May 18, 2004—Singers from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College will join The Cleveland Orchestra, under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, and an international cast of singers in concert performances of Richard Strauss's Elektra at Severance Hall Thursday, May 20, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 23, at 7 p.m. Elektra will be sung in German with projected English surtitles.  The one-act opera, which lasts approximately an hour and 40 minutes, will be performed without intermission. 

The Oberlin cast members are soprano Jean Lowe as Klytemnestra's Confidante; soprano Marie Masters as Klytemnestra's Trainbearer; baritone Todd Boyce as Orest's Tutor; mezzo-soprano Karen Jesse as First Maid; mezzo-soprano Rebecca Ringle, as Second Maid; and mezzo-soprano Kathryn Leemhuis as Third Maid.

Principal roles will be sung by soprano Lisa Gasteen as Elektra, Agamemnon's daughter; soprano Christine Brewer as Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister; mezzo-soprano Felicity Palmer as Klytemnestra, their mother and Agamemnon's widow; and baritone Alan Held as Orest, Agamemnon's son.

For information about ticket prices and parking at Severance Hall, please call The Severance Hall box office: (216) 231-1111 or 1-800-686-1141. Members of the media requiring additional information about Elektra or The Cleveland Orchestra should contact Timothy Parkinson at (216) 231-7473.

Todd Boyce of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Kathryn Leemhuis of Columbus, Ohio, and Marie Masters of Fairlawn, Ohio, vocal performance majors in their junior year at Oberlin, are making their Cleveland Orchestra debuts. Rebecca Ringle of Santa Fe, New Mexico, who graduated in 2003 with a degree in vocal performance, sang the role of Thibault last June in The Cleveland Orchestra's concert production of Verdi's Don Carlo with Franz Welser-Möst conducting. Karen Jesse of Prairie View, Illinois, and Jean Lowe of Eugene, Oregon, vocal performance majors, were Flowermaidens in the Orchestra's Cleveland and Carnegie Hall concert productions of Wagner's Parsifal, Act II, under the baton of Pierre Boulez, in February. Jesse graduates from Oberlin in May; Lowe graduated in December 2003.

These appearances by Oberlin Conservatory of Music students continue the enhanced collaboration between the Orchestra and the Conservatory, established at the start of Welser-Möst's tenure as music director. The maestro took the Oberlin Orchestra through a rehearsal of Beethoven's Leonore Overture last fall in Finney Chapel, and the women of the Oberlin College Choir were on stage when mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong '02 made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in March, joining Dame Felicity Lott in Debussy's La Damoiselle élue. Malia Bendi Merad '03 sang one of the soprano roles in The Cleveland Orchestra's first performances of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt last November.

The Conservatory and Cleveland Orchestra collaboration builds upon a core element of Oberlin's mission: professional training and contact with one of the world's great orchestras is seminal to a formal music education.

"This is a marvelous opportunity for our students," says Acting Dean of the Conservatory David Stull. "We are very pleased with our evolving relationship with The Cleveland Orchestra."

Gary Hanson, executive director of The Cleveland Orchestra, says: "The Cleveland Orchestra has long enjoyed an association with Oberlin College, and because of Franz Welser-Möst's commitment to education, our relationship with this fine conservatory has been invigorated."

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated within the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. It is renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber.

Primarily an undergraduate conservatory of music, the Oberlin Conservatory provides its 585 students with unparalleled individual attention and training from more than 85 artist-teachers and scholars. Through hundreds of courses in classical and jazz performance, vocal studies, music history and theory, music education, composition and TIMARA (Technology in Music and the Related Arts), Oberlin has prepared many of the music world's notable luminaries for successful careers in all walks of the profession. Some of Oberlin's vocal performance alumni include such opera stars as Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Lisa Saffer, Derek Lee Ragin, and Edith Wiens. In 2002 and 2003, Oberlin graduates Carolyn Betty and Alyson Cambridge, respectively, won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.