Liz Delillo
Staff Writer
This summer, the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory is led by internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves-Montgomery and distinguished baritone Jonathan Beyer. The season’s cohort of Voice students marks the first with Graves-Montgomery and Beyer at the helm.
Together, the pair are “the perfect co-leaders to chart the course for the next chapter of the Opera Conservatory,” said Laura Savia, Chautauqua’s vice president of performing and visual arts. “Both are world-class professionals who bring not only their own body of experience as singers but also a deep and lifelong commitment to training and pedagogy.”
As Artistic Advisor, Graves-Montgomery serves as both a visionary for the Opera Conservatory and mentor for the season’s young artists. In addition to her work at the Opera Conservatory, she will perform with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and speak as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series during Week Three “Art in Action: Building Community Through the Arts.”
“I have a lot of energy. I am very, very excited about being here and being part of the community,” she said. “I’m looking forward to meeting people and seeing how that well-oiled machine functions.”
Regarding her vision and priorities for the Opera Conservatory, Graves-Montgomery said, “As I look into bringing in innovation and collaboration, there’s a tradition as well that needs to be honored in the Conservatory’s role in terms of craftsmanship.”
Graves-Montgomery imagines her own role as one that will intertwine both ”artistic tradition and forward-thinking leadership.”
On and off stage, Graves-Montgomery is celebrated for her contributions to the arts. With a long history performing at the Metropolitan Opera, she has won the Grand Prix du International de Chant de Paris, Grand Prix Lyrique l’opéra de Monte-Carlo, Eleanor Steber Music Award, Marian Anderson Award and a Grammy. Recently, she was presented with the Service to America Leadership Award from the National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation.
She founded the Denyce Graves Foundation, a nonprofit guided by values of excellence, education, mentorship, opportunity and community. The foundation seeks to weave together art, social justice and American history, underscoring its mantra that educating is activism.
“I was really impressed with the eagerness of the young developing artists — they’re very excited to learn and very open,” Graves-Montgomery said of this season’s cohort. This season, the Opera Conservatory received a record number of applications and will host 27 students.
She has keenly anticipated embarking on this season as well as starting to mentor the students.
“I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves, becoming part of the community, understanding how Chautauqua functions and seeing where my place is and carving out my lane for myself and that of the Conservatory,” Graves-Montgomery said.
After spending years as a member of the Voice faculty at Chautauqua, Beyer will now help shape and execute the vision for the Opera Conservatory as its director, envisaging with Graves-Montgomery as well as overseeing day-to-day operations.
“This year, (Denyce and I) have been talking to a lot of Chautauquans, other departments, the residents, long-time visitors, new people, and including them in our journey a little bit more while we do it,” he said. “We’ve got lots of exciting ideas, and we want to see how this summer plays out, what the audience responds to and all these sorts of different things, so that we can learn from it moving forward.”
Beyer emphasized the variety cultivated in this season’s repertoire.
“We’re doing a lot of accessible music, which doesn’t mean we’ve lowered any standards or anything like that, but we’re creating a big variety,” he said. “We’ve gone for brevity in a lot of performances; it’s something — for better or for worse — that modern audiences really crave.”
La Vida Breve, for example, is an exciting Spanish opera that is roughly an hour long. The performance on July 28 in the Amphitheater will be a collaboration between the Festival Schools, bringing together artists from the Opera Conservatory as well as the Schools of Music and Dance.
Beyond collaborating across performance media, the Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory has partnered will present a workshop of an operatic adaptation of short-story writer George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Following the performance on July 11 in Norton Hall, a discussion with Saunders, composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek will occur.
“You’ve got a more straightforward Mozart opera happening, which is totally different,” Beyer said of the repertorial variety the Opera Conservatory has planned.
The weekly recitals will also reflect a broad number of styles, with some recitals showcasing musical theater and some opera scenes, said Beyer. The Opera Conservatory will be doing “all sorts of different kinds of operas.”
From Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Geter’s “Common Threads” and Falla’s La Vida Breve to workshops, Wednesday evening recitals and departmental collaborations, this season offers a diversified array of opera productions, varying in length, style, subject matter and incorporated performance media.
For this summer, the Opera Conservatory faculty includes Carol Vaness, Kensho Watanabe, John Holiday, Claudia Catania, Rhoslyn Jones, Dominic Armstrong, Maxine Davis, Joel Harder, Donna Gill, Nicole Cabell, Dietlinde Maazel, Rachel Calloway, Nathan Troup and Kevin Short, as well as Graves-Montgomery and Beyer.
Beyer, who has been awarded the Marian Anderson Prize for Emerging Classical Artists and was a national finalist at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition, “brings invaluable institutional knowledge and continuity, alongside innovative ideas for growing the program,” Savia said. Among other roles, his repertoire includes Figaro in Barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in Le Bohème and Conte in Le Nozze di Figaro.
“I’ve been going to Chautauqua for forever, first as a student, then as a performer, then as a teacher, so I’m really excited to go into this summer in the newest role of director,” he said.
Beyer first came to Chautauqua in 2003 as a student, working with the late Marlena Malas, who led the School of Music Voice Program for 44 years. During Malas’ time as director, the Voice Program combined with the Chautauqua Opera Company in 2022, forming the Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory. In that same year, Chautauqua announced a scholarship fund bearing her name to enable more students to attend. Beyer had performed at the reception for the scholarship launch and had then commented how her instruction, especially her warm-up exercises and her reprimand that he needed to stand up straight while he sings, sticks with him.
‘’She was a technical genius, and it’s an honor to then be able, as her student and her teaching protégé, to see this program into the next chapter,” Beyer said of Malas. “That’s very personally rewarding for me.”
