Arts High to Offer Opera Training : EducationTuition-free vocal classes begin this fall. Auditions are Sept. 14.

Armed with nearly $20,000 in grant funds, the Orange County High School of the Arts will launch its first tuition-free opera vocal training this year.

The Opera Conservancy program is being organized in partnership with Irvine-based Opera Pacific, the county’s only major opera company. It is open to Southland high school students by audition, scheduled for Sept. 14 at the high school in Los Alamitos. Classes begin Sept. 27.

“We draw students from 54 different cities in the Southland,” said Ralph Opacic, executive director of the high school, located on the grounds of Los Alamitos High School at 3591 Cerritos Ave. “They are students from parts of Los Angeles County, Riverside and even San Diego, as well as Orange County.”

The Opera Conservatory Program is being funded in part by a $7,500 Arts Orange County Arts Education/Project grant. But Opera Pacific Executive Director Martin G. Hubbard actually kicked off the fund-raising effort with his personal grant of $5,000. Other individual donations have brought the fund to nearly $20,000, program officials said this week.

“I was very impressed by their ideas,” Hubbard said. “We see a tremendous benefit in having the High School of the Arts have a full opera program in which we’re participating. We see that as just an incredible powerful outreach into the community.”

Applicants for the opera training program must be in grades nine through 12. They do not have to be Orange County residents.

Opacic said applicants should prepare two vocal pieces of contrasting styles.

“If they’ve had some experience in classical voice, they should prepare two arias of different styles,” he said. “But if they don’t have that classical background, we’ll take students who have prepared [any] two contrasting pieces, even Broadway musical songs.”

Classes will focus on aria and song interpretation, and as the program develops, it will add aspects of the business of opera, language study, opera history and repertory.

“Kids will have hands-on vocal and coaching training,” Opacic said.

Classes will be offered on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 p.m., Fridays, from 3 to 5 p.m., and occasionally on Saturday mornings, through June 2000.

Students can opt to attend the high school, taking their academic subjects there too. They also can take classes after school.

For now, the High School of the Arts is part of the Los Alamitos School District, but the arts portion of the school operates on $600,000 a year that is raised by its own nonprofit foundation. Students spend five hours a day on academics and another three hours in arts training programs.

The arts high school recently lost a legal battle with Los Alamitos over its expansion on a new campus in the city. Its board members are exploring campus locations in other cities, including Costa Mesa and Santa Ana.

One proposed site is on land in the South Coast Metro area of Santa Ana that could be donated by developers C.J. Segerstrom and Sons.

“We’ve also had talks with the city of Anaheim, the Newport-Mesa school district and Orange County Fair board about space in Costa Mesa,” Opacic said. “We expect to be able to announce a decision by December.”

“If they come this way, there are a lot of other long-term projects we can do to help their opera program,” Opera Pacific’s Hubbard said. “It’s a pretty exciting area. Education is always exciting, particularly when you get into arts organizations.”

Meanwhile, Opacic said, they intend to forge ahead with vocal training.

“We’ve felt really limited in terms of proving instruction for opera singers,” he said. “We have students who are more and more interested in classical voice, and we’ve been discussing in the last several years finding better preparation in that area.”

Opera Pacific will provide artists in master classes and coaching sessions and allow the singers to observe and possibly participate in its productions.

Future projects also would include a summer opera camp, for which a fee would be charged. But no date has been set as yet.

For more information, call the high school at (562) 596-1435 or (714) 536-8597.