Release Date: January 24, 2008
International opera star Jennifer Larmore returns for artist residency at Kennesaw State
Contact: Cheryl Anderson Brown, Assistant Director of Public Relations,
770-499-3417 or cbrown@kennesaw.edu
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Kennesaw, Ga.—International opera sensation Jennifer Larmore presented a master class and offered private lessons to vocal performance and musical theatre majors at Kennesaw State University in metropolitan Atlanta earlier this week as part of her residency in the university's music department. During the master class on Jan. 14, she offered many useful insights for young singers, including this list of ten:
—“It is your duty to engage the audience. Our job as singers is to bring them up on stage with us, to make them part of the experience.”
—“When you are singing, you must commit 100 percent to that moment without thinking of the next word. That way, you will be able to hear the whole phrase.”
—“Singing is often all about the vowels.”
—“When you are performing, you must own the stage. It is your five minutes and, in that space, you can do whatever you feel.”
—“You even have to interpret the spaces between notes.”
—“A good actor is always thinking and we can see it in his or her eyes.”
—“Don't hold your hands in front of you or you'll close yourself off. You don't want to be too safe; you want to sing from your heart and with your soul.”
—“The first note starts before the music is played. When you sing the subtext in your head, you show it to the audience.”
— “When you’re performing, don’t ever think you’re giving it all you’ve got.”
—“Enjoy music to the fullest and always give of your art.”
Larmore made her operatic début in 1986 as Sesto in Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito” in France, marking the start of a brilliant international career in which operas of Rossini, Bellini, Mozart and Handel have come to figure prominently. After a decade in Europe, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Rosina in “Il barbiere di Siviglia.” She has performed with the most renowned opera companies of the world, including those in La Scala, Lisbon, Geneva, Paris, Torino, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bologna, Melbourne, Chicago and Vienna, as well as at London's Covent Garden and New York's Metropolitan Opera. Larmore has sung under the direction of the world’s most acclaimed conductors, including Donald Runnicles, Günther Neuhold, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kurt Masur, Andreas Delfs, Mariss Jansons, Marco Guidarini, Manfred Honeck and Seiji Ozawa, among others. She was also made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Throughout her career, she has been an active recording artist, and now has more than four dozen recordings and five Grammy nominations to her credit.
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Kennesaw State University is a comprehensive, residential institution with a growing student population exceeding 20,000 from 132 countries. The third largest state university out of 35 institutions in the University System of Georgia, KSU offers more than 55 undergraduate and graduate degree programs.
The KSU College of the Arts is one of only four Georgia institutions to have achieved full national accreditation for all of its arts programs.