Reporter Volume 25, No.27 May 5, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

While many symphony orchestras across the country are experiencing
difficulty finding audiences and have corresponding financial
problems, Gary Burgess says that opera in the United States is
thriving. The opera company he founded is living proof of his point.
	"Some people say opera is dead in this country, but there are
more opera companies in the United States today than there were 50
years ago," says Burgess, associate professor of voice and opera at
UB, and the founder and artistic director of the Greater Buffalo Opera
Company. "Today every city in the United States has one, if not two,
opera companies," Burgess says.
	Burgess, who is also director of UB's Opera Workshop and of
the Vocal Arts Institute at UB, was born in Bermuda. His mother played
piano, and so there was always a piano in the house. But although
Burgess studied piano and voice in high school, while growing up he
never thought he would make music his career. In fact, when he went to
Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, he enrolled as a pre-med
student.
	"I sang solos with the school chorus from the moment I went to
college, and I quickly found myself in the music building more than in
my science labs," Burgess says. "So I switched in my second year to
majoring in voice."
	After college, Burgess moved to New York City, where he
studied voice at the Juilliard School of Music with Sergius Kagen. He
soon received a fellowship to study at the Saint Cecilia Academy of
Music in Rome. But even then his future as a singer remained
uncertain.
	"When I came back to the U.S. after being in Italy, I didn't
do much singing for awhile," Burgess says. "I taught choral music at
Niagara Wheatfield High School for a couple of years. But I began to
feel stagnant, and so I went back to school."
	Burgess went to Indiana University for his graduate education,
where he studied with Margaret Harshaw, who had been a famous singer
at the Metropolitan Opera for years, and who taught many other
important singers. When Burgess finished his graduate degree, he went
to Philadelphia and worked with the Curtis Institute of Music, partly
because he wanted to keep studying with Harshaw.
	"My career as a singer started in Philadelphia," Burgess says.
"I made my debut there, in a performance with the San Francisco
OperaQI was a member of their company for ten years."
	Burgess' European debut came in 1973, with the Greek National
Opera in Athens. Over the course of his career he has sung at most of
the major opera houses in Europe, he says.
	He came to UB as a member of the voice faculty in 1976. On his
first sabbatical in 1984, Burgess taught as a visiting scholar at the
Poulenc Conservatoire in Tours, France. He also taught in Beijing,
China as a visiting scholar in 1988, the second UB music faculty
member to be involved in a teaching exchange with China.
	Burgess founded the Greater Buffalo Opera Company in 1986, and
has been its artistic director ever since. "The budget for music here
at UB had been cut," Burgess says, "and so one of the reasons I
founded the GBO was that I had to have a place for my students to
sing. But when I decided to start the company, Buffalo was also the
only city of its size in the whole country that did not have its own
opera company. We are now a nationally recognized regional company."
	This is the second year that Burgess has directed the Vocal
Arts Institute, which will run its program this summer from July 10-24
in Baird and Slee Halls at UB. The institute was founded last year as
the Keenan Vocal Arts Institute at the Keenan Center in Lockport. A
number of renowned artists will come to visit Buffalo this summer and
teach at the institute, including such famous singers as Licia
Albanese, Maureen Forrester and Maria Pelligrini, and renowned stage
director Janet Bookspan.
	At UB, Burgess teaches an opera workshop for both graduates
and undergraduates, and works with them in such areas as stage craft,
interpretation, body movement, singing, and other necessary parts of a
career in opera. He meets with students individually for an hour each
week. Students are graded on how well they do in the opera which they
perform at the end of each semester, Burgess says.
	"Many of our graduate singers go on to sing in professional
opera companies," Burgess says. "Seven or eight of our graduates sing
professionally in Europe."
	The Greater Buffalo Opera Company recently performed Richard
Strauss' Salome , a one-act music drama based on the stage poem by
Oscar Wilde, at Shea's Buffalo. At Artpark this summer the GBO plans
to do two operas in conjunction with the Academy of Vocal Arts in
Philadelphia, both of which Burgess is directing. Mozart's
Impressario, a chamber opera, will be performed at
Artpark-at-the-Church on July 1,2,3. Madame Butterfly with be
performed at the main Artpark theater on July 8,9,10.
	Burgess points out that while symphony orchestras are
struggling, many opera companies actually make profits. "Operas
attract younger crowds, which symphony orchestras don't often do,"
Burgess says. 
	Why is opera popular these days, when many other areas of
classical music performance are struggling? "I think the answer is
that opera is a multi-faceted art form," Burgess says. "There's not
just music, there's also singing, scenic design, costuming and
make-up. Opera involves many other art forms. There's drama on stage,
and visual aspects to help people enjoy what's happening. To get
people off their couches in an age of TV, you have to give them a
little more."
	"A city like Buffalo has to offer people more than just sports
entertainment," Burgess says.
	Strangely enough, while music events that take place on the UB
campus draw strong audiences from Buffalo, Burgess thinks it's harder
to draw audiences for such events from the UB population itself.
	Burgess says, "We have a major music department and Fine Arts
Center here. But while the general public takes advantage of what we
have, UB students, faculty and staff are here all day and tend not to
come back in the evening.
	"There's a tremendous number of interesting events going on
hereQstudent recitals, faculty recitals, a Visiting Artist Series,"
Burgess says. "But we need a better audience from UB, now more than
ever. What we offer is a major part of education."