Photos by Isabell Macrina
LyteHaven, Shanefield, and Evans against the old hospital and hill, creating a scene for the crowd
By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The Bellforge Arts Center held their Summer Sounds event against the backdrop of the Medfield State Hospital last week, featuring artists that seemed unconventional. Though, these artists exposed a large part of the crowd to something new.
Boston Summer Opera, or as they call themselves “the other BSO,” performed on Wednesday night. Hannah Shanefield, the executive director of BSO, Dylan Evans, and Jacob LyteHaven took to the stage to share their passion for the art form. BSO was only founded last year as a place for opera singers and enthusiasts to have a place to experience and enjoy it during the summer months.
The evening began with a set of arias, a self-contained piece for solo voice, with musical accompaniment, that expresses a character's emotions or thoughts and are meant to show off the singer’s vocal skills. Performed in Italian, the words themselves were lost in translation but the emotion showed in Shanefield’s voice, along with the incredible notes she hit, which conveyed the meaning of the song in a deeply human way.
Evans, a baritone singer, took the next aria and stunned the crowd with the power of his voice against the green hills. It was a deep resonance showing the breath power that comes with being an opera singer. LyteHaven accompanied the two on piano.
The true power between the singers came out in their duets. Shanefield and Evans sang a conversation in song in front of the crowd, using the raw emotions from the song and their body language to create a compelling scene that brought the patrons into the story. The high and low notes hit respectively created a harmony that seemed to echo off the hills.
Families from Medfield and beyond were laid out in the crowd, in chairs and picnic blankets enjoying the local food trucks that had shown up. There was an enchantment befallen them, hooked into the music even with no prior knowledge of it.
They sang another set of arias next, these in German, from the opera “Rigoletto” by Giuseppe Verdi. The opera follows Rigoletto, a hunchback jester of the corrupt Duke of Mantua, and what tragedy befalls him after he unknowingly mocks a nobleman whose daughter the Duke had seduced. The opera is full of emotionally charged moments that were felt through the music. The singers effortlessly brought all of these emotions to life through their performance.
Before the final set of arias, they did a brief pause and performed some musical theater numbers that were more familiar. The songs included were from The Music Man, Beauty and the Beast, the Broadway edition, and My Fair Lady. The artists brought the same passion to these musical theater songs as they did to the opera.
The evening ended with a final set of arias, this time in French and included operas based on Shakespeare’s famed plays “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet,” but skipping the tragic parts. It was a wonderful evening that spiked curiosity in a few fellow patrons to continue exploring the art form, including BSO’s new production “The Pirates of Penzance.”
