When Houston Grand Opera\u2019s production of \u201cHansel and Gretel\u201d opened at the Wortham Theater Center, audiences heard 24 young voices joining the professional cast on stage. Among them is Shreya Puvvada, a 12-year-old from Garden Oaks who attends T.H. Rogers Middle School.<\/p>\n
This is Puvvada\u2019s third production with the opera company, having previously performed in \u201cLa Boh\u00e8me\u201d and \u201cIl Trittico.\u201d She said her first experience with HGO was so fun that she knew she wanted to come back.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing in an opera is definitely challenging because you have to balance so many things at once and it takes a lot of dedication,\u201d Puvvada said. \u201cBut the experience is incredibly rewarding, and it has really helped me become a more independent person.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s chorus is led by Karen Reeves, a Shepherd Park Plaza resident who has been preparing young singers for Houston Grand Opera since 1991. Her work with the HGO Children\u2019s Chorus on the Houston Symphony\u2019s performance of Berg\u2019s \u201cWozzeck\u201d won the 2017 Grammy for Best Opera Performance. She was also the founding director of HGO\u2019s Bauer Family High School Voice Studio.<\/p>\n
Reeves auditions and rehearses the children for every production that calls for young performers, guiding them through the same professional expectations as the adult cast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve told them, you have to be every bit as professional as the leads or the principals who are on stage,\u201d Reeves said. \u201cYou are a part of Houston Grand Opera. They audition, we contract them, and they sing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children even get paid for each performance, something Reeves said helps build ownership and commitment.<\/p>\n
In this production of \u201cHansel and Gretel,\u201d the young singers play children who have wandered into the forest and been captured by the witch. She has frozen them in time and begun turning them into gingerbread cookies. When the opera\u2019s protagonists outsmart the witch, they awaken the frozen children, who then join the cast for the rousing finale.<\/p>\n
The 24 chorus members range in age from 8 to 17, with an average age of around 11. They come from all over the Houston area, and Reeves said each production brings a mix of returning singers and newcomers.<\/p>\n
\u201cA certain amount of continuity is great,\u201d Reeves said. But the pandemic disrupted that pipeline, and they had to rebuild the children\u2019s chorus from the ground up.<\/p>\n
The young performers face a unique challenge with this production: they\u2019re singing in German for most performances, though they\u2019ll switch to English for the family matinee and student performance. Reeves said it\u2019s important that the children understand what they\u2019re singing, not just how to pronounce it, since every moment on stage is choreographed and directed.<\/p>\n
Puvvada said learning German was one of the trickier parts of the rehearsal process.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinging in German is challenging because there are so many consonants and it can be hard to get the language down,\u201d she said. \u201cBut once you figure that out, it\u2019s really fun to speak and sing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rehearsals began in late November and have demanded serious commitment from the young singers and their families. Since the children are in school, rehearsals typically start at 5 or 5:30 in the evening, but as opening night approaches, they can run until 10 or 10:30 at night.<\/p>\n
Puvvada said she\u2019s learned to manage her time, sometimes bringing homework to the opera house or finishing it early. \u201cThe opportunity motivates me to balance my workload and just power through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Reeves, who sang with the HGO Chorus for 13 seasons before shifting her focus to working with children, said one of the most rewarding parts of her job is watching the young performers experience the production coming together, first hearing the full orchestra, then singing alongside professional opera singers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always something new for them, and it\u2019s so fun to watch them take all of that in and how they fit into that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Puvvada, that bond has been the highlight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most fun part about HGO is getting to be included in a big family of people who share the same emotions on stage as I do,\u201d she said. \u201cExperiencing that connection with everyone is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
She plans to keep performing, though her long-term goal is to become a neuroscientist. Puvvada is particularly interested in understanding how music impacts the brain.<\/p>\n
This production of \u201cHansel and Gretel\u201d originated at Covent Garden in London before traveling to San Francisco Opera and now Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the sets, costumes, and design team travel with the show, the singers, chorus, orchestra, and conductor are all local to each city. Performances run through Feb. 16 at the Wortham Theater Center. For tickets and showtimes, visit\u00a0houstongrandopera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Houston Grand Opera\u2019s production of \u201cHansel and Gretel\u201d opened at the Wortham Theater Center, audiences heard 24…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,11548],"class_list":{"0":"post-149359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-houston-headlines","10":"tag-houston-news","11":"tag-the_arts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}