In Focus: BSU Takes to the Stage with Opera Productions

Last month, Bemidji State University’s Department of Music produced a full opera production, “Ahmal and the Night Visitors”, for the Bemidji community.

Photo Credit: Bemidji State University

Every year, BSU’s Department of Music produces an opera that performing arts students, faculty, and artists from across the state put on for northern Minnesota. And this year’s theater productions were two stories by Italian composer and director Gian Carlo Menotti.

BSU Associate Professor and Director of Opera Theater Dr. Cory Renbarger said that this was the first year where they were able to perform two opera productions in one academic year. The first, “The Old Maid and the Thief,” was performed in November of 2021. With the COVID-19 pandemic presenting numerous challenges, students were eager to get back on stage.

For Renbarger, the quality and artistic value that comes out of these opera productions is fulfilling as a professor, artist, father, and opera singer himself to see the level of art, passion, and love the students have for this program. He hopes to keep the momentum on productions going with new students coming in, and he is confident that he will have something great for even next year’s performance.