#Songbird review broadway movie#
#Songbird review broadway professional#

“There’s very few outlets here for opera singers,” she said. “The only way that you can perfect your craft is to get out and do it,” Sohre said. The troupe also offers local singers a chance to hone their skills, engage in mentorships and gain experience on the stage. There’s no one else in the state right now that’s doing those productions.”

#Songbird review broadway professional#

“Our goal is to provide professional opera productions with traditional scenery and costumes, live orchestra and lighting,” Sohre said. Jim Sohre, the organization’s production manager and young artist coordinator, said that’s one of its priorities. First, it provides the rare opportunity for Southern Nevadans to experience quality opera performances.

Opera Las Vegas has twofold benefits in the community, DeVol said. “We also do shows like ‘Holiday on Broadway.’ The purpose of the shows is to raise money for the main productions and also to raise public awareness.” “This past June, we did ‘Madame Butterfly,’ and we increased the number of our audience by 50 percent because word starts getting around that we’re doing professional, high-quality productions,” said DeVol, a San Francisco native who moved to the valley in 1996 from Germany.

Now retired, her focus is growing Opera Las Vegas’ audience, raising awareness about the troupe and bolstering its finances. She appeared in numerous productions, ranging from Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” to Richard Wagner’s “Die Walkure” in major opera houses around the world. “I’m working harder now than I did as an opera diva,” she recently joked.ĭeVol’s opera career began in 1984 in Germany, which is also where she ended it, performing her last concert as a professional in 2012. (Jason Ogulnik/Las Vegas Review-Journal)Īfter 31 years singing soprano to audiences around the world, Luana DeVol is now playing the leading role in the Henderson-based nonprofit Opera Las Vegas.ĭeVol became general director of the all-volunteer troupe in January 2014, helping it put on opera productions and shows throughout the year, using a combination of local singers and established performers. It was also her biggest seller in four years and launched the comeback that saw her through the '70s.Sheet music is shown during Opera Las Vegas‘ rehearsal for their upcoming production entitled 'Viva Verdi!' at Jim Sohre‘s residence in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Aug.

#Songbird review broadway movie#

But Streisand herself found something to identify with in songs like Gordon Lightfoot's 'If You Could Read My Mind' (maybe that passage about the movie queen) and Mitchell's 'I Don't Know Where I Stand.' Stoney End was not a perfect album - the reliance on minor Brill Building material and two more Nyro copies kept it from classic status - but it was so far removed from what Streisand's fans and her detractors thought her capable of that it stands as one of her major triumphs. Producer Richard Perry may have eased the transition by using sessionmen like Randy Newman, who played piano on two of his own compositions and who bridged the worlds of show tunes and rock. Maybe she listened as closely to Nyro and Joni Mitchell as she had to Ethel Merman and Judy Garland a decade earlier, but somehow she re-oriented her approach to music, adapting herself to vocal demands that were very different in terms of dynamics, expressiveness, and especially rhythm from the traditional pop and theater music she had sung previously. Where that record had redefined the role of the traditional pop singer in contemporary terms for the early '60s, Stoney End redefined Streisand as an effective pop/rock singer, which her last outing, What About Today?, had failed to do. The followup album of the same title was, in its own way, as surprising as Streisand's debut album eight years earlier. 'Mama, let me start all over,' she sang, and her wish was granted. Barbra Streisand scored her second Top Ten hit in early 1971 by treating Laura Nyro's recording of her song 'Stoney End' as a demo and copying it practically note for note.