ODU Opera Presents Final Performances of the Season

The Old Dominion University opera program, featuring several of the music department's award-winning student vocalists, will present "Letter to Warsaw" and "Cosi fan tutte" as their final performances of the season.

A concert version of "Letter to Warsaw," directed by Charles Stanton and written by Thomas Pasatieri, will be performed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, at the Chevra Thelim Jewish Cultural Center (JCC), 607 Effingham St., Portsmouth.

Presented in honor of the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, "Letter to Warsaw" is the extraordinary musical setting of one woman's firsthand account of life in the grip of the Holocaust. The performance is co-sponsored by the Tidewater Jewish Foundation and ODU's Institute for Jewish Studies and Interfaith Understanding.

April Lessard, a senior vocalist who tied for first place with ODU's Ann Scott Davis at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Virginia District Spring Conference in March, will perform in "Letter to Warsaw."

Tickets for the performance, which are $5 for students and balcony seating, and $10 for general admission, may be purchased at the JCC prior to the event or by calling 683-5305.

Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," also directed by Stanton, will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 30, and Saturday, May 2, in Chandler Recital Hall of the Diehn Fine and Performing Arts Center at ODU.

Vocalists Orson Van Gay, Ann Scott Davis and Jennifer Searfino, also award winners at the NATS conference, will join Travis Thon, Adam Piper and Brittany Cannon in this comic battle of the sexes. Fueled by disguises, fiancée swapping, bribery and flirtation, a wager among friends results in two sisters being tested in their devotion to their lovers.

Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general admission. Call 683-5305 for tickets.