It was a performance to remember.
Twenty-nine Hunter College students attended the final dress rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production, Ainadamar, thanks to their instructor, Adjunct Associate Professor Leah Batstone.
Batstone organized the trip for the students of her “Thousand Years of Listening” introductory musicology course – many of whom are freshmen and the majority of whom had never seen a performance at the Met.
The students listened to the 90-minute opera and observed another 20 minutes of rehearsals – enjoying it all. A Grammy Award–winning first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, Ainadamar depicts the life of 20th century avant-garde Spanish poet-playwright Federico García Lorca, who was murdered by fascists in 1936. Its libretto, translated into Spanish, is by playwright Henry David Hwang.
“I have already had several students in the class ask how they can attend more performances,” Batstone said. “I consider each of these requests to be a small victory for liberal arts education.”
Batstone always does musical outings with her classes. On October 24, the class attended a performance of Mozart’s Requiem by the Fort Greene Orchestra.
“The immersive and accessible approach of the ensemble, which performs in an atmospheric cathedral in Prospect Heights, complete with light design and interactive presentations by the conductor, is perfect for introducing students to the beauty and magic the concert hall can offer,” she said.
Extra-curricular activities are a signature of Batstone, who has been teaching courses at Hunter since fall 2018. Her students frequently attend performances at the Met, including a group who attended Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones when it premiered in 2021 and are now the face of the Met Students webpage. Students in one of her history courses for music majors even had the chance to sit in on a closed rehearsal with Maestro Yannick Nezet-Seguin ahead of the 2019 performance of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.
She has also taken groups to performances by the New York Philharmonic and to the Compline by Candlelight service at Trinity Church Wall Street, as well as to connect musical and visual arts through trips to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. Her students even visited the Neue Galerie’s Café Sabarsky to experience Austrian coffeehouse culture while studying music in fin-de-siècle Vienna.
According to the educator’s guide that Batstone prepared for the Met, “Golijov’s groundbreaking score is a rich sonic tapestry combining conventional operatic singing and orchestral music with Spanish flamenco, amplified instruments, prerecorded sounds, and electronic sampling, in addition to extended improvisational sections” that “straddles the boundaries of convention and innovation, bringing new genres and stories to the operatic stage.”
Hunter recently reorganized its Office of the Arts to emphasize partnership with New York City arts organizations such as the Met.
