Friday at 8 p.m., you're going to want to be in St. Luke's Episcopal Church to hear Jamestown native Douglas Ahlstedt perform a concert. Accompanying him on piano will be Walter Morales.
The handsome tenor has had a long and successful career since his graduation from Southwestern Central School, including leading roles in operas and oratorios in sites as disparate as South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as nearly 200 leading role performances at New York City's Metropolitan Opera. His singing is part of numerous recordings, and most recently, the Deutsche Grammophon label has released a two-disc set of recordings featuring Ahlstedt singing the lead in Gioachino Rossini's opera ''L'Italiana in Algieri,'' opposite Bradford native Marilyn Horne.
His concert in Jamestown is the most recent in the 2008-09 concert series of the Jamestown Concert Association.
Article Photos
Robert W. Plyler
We've recently had a conversation with him by telephone, which I want to share with you shortly, but first, let me share with you what I've learned through some research. It's truly impressive.
HISTORY AND CAREER
Douglas Ahlstedt was the son of the late Carl and Pearl Ahlstedt, and started life in their home on Avalon Boulevard in West Ellicott. Blessed with a clear, high, lyric tenor singing voice, his life would make a sudden change which would lead him to international fame and fortune.
When he was 13 years old, the Columbus Boy Choir came to perform at Chautauqua Institution. The choir was internationally celebrated and often ranked with the famed Vienna Choir Boys. In an interview some years ago, Mrs. Ahlstedt would tell me that the choir always held auditions wherever they performed.
She said she knew her son wanted to audition for the choir, and she was afraid that she would make him nervous, so she asked his aunt to drive him out to the Institution. ''They loved his voice so much, they wouldn't even let him come back home,'' she told me at that time. ''They wanted him to stay and begin learning their music, and have his aunt come back and get a suitcase full of things, so he could leave right with the choir,''
For a number of years, Ahlstedt toured the country with the choir, attending school in their customized bus, which included individual school desks for schooling and a piano for practicing.
While he was with the Columbus choir, he auditioned to sing the three solos for boy soprano in a concert performance of Arthur Honegger's dramatic oratorio ''Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher,'' at Carnegie Hall under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.
The review in the New York Times quotes the famed conductor as saying that Ahlstedt's singing was so pure and perfect, it had moved him to tears. As a result of the Carnegie Hall concert, Bernstein cast the boy in the crucial role of Miles in the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera ''The Turn of the Screw.'' The performance was at the New York College of Music.
When his voice changed, Ahlstedt returned to Jamestown, where his mother reported he was constantly torn between his love of music and his love athletics. ''He used to run to and from school every day. I used to worry about him, running along Hunt Road in all kinds of weather,'' his mother said.
On graduation from high school, music won out, and the budding tenor majored in music performance at the State University at Fredonia, and then he was accepted to study at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. As it happened, though, the draft interfered, and before he could enroll there, he found himself headed for two years of service on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Fortunately, Walter Hendl was then frequently appearing at Chautauqua as conductor of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. Hendl was then director of the Eastman School, and he insisted that the opportunity and the accompanying scholarship must be kept open for Ahlstedt when he finished his service.
In those days, opera companies were very rare in the United States, and the ones which existed had few or no programs for developing young singers, such as the Young Artists Program at Chautauqua. As did most young American singers, in those days, Ahlstedt headed off to Europe, where he developed his art by singing in the many opera houses which exist in even the smallest European cities.
After winning leading roles in the opera houses of Dusseldorf, Zurich, Hamburg, Geneva, and Vienna, the tenor won a place with Opera West, the touring company attached to the San Francisco Opera House. While he was performing with them, he participated in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions, the annual program by which our country's most respected opera house invites singers in sites scattered all over the country to compete for contracts which entitle them to sing minor roles on the giant stage of the Met, while understudying international celebrities with the possibility of actually singing a leading role.
As previously mentioned, he would go on to perform nearly 200 performances with the Met, including the tenor leads in ''Pelleas et Melissande,'' ''Cosi Fan Tutti,'' ''Abduction from the Seraglio'' and ''L'Elixir d'Amour.'' While with the company, he would sing the principal role of Fenton in Giuseppe Verdi's opera ''Falstaff'' and was contracted to perform the leading role of Lindoro in Rossini's ''L'Italiana in Algieri.'' Singing the female lead was Bradford native Marilyn Horne, then considered one of the finest singers in the world.
Their performances were recorded for the Public Broadcasting Company's ''Live from Lincoln Center'' series. In recent weeks, the Deutsche Grammophon recording label has releases a DVD of the performance.
Ahlstedt has returned to perform frequently in his hometown, including a command performance for King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, when he visited Jamestown in 1976 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the settlement of New Sweden, the first settlements in the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
When James Levine celebrated his 25th anniversary as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera Company, he was asked to chose from all the recordings which have been made by the company in its long history, the outstanding performances to be made into a boxed set of recordings. Douglas Ahlstedt was the only American-born tenor to have his performances in leading roles chosen, and there were two: Fenton in ''Falstaff'' and Peleas in ''Peleas et Melissande.''
AN INTERVIEW
We spoke with the singer via telephone from Pittsburgh, where he is completing his 11th year as a professor of voice at Carnegie-Mellon University. There he specializes in voice health and has collaborated with the University of Pittsburgh's Voice Center to promote proper care of the voice.
''Linda and I love it in Pittsburgh. I've greatly enjoyed teaching and coaching young singers, and we've had a very great success rate in preparing them for professional careers,'' he said. In fact, among the 37 singers he has taught individually, 17 are actively pursuing professional careers at the moment.
