Words of Welcome from SIO Chair
Isaí Jess Muñoz
Since 2008, the NOA’s Sacred in Opera Initiative has provided the field of opera with resources and presentations that share information on productions, research, pedagogy, and other happenings related to music-drama at interplay with world religions. In recent years, our initiative has highlighted operas and staged oratorios that engage with Buddhist, Bahá’í, Islamic, Judeo-Christian and other religious practices. The interplay of music-drama and religion has long formed a powerful catalyst for spiritual inquiry. From the emergence of the earliest known liturgical dramas heralding the rebirth of theatre after the Dark Ages, religion’s role in the development of dramatic and musical representation was pivotal in laying the foundations for Baroque opera and consequently modern opera. Today, music-dramas continue to provide a spiritual touchstone for artists and audiences, and we hope that all SIO resources reflect our team’s commitment to provide robust dialogue and respectful discourse that models what it means to produce music and theatre material in an increasingly diverse world.
As we look with despair at many of today's ongoing global challenges, in line with the mission of the Sacred in Opera Initiative, this publication is shared with a positive awareness of religious diversity and the intentional practice of engaging people of different faiths for the betterment of our organization and society as a whole. In this latest issue of the SIO Newsletter, we focus our attention on operas inspired by Mormon and Jewish history and faith.
SIO recently took time to interview Dr. Murray Boren, who was longtime composer-in-residence and faculty member at Brigham Young University. Most of Dr. Boren’s nine completed and fully produced operas have been inspired by biblical narratives and occurrences within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Murray, respectfully and without pontificating, doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind. He’s been criticized by protectors of LDS teachings for posing moral and theological questions on the operatic stage. His works have fostered significant and sometimes uncomfortable discussions in The Church, but he says “writing is a process I needed to go through.”
We also welcome Dr. Kathleen Roland-Silverstein to the SIO writing team, who some of you may know from her important work as former editor of the NOA Opera Journal and as a frequent reviewer in the NATS Journal of Singing. Her first entry here focuses on a work highly regarded by Dmitri Shostakovich, Mieczyslaw Weingerg's The Passenger. Dr. Roland-Silverstein's regular column in the SIO Newsletter will focus on Judaic elements found in music-dramas, such as works written by Jewish composers or works which contain Jewish themes or material. Organizations such as The Milken Archive of Jewish Music and Music of Remembrance have made extraordinary strides in collecting and commissioning many of these works, and SIO is pleased to now take steps that intentionally support the continued exploration and producing of these significant musical masterpieces.
We’re pleased to introduce you to a sibling organization, deus ex musica. Founded by Dr. Delvyn Case (Associate Professor of Music at Wheaton College), this ecumenical group produces events and creates resources that allow church communities and individual Christians to engage with sacred music in ways that are valuable for learning and for Christian formation.
Lastly, in this issue, we’re excited to announce that Ms. Alice Parker, has been selected as recipient of the 2021 NOA Sacred in Opera Achievement Award. Ms. Parker is an extraordinary and prolific artist (composer, author, lyricist), who at 95 years young is still actively composing and contributing to the field of music. I recently had a telephone conversation with her and was reminded of what an incredible spirit, mind, and talent she is. The 2021 SIO Plenary Session at this year’s NOA Conference in St. Augustine, will celebrate Parker’s life and legacy. Her contributions to opera are often a surprise to people who think only of her work in choral literature. Her four operas and other musical works, some of which are also suitable for various forms of staging and dramatic presentation (cantatas, song cycles, and choral symphonies), offer a diversity of compositional style and approach that beyond her own distinctive voice, draws both on specifically American musical & textual sources. They offer unique and substantive opportunities to grapple with the sacred through the re-imagining of Biblical narratives and other writings on goodness. We are very excited to welcome Ms. Parker to our list of award recipients, and look forward to hosting a wonderful celebration of her career and spirit.
We invite you to read our call for submissions, and we encourage you to let your students and colleagues at all levels know, that we are here to support their scholarly-creative endeavors with opportunities to present their work through sessions at the NOA National Conference, our multiple regional events, and through publication in our newsletter. Each day we are experiencing right now brings new challenges, and the fields of voice and opera are adjusting in ways that none of us could ever have imagined…with innovative resilience, reassuring grace, heart-felt support and undying spirit. Driven by our organization’s values to care for one another and make a difference, your leaders at the National Opera Association continue to prudently and responsibly plan for our 2021 national conference in St. Augustine. I’m really looking forward to next January, where we will be able to come together once again, reminded that as a community of artists and educators, our collective resiliency, resourcefulness, kindness and willingness to adapt to rapid change is vital to our world!
Should you have any questions or ideas, please contact me or any members of the SIO Committee and we will be happy to help. We’re always eager to hear from you!
Dr. Isai Jess Muñoz
The Sacred in Opera Initiative of the NOA
Chair and Senior Editor
www.JessMunoz.com
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From The Editorial Board
Article Submission and the Peer Review Process
Although traditional print journal and monograph publishing is still alive and well, non-traditional forms of publishing such as the Sacred in Opera Web and Blog based format can serve as wonderful supplements or alternatives to traditional scholarship. Web based publications such as ours can enable the broadest possible readership of your research outputs and become an important way to maximize the dissemination and impact of your findings. In order to better serve our community members, the SIO committee continues working diligently to refine its formalized peer review process for the vetting of article submissions and materials to our newsletter. We welcome you to visit our updated submission criteria found in the SIO pages of the NOA website. We are always interested in hearing from potential contributors and supporting the good work you are doing in the field of Sacred in Opera. Let us hear from you.
The current list of the SIO Committee and Editorial Board includes:
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Dr. Isai Jess Muñoz
University of Delaware
SIO Chair and Senior Editor
IJMunoz@udel.edu
Professor Ruth Dobson
University of Oregon
Dr. Tammie Huntington
Indiana Wesleyan University
Dr. Ryu-Kyung Kim
University of Dayton
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Dr. Michelle Louer
University of Indianapolis
Professor Susan Mcberry
Lewis and Clark College
Dr. Philip Seward
Columbia College
Dr. Kurt-Alexander Zeller
Clayton State University
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The Operas of Alice Parker, Recipient of the 2021 National Opera Association Sacred in Opera Acheivement Award
By Kurt-Alexander Zeller
 
