Recent Denison alum Katie Kress ’25 had the opportunity to assistant-direct one of the operas at the Opéra Bastide festival, alongside Denison voice instructor Emily Noël.
The opera, a famous French piece titled Orphée et Eurydice, is based on the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and was staged for the festival by Noël.
The festival, which is in its third year, was started with the idea of making use of the ancient theaters and churches in the small town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue. In collaboration with Lyric Arts France, the festival’s operas are performed every summer by a mixture of student and professional vocalists.
While at Denison, Kress majored in music performance with a minor in music theater. She was involved with the American Roots and bluegrass ensemble and the Denison Independent Theater Association (DITA). Through DITA, she produced and directed the Mamma Mia! shadow cast, which has since continued every spring after.
Noel’s and Kress’s relationship goes back to 2021, when they both began at Denison — Noël as a voice instructor and Kress as a first-year looking to study music performance. Six years later, Noël convinced Kress to apply for the position of her assistant director in the opera.
For her part in arranging the opera, Kress collaborated with stage management, took down the blocking, and worked with the singers when Noël was unavailable. She was also in charge of staging three scenes on her own.
“She captured the intimacy of those three scenes and understood how they reflected the larger emotional arc of the opera,” Noël said. “Her work was beautiful, and I was incredibly proud of her.”
Six current Denison students were also involved with the opera festival, following encouragement from Noël to apply. The students, a mix of music performance and theater majors, were the very first to represent Denison in the festival’s short history. Two of them performed in Orphée et Eurydice, while the others performed in the other two operas that were staged for the festival.
“I’m so proud and I love each and every one of them,” Kress said.
The group had to overcome multiple obstacles during the month that they were in France, such as a historic heatwave, language barriers, and changing resources. Despite these challenges, Kress said the experience was invaluable.
“Overall, it was a super impactful and inspiring experience,” she said. “I think that it’s when you are engrossed in this level of artistic collaboration that you always learn things.”
Her favorite part of the process was the first full tech run of the show, when the production team first turned on the lights that had been set up for the performance in the historic Saint Augustin’s Church. The lights, as well as a fog machine, were used to create the atmosphere of the emotional show in the old church.
Each of the four performances of Orphée at Eurydice had audiences of 140, which included local politicians and figures, many of whom offered praise for the opera.
“The applause was staggering,” Kress said. “I was recording on my phone because I was just trying to get some documented footage for everybody involved to have for their reels and just to have some sort of documentation of the show. And it’s when I go back and I watch those videos that I realize just how generous the applause was.”
Kress is currently working as the music director at the Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio. There, she is directing the middle school performance of Finding Nemo.
When asked about the differences between working with opera singers and middle schoolers she says, “You treat them the same, like artists, you treat them like people who are putting their work into the production,” Kress said. “I’ve loved all of it and I’m so grateful that I’ve gotten to work with such a diverse range of artists, and I intend to keep it that way because it all is a different type of special.”
