|
Music Department brings in guest stage
director for opera
Jessica Trenchik / Features Editor
The already enormously talent-filled music department here at CSU has again had the good fortune of adding a very valuable member to the crew of this year’s upcoming opera. This valuable new member is Cindy Oxberry, a woman with a multitude of talent and experience in classic opera and musical theatre.
Oxberry is a New York native, with a permanent residence in Manhattan. She commutes to Columbus on the weekends to be the stage director for the CSU’s upcoming “Opera Gala 2000.”
According to Joseph Golden, CSU’s opera director, Oxberry “has had a very fine career as an opera singer and also a singer in Broadway musicals. She started another career as a stage director about four years ago.”
When Oxberry decided to make the switch to directing, she began contacting people she had met through her career over the years so as to make her availability known. One of the people she contacted was CSU’s own Shirley Brumbaugh Dillard, the head of the voice department.
Dr. Brumbaugh Dillard then let Golden know that Oxberry’s services would be available for The Merry Widow, last year’s opera.
From the first time Golden spoke with Oxberry he says he “could tell that she was enthusiastic and energetic and highly imaginative.”
Shortly after having signed the contract to be stage director for The Merry Widow, Oxberry began to experience some exciting career advancements.
Placido Domingo, one of the world famous Three Tenors, asked Oxberry to be artistic director for his Washington Opera Company in D.C. After working with Oxberry and recognizing her extreme talent, Domingo invited Oxberry to direct him in his performance celebrating his forty-year anniversary of being on an opera stage. He then also hired her as artistic director for the Los Angeles Opera.
In addition to her work with the Washington and Los Angeles operas, Oxberry also teaches voice at Wagner College in Long Island twice a week.
Needless to say, the music department was highly impressed with the contributions that Oxberry made to The Merry Widow. “We were thrilled that she was able to come back again,” says Golden.
Oxberry goes above and beyond the typical duties of a stage director. Besides just telling the cast how and where to move on stage, “she gives them acting lessons on the spot,” Golden says. “She really is, what we call, ‘coaching’ the actors,” he also adds.
Oxberry’s talents, however, do not end with directing and coaching. According to Golden, “She also has had a career as a professional dancer. She is a professional wig and make-up expert, and she is a professional seamstress.”
Oxberry has contributed all of these talents to the opera as well. She has been working on costuming and showing students how to do their hair and make-up.
Golden says that one of the best things about working with Oxberry is that “[h]er unique way of staging gives everybody something to do. She makes everybody feel like they’re really part of the scene.”
Golden feels that Oxberry “really cares about each person individually,” and that is not something you find in most directors, according to Golden.
The interaction between Oxberry and the students has been very positive, Golden feels. “They know how much they’re learning from her,” he says.
“She gives the student a sense that they’re learning things that they’re going to have to do for the rest of their lives, which is the most important thing,” Golden states.
Golden sums up his overall feelings about working with Oxberry when he says, “She turned out to be just world class.”
|
