Three “rules” projected onto on-stage screens greeted opera-goers as they trickled into the Howard Performing Arts Center the night of April 14. Each was a principle that Charles Reid, associate professor of music at the Andrews University Department of Music and director of the opera, wanted the audience to consider.
“There are no operas written for, or about, Seventh-day Adventists,” read the first rule. “The primary purpose of art, including opera, is to challenge us,” read the second. “You, the audience, have a critical role to play,” the third said. “You decide the meaning.”
In an interview with the Student Movement, Reid—who, before coming to Andrews, had an extensive international performance career, including nine seasons with New York’s Metropolitan Opera—said he highlighted these principles to emphasize that “we each bring to the theater our personal lens and our ideas about ethics and morality, our life experiences and all of the things that make us us.”
He explained that each audience member will understand the theater production in a way “that is basically influenced by who we already are. And that's normal,” he said. “That's how art works.”
Reid’s latest production differed from stereotypical opera performances in a number of ways, but principal was that its two acts were the first acts of two entirely different operas: “The Barber of Seville” and “Albert Herring.” “The first act of “The Barber of Seville” opened the performance, followed by the first act of “Albert Herring” after intermission.
Both operas are comedies. “The Barber of Seville” was written in 1816 by Gioachino Rossini and centers on two lovers who must outwit a powerful character in order to be together. “Albert Herring” is a 1947 English opera by Benjamin Britten about an upright young boy who experiences life outside his town’s walls and grows into himself.
Before both acts, Reid took to the stage to expand on the cultural context of each opera, emphasizing the rules he’d projected onto the screens. Before the act of “Albert Herring,” he explained that, while many of the opera’s characters resemble archetypes found in the Andrews community, “it's not us, and it wasn't written for us. So take it how you will.”
Onlookers, according to those involved in the production, responded very positively to the performance. Reid mentioned that the audience especially appreciated the community-specific tie-ins that set “Albert Herring” in Berrien Springs.
“Our church school teacher was wearing an Andrews Academy shirt, and our three students were wearing Andrews Academy and Ruth Murdoch shirts, and our police chief was wearing Campus Safety shirt,” Reid said, noting that the “creme de la creme” of the production was that “when the vicar gave his little sermon, he took the position and looked like Pastor Shane through his sermon.”
Students involved in the production also noted that the audience response was “overwhelmingly positive.”
“There was lots of cheers and applause after everything,” said Jon Clough, a sophomore studying vocal performance who played the titular role in “Albert Herring.” Clough said he had “lots of people coming up to me afterwards saying how much they appreciated it, how enjoyable it was.”
The production was initially supposed to include all acts of “Albert Herring.” Rehearsals for the opera began at the beginning of the Spring 2025 semester, but, about a month in, on Feb. 13, top Andrews administration figures stepped in to cancel the production.
“Based on a review of the libretto, the officers determined that there were Acts of this work that did not represent the values and Adventist identity of the University,” John Wesley Taylor V, president of Andrews, told the Student Movement in an email.
“The problem with the opera,” Reid said, “is that in the second act at the celebration of the king of the May, Sid, Albert's good friend, spikes his drink with some rum.” This causes “comedic chaos” and “ends the scene in a funny way.”
According to Reid, this on-stage depiction of alcohol would not have amounted to an endorsement of drinking (an act that is widely prohibited in Adventist circles).
“I think it's just telling a story,” he said. “And I think that the reality is if we set many of the Old Testament stories in play form, then we would touch on topics that are not things we would want to promote, even if the moral outcome of those stories, the messages of those stories and how they're resolved is clear and in focus.”
Reid said he tends to choose stories that “could relate to us” when he picks operas to produce. “Albert Herring,” he said, has many elements the local Adventist community could have been positively affected by.
“I feel like this is a story that anybody who's had children who've grown up, they've lived this story as a parent, and whether or not the kids who have grown up can remember what they went through and put their parents through, most kids have also lived that story,” he said.
The initial cancellation was jarring to students involved in the production.
“We woke up one day and all was fine. We're all learning our scores,” said Raleigh Pettey, a senior vocal performance student who was set to play Sid in Britten’s opera. “The next day we walk into rehearsal and it gets dropped on us like a bomb.”
News of the cancellation was especially disheartening to Davielle Smith, a recent Andrews graduate who had returned to campus from Connecticut solely to perform the role of Florence Pike.
“It was canceled the day after I arrived,” she said. “… It was almost surreal, because it's like, how did it get canceled the day after I arrived? Why couldn't it get canceled the day before I arrived?”
Within two weeks, the opera had resumed rehearsals, but with a major alteration: Instead of performing all of “Albert Herring,” the performance would include the opera’s first act alongside a portion of another opera—which ended up becoming “The Barber of Seville.”
“We lost a lot of momentum just as a department because of that,” said Pettey. “And then we had to pivot. … It felt like we were walking on eggshells: If we do this, is it going to get cut again? Because we had no idea.”
Andrews has previously been the site of a number of music department-sponsored operas that were well-received by the community. The department’s most recent productions were “Street Scene” in 2018 and “Susannah” in 2016.
Reid said that, although portions of these productions were met with some community concerns, the vast majority of responses were positive.
“For every word of concern that's been voiced to me,” he said, “I've easily received 100 words of thanks for giving our students the chance to experience this, to rise to that level, just to experience something like this in the safe environment of our campus, in our community, with our community.”
The experience of putting on an opera can be a significant positive influence in students’ lives, Reid said, sharing a story about a pre-medical student who realized that “getting to be in the opera productions had made him a better person who would be a better future doctor because he had learned how to empathize with people besides himself by stepping into the shoes of these different characters.”
“I'd never thought about it in these terms,” said Reid.
Regardless of the form the opera inevitably took, music students, faculty and community members were all very impressed with the work the students put into the production and with the quality of the end result.
“I would definitely go to it again,” said Jonathan Kasper, a sophomore studying architecture. He said it was “really cool seeing them up front with people my age,” and that their presence showed him that he “could also do something like that at some point. I guess you could say inspiring.”
Tyler le Roux, a sophomore studying aviation and music, had never been to an opera before. “I didn’t really know what to expect,” he said, adding that he “really liked” it.
“Going to student events is one of the best things to do on campus,” he said. “It's even better when it's your friends up there. It's like, yeah, I know that he's been working really hard. And then you see the final product of what you've been hearing them talk about.”
“I was really proud of the students, especially in the time to learn the parts, to have two different operas’ acts that they were presenting in different languages under the time constraints,” said Max Keller, chair of the music department. “I thought they did a fantastic job.”
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.