Composer, conductor, and teacher Alice Parker is a familiar name to almost everyone involved with classical singing in the United States. Her anthems, hymns, and choral arrangements are staples of the repertoires of church, community, academic, and professional choirs from coast to coast. Her decades-long collaboration with famed conductor Robert Shaw produced widely used editions of standards such as Schubert’s Mass in G and scores of perennially beloved arrangements of Christmas carols and folk songs, almost all of them still in print and now enticing a third or even fourth generation of singers. Parker, who will celebrate her 95th birthday in December, has received dozens of honors and awards in her distinguished career, including the American Guild of Organists’ 2000 Distinguished Composer of the Year Award, the 2014 Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors’ Association, the 2015 Harvard Glee Club Foundation Medal, and numerous honorary doctorates. She was the first Director Laureate of Chorus America, and now, Alice Parker has been selected as the National Opera Association’s 2021 Sacred in Opera Achievement Award honoree. Continue...
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Composer Spotlight: Murray Boren and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Isaí Jess Muñoz
   
Murray Boren (b. 1950) is a prolific composer whose works include nine operas, three ballets, dozens of songs and choral works, over eighty chamber compositions, and incidental music for the theatre. Most of Boren’s operas are settings of biblical narratives and occurrences in LDS Church history. In 2007, Dr. Boren retired from his position as composer-in-residence at Brigham Young University. SIO Chair, Isaí Jess Muñoz, recently sat down with Dr. Boren, who took time to share on his writing process, his love of storytelling, and his experiences in questioning the boundaries of Mormon beliefs while encouraging audiences and artists alike to open up and simply let go. Continue...
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Jewish Opera:
Weinberg's "The Passenger" and Principal Artist Daveda Karanas
By Kathleen Roland-Silverstein
 
Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s first opera, "The Passenger," is a searing Holocaust story, based on real life events. It was first presented in a radio play, "The Passenger from Cabin 45," and later recreated as an autobiographical novel by the author Zofia Posmysz (b. 1923), herself a World War II resistance fighter and camp survivor. It was Dmitri Shostakovich who discovered and shared Posmysz’ book with Weinberg, and later proclaimed his opera The Passenger "a masterpiece." Continue...
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Resource Corner: deus ex musica
We’re pleased to introduce you to a sibling organization, deus ex musica. Founded by Dr. Delvyn Case (Associate Professor of Music at Wheaton College), this ecumenical group produces events and creates resources that allow church communities and individual Christians to engage with sacred music in ways that are valuable for learning and for Christian formation. SIO Chair, Isaí Jess Muñoz, recently sat down with Dr. Case, for a segment on the deus ex musica podcast entitled: What Has Pentecostalism to do With Opera? In it, Muñoz discusses how his upbringing in a Latin American Pentecostal church led to his career on the operatic stage, as well as how his faith has inspired his work on topics as diverse as Latin American Protestant worship music and sacred music drama.
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