Every five years, the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) celebrates an anniversary with a celebratory event. This year will mark another milestone for the academy with BrAVA Philadelphia! AVA’s 90th Anniversary Celebration and Gala on March 21 at Marian Anderson Hall. The evening will feature excerpts from works such as “La Traviata,” “The Barber of Seville,” “La Bohème,” “Don Giovanni” and “Madama Butterfly.” AVA’s 22 resident artists, vocal faculty and distinguished alumni — including soprano and three-time Grammy-winner Latonia Moore — will bring these works to life.
Scott Guzielek, the president and artistic director for AVA, said that “the arts continue to be a place that is welcoming and safe for everyone,” including but not limited to the LGBTQ+ community.
“AVA is a place where all are welcome and all feel supported and loved and respected,” Guzielek said. “And it’s something I will say I demand and expect because the beauty of this art form is that it is a collaborative art form by nature.”
LGBTQ+ representation in opera dates back hundreds of years, though not overtly. Mozart’s “Apollo et Hyacinthus” (1767) portrayed Apollo and Hyacinthus, who are often portrayed as lovers in Greek mythology, but Mozart’s opera effectively erases their queer relationship by introducing an extra female character into the tale. Meanwhile, Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride” (1779) portrays a homoerotic relationship. The two male characters, Oreste and Pylade, have a close relationship where they are willing to die for each other but the romance is never specifically stated.
However, explicit queer characters ended up showing up in the 1900s. This includes Berg’s “Lulu” (1937), Michael Tippett’s “The Knot Garden” (1970), and Stewart Wallace’s “Harvey Milk” (1995) — all portraying gay and lesbian characters. More recently, Laura Kaminsky’s “As One” (2014) was a one-character opera about a transgender woman.
“[The LGBTQ+ community has] been very well represented, not just here [at AVA], but across our industry — from singers, wonderful directors, conductors, scenic costume [and] lighting designers,” Guzielek said. “I like to think that the arts are an incredibly welcoming and supportive place for the LGBTQ community, and certainly — as myself, a member of [the LGBTQ+ community] — I try to make sure that this atmosphere is welcoming to all, and I think our industry does embrace members of the LGBTQ community.”
While Guzielek said he has always felt embraced by his colleagues in the world of opera, he still acknowledges the culture wars and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in current times. However, he says opera will still prevail as an art form.
“We’re at a difficult moment in history but I will always come back to the fact that opera is 400-plus years old and as an art form has survived through lots of hard times in history,” Guzielek said. “I truly do believe it will continue. It will change. It will evolve. It should be, like all art forms, reflective of the society we live in. For me, the interesting thing about opera is that humans haven’t changed that much. So the stories we tell and the stories that Mozart and Puccini wrote about are the same human themes that we deal with today: love, greed, hate, power, sex. These are masterpieces that have survived for hundreds of years, for a reason.”
BrAVA Philadelphia! AVA’s 90th Anniversary Celebration and Gala will be held at 8 p.m. on March 21 at Marian Anderson Hall, 300 S. Broad St. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit ensembleartsphilly.org.