VGCC students experience Opera
More than a dozen Vance-Granville Community College students recently moved their study of opera from the classroom to one of the state’s finest performing arts facilities. On Oct. 4, VGCC music instructor Michael Stephenson took a group of students, along with a few VGCC faculty and staff members, to Memorial Auditorium at the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, to see Rigoletto, the opera by the 19th-century Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The opera was presented by the Opera Company of North Carolina as the opening of their 2009-2010 season.
“This was the first opera performance that any of the students had ever attended,” Stephenson said. “It was a world class performance.” The students are enrolled in one of Stephenson’s three Music Appreciation classes — one taught at the college’s main campus, one taught at South Campus in Granville County and one taught online. Music Appreciation ( MUS 110 ) is a basic survey of the music of the Western world.
Above: A group from Vance-Granville Community College poses outside Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh on Oct. 4. On front row, from left: Dean of Arts and Sciences Dr. Michael Ellis, Joshua Moore, Joshua O’Briant, Angel Yauchzee, Michael Yauchzee and instructor Michael Stephenson; on back row, from left: Andrew Boeye, Jacob Moore, Melissa Harrod, Rebecca Vandergriff, Zack Egerton, William Hester, part-time VGCC librarian Frank Sinclair, Debbie Masone and Christian Masone. Not pictured: students Melanie Overton, Amy Hayden, David Mwambua and Chartie Parrish, and VGCC Electronics Engineering program head/instructor Tom Bowen.
