Dear friends, welcome to the 30th anniversary of It's a Grand Night for Singing!

Can you believe it has been 30 years of a new Grand Night production each year? When we started out, we started out with the goal of introducing musical theatre songs to students who were not learning these songs in their voice studios. Most voice students begin their studies with learning the classic Italian art songs and then migrate into other languages like German, French and English. 30 years ago, the concept of mixing in a few musical theater selections was not the norm. However, when I was a young artist pursuing a career in New York, I could see where our industry was going. It was going towards a more crossover approach where singers had to learn more than one style in order to work. Classical singers were working in opera, and on the side they were creating cabaret performances of songs from the American Musical Theatre Song Book and giving performances at places like Sweetwaters in New York City. The path was clear to me. Performers in the future would need to know the operatic standards as well as the musical theatre standards in order to have a viable career. We need to train our singers to be versatile and to be able to work in more than one style of music. Being at UK gave me the opportunity to be in an environment where I could help students to learn all styles so that they could be more versatile and more marketable when they transition into professional careers. Hence GRAND NIGHT was born!

I consulted with my colleague Dr. Jim Rogers in the theatre department and asked him to help me to create a concept for a show that 30 years later is still relevant and exciting. Our vocal students have gone on from the stages of UK and achieved amazing things worldwide. It’s so exciting to say that many of the young people who started on this stage are now performing at the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco, Washington National Opera, Bayreuth, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Paris and holding prestigious faculty positions at major universities across the country. And just think, they were once all on the Singletary Center stage in Lexington, Kentucky, performing in GRAND NIGHT! Who from this year’s cast will be the next major star to perform on stage and screen around the world? I can’t wait to see! Thank you for coming out and supporting our work and our efforts to train the world’s next great performers. We really can’t do it without you! They all get their start somewhere, why not here at the University of Kentucky with UK Opera Theatre! Enjoy the show!

Everett McCorvey
Producer