Baritone Ryan Burns ’12 MM likens the preparation for his performance with the Jessica Lang Dance Co. presentation of “The Wanderer” at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 19 to having the lead role in an opera.
“It’s not something you can put together in a couple of weeks,” Burns says of singing Franz Schubert’s “Die schöne Müllerin” (The Lovely Maid of the Mill), a song cycle of 20 songs sung over an hour. “It’s been a unique challenge to prepare this body of music in such a way that you can maintain all that good technique and language and stay focused. It’s been a challenge, but a really great one.”
A doctoral candidate in music who has performed with the Connecticut Lyric Opera and the Opera Theater of Connecticut, Burns was selected by the contemporary ballet choreographer for the unique joining of dance and classical music that has been described as “a true work of art” by the Boston Globe and “a work of high craftsmanship” by The New York Times.
The innovative Jessica Lang Dance has become one of the most talked about new companies in the dance world. “The Wanderer” is a romantic contemporary tale of jealousy and obsessive desire, performed by nine dancers with sweeping choreography and imaginative set design. “Die schöne Müllerin” is based on poems written around 1820 by Wilhelm Müller and is one of the composer’s most important song cycles written in 1823 in the tradition of setting Romantic German poems to classical music.
Burns says combining the two artistic fields is “a really unique way to take something that’s almost 200 years old now and make it fresh and new. What’s unique about this particular pairing is taking two mediums that you wouldn’t necessarily think to put together. It’s a way to connect different audiences that maybe have never heard Schubert’s music or seen contemporary dance. I’ve approached it as if it were an opera, because it has so many of the same elements.”
Burns grew up in a home surrounded by music, singing, playing trumpet, and performing in musicals. As an undergraduate at St. Anselm College, he majored in criminal justice, played football, and once performed the National Anthem while in pads and uniform before a game. After completing his degree, Burns worked in the development office of his alma mater while taking voice lessons and started performing.
“The opera bug bit me,” he says. “I knew I wanted to go back to music and would have regretted it had I not done it.”
He decided to pursue a master’s degree in music and looked at several programs, deciding on UConn because of the opportunities to perform within the School of Fine Arts. In addition to his work with the Connecticut Lyric Opera and the Opera Theater of Connecticut, he has performed with the UConn Opera Theater and was a member of the ensemble for Opera Boston’s “Beatrice et Benedict.”