VCU Opera accepts donation valued at $200,000

Tom Gresham

VCU News Center

VCU Opera has received a very special 60th birthday present.

William Welty of Charlottesville donated an elegant costume collection valued at $200,000 to VCU Opera, which is part of the Department of Music in the VCU School of the Arts, infusing the program with a professional opera company-quality collection featuring more than 1,000 articles on coat hangers and more than 40 boxes of smaller items. The pieces span generations and continents, representing a diversity of cultures and productions.

“We feel very privileged and honored beyond utterance at this gift,” said Melanie Day, who is co-director, along with Kenneth Wood, of VCU Opera.

Day said Welty’s donation gives VCU Opera a rich collection that is unusual among undergraduate programs in the United States. VCU Opera is celebrating its 60th year of operation this academic year, making it the longest-running opera program in the state.

“We have always strived to clothe the students in period costumes,” Day said. “Over the years we have collected a respectable number and this donation really sets us further apart. Very few schools in the nation have collections of this quality.”

Welty and his late wife, Louisa Panou, assembled the collection while operating Operafestival di Roma, a summer opera program they founded for young North American opera singers in Italy. Panou, a talented singer who was performing in some of Italy’s finest opera houses by the age of 16, served as the program’s artistic director for 10 years until her death six years ago. Day succeeded Panou as artistic director, working with Welty, who was the managing director, until they closed the program in 2010.

Day said it has been a blessing to know both Welty and Panou, saying that Welty is an “amazing man” with a quick wit and generous sense of humor and his late wife an inspiration to her and many others.

“She was one of the most extraordinary individuals I’ve ever known in my life,” Day said. “She just radiated energy and talent and enthusiasm. She lifted up everybody around her.”

Welty’s relationship with Day and his appreciation for the VCU Opera program were the catalysts for the donation. Welty considers VCU Opera to be an outstanding opera training program with a proven track record of graduating students who advance to successful careers in the world of opera. He also knew Day, Wood and Roland Karnatz, technical director of VCU Opera and Day’s husband, would be diligent stewards of the collection.

“I’ve worked closely with Melanie for many years and have regularly attended VCU Opera’s productions,” Welty said. “They do a wonderful job, and I know they will use and appreciate the costumes. My wife would be so proud to see young singers wearing them on stage.”

The collection includes such items as dragonheads, corsets, bustles, princess gowns, frockcoats, top hats, nuns’ habits, men’s capes and soldiers’ uniforms. Ancient Egypt is among those represented, as is 19th century Vienna, 17th century Italy and 18th century Spain. The collection includes costumes for “The Marriage of Figaro,” “Cosi fan Tutte,” “The Elixir of Love,” “Don Giovanni,” “Suor Angelica,” “Pagliacci,” “Cavalleria Rusticana,” “The Barber of Seville,” “The Magic Flute,” “Die Fledermaus,” “The Merry Widow,” “La Serva Padrona” and costumes for assorted Broadway scenes.

The pieces would be prohibitively expensive for VCU to have made.

“These are beautifully constructed, each and every one of them a labor of love,” Day said.

The looks for the costumes are complete, including both the small touches – the right kinds of buckles on shoes, the right jewels – and the large ones – elegant, intricate wigs – that lend a performance authenticity. Wood said wearing historically accurate costumes helps performers settle into their characters and move more naturally in the manner of a piece’s time and place.

“As soon as you put good costumes on the students, it becomes more real to them,” Wood said. “The characters just come to life.”

A major benefit of the new collection will be its utility as a generator of revenue. VCU Opera will rent costumes to other productions, contributing the fees raised from the rentals to a scholarship fund that will benefit students in the Department of Music. Day said the rental activity has already begun, though VCU has not done anything yet to advertise the collection’s availability.

Darryl Harper, interim director of the Department of Music, said the collection’s capabilities as a source for student scholarship funding were a tremendous value to the department, giving Welty’s gift the power to benefit the department well beyond the opera program. “It’s wonderful,” Harper said.

VCU Opera will present performances of “Hansel and Gretel” with the Greater Richmond Children’s Choir and VCU Symphony on April 30 and May 1 at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts.

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