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Jakarta Post

Untung P. Siahaan: Promoting opera

(JP/Nani Afrida)People have their own musical tastes and so does Untung P

Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, April 17, 2013

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Untung P. Siahaan: Promoting opera (JP/Nani Afrida) (JP/Nani Afrida)

(JP/Nani Afrida)People have their own musical tastes and so does Untung P. Siahaan. While his friends love listening to pop music, young Untung prefers to listen to classic music, specifically opera.

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. The performers are accompanied by an orchestra or a small musical ensemble.

As part of Western classical music, opera is not so famous in Indonesia, but Untung has been learning about opera since he was 23 years old. He knows, for instance, that of the 98 well-known operas, only one opera concludes with a happy ending; the rest all have tragic endings.

'€œOpera as a discipline demands singers with high quality voices and knowledge about opera itself,'€ the 48 year-old-told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview in Jakarta.

Untung is not only a dedicated audience member for opera; he can sing and perform opera as well. He was trained to sing by prominent singing teacher Annete Frambach for almost two years, starting in 1986. Annete once said that Untung was the best tenor in Indonesia.

Untung visited Annete once a week to practice for 30-40 minutes. As he was so interested in becoming a good singer, Untung spent more time to practice and develop his singing at home.

Annete was the best teacher for him because she let Untung sing without offering any criticism for 18 months. But thereafter, when Untung'€™s singing had considerably improved, Annete began to offer constructive criticism.

'€œTante [Aunt] Annete said that I was a musically intelligent person. She thought I was also clever at school,'€ Untung recalled, smiling.

The truth was that Untung preferred to read books on music than economics, even though he was a student of economics at the University of Indonesia (UI). As consequence, Untung had to stay at university longer as he did not submit his thesis on time.

Untung did not always practice his singing alone. In 1989, he joined the university choir, Paragita. Soon after that, he was made a conductor for the choir, thanks to his singing ability.

'€œIn 1992, Paragita received the prize for the best choir in Indonesia. Our pianist also received a prize during the time when I was the conductor,'€ the father of three said.

His career as Paragita'€™s conductor ended once he got married in 1993 and was busy with family concerns.

Untung then became a voice coach for the AMA choir in 1998, after which the choir encouraged him to contribute with more than just the vocal training.

'€œI became a singer with the choir,'€ said Untung, who is also a managing consultant for Bangun Tunggal Consulting.

The group went international in 2010 by competing in the 27th Franz Schubert International Choir Competition and Festival in Austria, during which AMA received a gold certificate.

Although he feels happy about all the prizes gained by the choirs, Untung still thinks about opera.

'€œUnfortunately, no one had a similar idea about performing opera until I met soprano Diani Sitompul,'€ he said.

Before performing in a full-length real opera with Diani, Untung performed several duets with the soprano in shows for charity.

In October 2011, Diani and Untung held the first of their operatic evenings at Erasmus Huis Jakarta. The duo sang a combination of duets and arias from mainly Italian operas, including highlights from Verdi'€™s La Traviata, as well as pieces by Puccini, Donizetti and Mozart.

Untung said it would have been impossible to perform La Traviata in its entirety as it would have taken an immense budget, orchestral music, additional wardrobes and, of course, it would have been much longer for the audience.

'€œThe full opera lasts around three hours; the audience will likely become sleepy. So we selected the key moments from the opera,'€ Untung said.

That first show has now been joined by a successor. On April 6 this year, Untung and Diani again performed an operatic evening, '€œA Night with Verdi and Puccini'€, at the Jakarta Playhouse (GKJ).

 The show presented operatic arias from Verdi and highlights from La Boheme by Puccini. Verdi and Puccini are the most-beloved and best-known composers of opera in Italy, the country where opera originated.

Around 50 people were involved in '€œA Night with Verdi and Puccini'€, including musicians playing the piano, violins and flutes. The performance was attended by around 300 people.

'€œWe want to show Indonesians that opera is a beautiful musical form; and after performing twice in Indonesia, we believe people like opera,'€ Untung said with a big smile.

He acknowledged that the majority of people interested in opera were mostly from music societies or people involved in choirs. However, Untung insists that opera is a musical performance that is enjoyable.

'€œAt the latest show, we distributed guide books and song texts in Italian. We also translated the songs into Indonesian, so the audiences could understand what we were singing,'€ Untung said.

As an operatic tenor, Untung must sing in Italian. Surprisingly, he has never visited Italy or made an intensive study of Italian. Instead, he learned all the operatic arias by himself.

According to Untung, Italian is easy to learn for a Batak (North Sumatra native) like himself.

'€œI don'€™t mean to boast but several members of the audience said my pronunciation was perfect, despite never having lived in Italy,'€ said Untung, who maintains his voice by drinking hot lemon water.

He believes that to be a performer, one does not need formal schooling, citing the case of the late Luciano Pavarotti, the world-famous Italian tenor.

'€œPerhaps I will go to study music in a summer class in Austria to improve my skill,'€ he said.

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