Mrs. Ahlstedt retired as a teacher in Penfield, a suburb of Rochester, where they lived while he was on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music. Their three children are grown, the youngest a student at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University.
He reports that he sings frequently in the Pittsburgh area, including with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and that he often travels around the country or to Europe to sing in operas, festivals and other occasions.
Not long ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an article about Ahlstedt and his singers performing, at the intermission of a Steelers game, a chorus from the opera ''Carmen'' to which they had written words relating to football.
What will he sing at St. Luke's, on Friday? He replied, ''I plan to do a number of my personal favorites. I expect to start with some works from the early Baroque, mostly by Handel. Then I'll do a set of songs by Mendelssohn, then a set of German music, and I couldn't sing in Jamestown without doing a Swedish set. My father always said that when I sing in Swedish, you knew it's being sung by a Swede.''
The singer said he still has many relatives in Chautauqua County, and many friends and people who were influential to him when he was growing up.
''I always enjoy singing in Jamestown,'' he said. We shall anticipate his concert on Friday with great enthusiasm. Those holding season tickets to either the Jamestown Concert Association or the Warren Concert Association will be admitted without additional charge. Individual tickets are $20 and may be purchased at the door, if space is available at the church.
WINKS
Speaking of opera lovers, they will soon have an opportunity to attend a world premiere of a new opera by composer Omar Daniel and librettist Alex Poch-Goldin.
The title of ''The Shadow'' comes from a quotation from Carl Jung saying that every person has a shadow in his life, and the less that shadow is reflected in the person's life, the darker and denser it becomes.
The opera is set in Barcelona, Spain, at the beginning of the 20th century and tells the story of a mail carrier who fantasizes that he is a dashing figure who can carry off a beautiful, wealthy young woman whose home is on his delivery route.
It will be performed at the Barkeley Street Theatre, at 26 Berkeley St., in downtown Toronto. Performances will be May 21 to 24 and May 27 to 30.
Tickets are $49 for the general public and $20 for students and arts workers. Prices are in Canadian funds. Purchase them or gain additional information by phoning 416-368-3110 or visiting www.canstage.com.
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Jamestown High School is one of seven Western New York high schools who are finalists for the 2009 Kenny Awards.
This is the 16th consecutive year in which the Lipke Foundation, Gibraltar Industries and Shea's Performing Arts Center have joined to honor high schools who have presented outstanding productions of musical shows. The winning school receives a $5,000 grant to the school's theater department from the Lipke Foundation. Other awards are given for outstanding performances, technical production, orchestration, choreography, set design and vocal performance.
Jamestown's production this year was ''42nd St.'' Other finalists are Clarence High School, Frontier High School, Grand Island High School, Mount St. Mary Academy, Tonawanda High School and Wilson High School.
The awards ceremony will be held at Shea's in the Downtown Buffalo Theater District next Saturday at 4 p.m. All tickets are $8, and they may be purchased through the finalist schools or from Shea's box office.
For information about the Kenny program, phone 829-1152.
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Jamestown High School is one of seven Western New York high schools who are finalists for the 2009 Kenny Awards.
This is the 16th consecutive year in which the Lipke Foundation, Gibraltar Industries and Shea's Performing Arts Center have joined to honor high schools who have presented outstanding productions of musical shows. The winning school receives a $5,000 grant to the school's theater department from the Lipke Foundation. Other awards are given for outstanding performances, technical production, orchestration, choreography, set design and vocal performance.
Jamestown's production this year was ''42nd St.'' Other finalists are Clarence High School, Frontier High School, Grand Island High School, Mount St. Mary Academy, Tonawanda High School and Wilson High School.
The awards ceremony will be held at Shea's in the Downtown Buffalo Theater District next Saturday at 4 p.m. All tickets are $8, and they may be purchased through the finalist schools or from Shea's box office.
For information about the Kenny program, phone 829-1152.
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The 2009 season of productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada includes a production of ''Ever Yours, Oscar,'' a one-man play performed by actor Brian Bedford which deals with the life of Irish writer Oscar Wilde.
The festival has recently announced that the production's tickets are selling so briskly that six additional performances have been added. Those who have received a season visitor's guide or a calendar of performances should add performances of the Wilde show on June 26 and 28, July 9, and Aug. 1, 5, and 29.
''Ever Yours, Oscar'' will open June 9 and run through Aug. 29. The 2009 season at Stratford opened April 11, and will run through early November, with 14 different productions opening on different dates and closing on different dates.
For information about any part of the festival's season or to purchase tickets for any of its productions, phone 800-567-1600 or visit www.stratfordshakespearefestival.com. That same phone number and Web address can be used to make accommodation reservations in Stratford.
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Thursday through Saturday of the coming week, Kingdom Bound announces a Christian Music Summit at the Chapel of Cross Point in suburban Buffalo. The event is intended ''to increase skill and inspire talent.''
The event has attracted hundreds of musicians, worship leaders and church technicians from all over the northeastern U.S. and Canada. Among the activities are numerous seminars as well as an intense songwriter boot camp.
Also part of the event will be two major concerts, open to the general public, even if not attending the summit. Friday, Lincoln Brewster will be in concert. Saturday, funk-Gospel band NewWorldSon and singer Brenton Brown will perform. All tickets are $20 for either concert, or $30 for both.
For information, visit their Web site at www.kingdombound.org or phone 800-461-4485.
