is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non‐profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Act Too Studio Opera Workshop must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” and are tax‐deductible to the extent permitted by law.
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As the air cools, we’re already deep into the year’s 
This year, as you may know, with the assistance of classical radio host and early music expert James David Jacobs, we’ll be assembling a collection of Monteverdi madrigals and opera fragments to create a new narrative of our own (tentatively named Il sogno d’Arianna), in our own new edition with new English translations adapted specifically for our singers. We’re very grateful to have James on board, and are especially looking forward to him working with our students to deepen their understanding of material.
We’re still recovering from this weekend’s performances of