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2. Ithaca College alum aims to surprise with scandalous musical
'Semele'
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ITHACA, NY - Ithaca College’s production of Semele, which ran from February
26th to March 5th at Hoerner Theatre, caught the audience off-guard.
People did not expect to see cross-dressed characters and showers of dollars
and glitter when they purchased a ticket for a musical drama by George
Frideric Handel.
“When it was first produced, it was so scandalous that it had like four
performances and then it disappeared for hundreds of years until the 1970s ,
but even now it’s very rarely produced,” publicity associate Arielle Rubin said.
Guest director and Ithaca College alumnus R. B. Schlather wanted to create
the same effect that the piece had in Handel’s time.
“To me Handel was writing the pop music of his age. He was writing the most
popular music of the time, so I think there’s no reason not to try to make it an
experience today that is as relevant and as central to the culture as it was
back then,” Schlather said.

4. (http://ithacavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/play1.jpg)
(Photo: Sheryl D. Sinkow)
Catching people off-guard is also Schlather’s particular directing style.
“I sort of don’t like acting. A lot of what I do is just sit and watch people and
wait until they do the things that are really real to them…. the way they
really stand or the way they communicate with their body language. Often I’ll
tell them ‘That’s amazing! You have to sing the aria doing that with your
body’,” Schlather said.
A lot of moments in the show emerged in this random way and the audiences
really responded well to such moments, saying that the show was “hysterical”
and “the funniest thing they had ever seen.”
According to Schlather, Semele is “a timeless story about an ambitious girl
who wants to move beyond her lot in life and she does so by taking up an
affair with the most powerful man around (actually a god, Jupiter) and then
gets punished by his wife (Juno).”

5. (http://ithacavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/play3.jpg)
(Photo: Sheryl D. Sinkow)
Everybody can relate to such a story and to “the emotions of this girl, who
desires so intensely to get out of where she is in life.” However, the story has
a sad moral.
“The moral of the story that the chorus sings is basically ‘Don’t try to do that
or you are going to get burned’,” Schlather said. “That’s a very upsetting moral
for contemporary people because we don’t want to be told ‘You can’t get out
of where you are at or you can’t do better.”
The production of Semele — technically an “oratio,” not an opera, and not
originally intended to be staged — took a long time. The production team
included conductor and musical director Geoffrey McDonald, scenic
designer Daniel Zimmerman, lighting designer Erik Herskowitz and costume
designer Greg Robbins.
CONTENT CONTINUED BELOW

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ANNOUNCEMENT
The singers were selected according to their specific vocal skills. For example,
Semele is sung by a soprano and she has to sing a lot of “coloratura,” which,
according to Schlather “is an Italian word that basically means intricate,
colorful singing.”
“We needed to cast someone who was able to do that and we did with Laura
McCauley, who is a senior and a vocal performance major. We saw a lot of
sopranos who had fantastic voices but, as we call it, their voice couldn’t
‘move’ the way it has to in order to build this very fast, virtuosic work,”
Schlather said.
Schlather also “wanted to get as many students on stage as possible,” so he
casted about 30 members for the chorus and some actors.
They started rehearsing on January 23rd and opened on February 26th. The
students had already memorized the songs the previous semester, but
started working on the stage and in the rehearsal hall this semester.

7. (http://ithacavoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/play4.jpg)
(Photo: Sheryl D. Sinkow)
“The staging process is about working with me and my ideas and what the
designers have come up with. The designers and I started working on this
back in June, so it’s been a long time. Working with the singers it’s sort of like
choreography, it’s about how their bodies move around, in the space that we
have made for the performance,” Schlather said.
Schlather, who is now based in New York City and has directed operas
nationally and internationally, enjoyed coming back to his alma mater. He
said he tried to “make the sort of show that always wanted to see” during his
time as a student at Ithaca College.
He has been going to theater since he was five years old, and has always been
especially passionate about opera.
“I’ve just been obsessed with it and there was never anything else that I
wanted to do, so I’m very lucky to have made that my career,” he said.

8. This is his advice for students who aspire to find a job in show business:
“I think you should only go into this business if you can’t imagine doing
anything else. It’s really hard, but if you can’t imagine doing anything else it’s
what you have to do. And I would also advise that you don’t have to be a
performer to work in the arts. We need creative people to work variously in
all aspects. That’s what’s so great about the training program here at Ithaca
College: it trains people in all facets of theater production.”
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