Katherine Parker, Teaching Assistant Professor of Voice at UNR and the Artistic Director of Nevada Opera Theatre, says that H.M.S. Pinafore ‘has really everything. You have the grand sweeping arias, but you also have the high energy dance numbers … there’s also a lot of comedy, fun satire, the wicked wit of Gilbert in this, which he carried on throughout his entire career.’
The works of Gilbert and Sullivan have been influential. As Parker says, ‘I don’t think we’d have Jerome Kern or Gershwin without Gilbert and Sullivan.’
Parker has worked at the University of Nevada, Reno for some six years: ‘I wear a lot of hats. I advise all of the classical voice students. I teach opera and musical theater students. I teach vocal literature. I get to teach everybody, whether they are a music minor, whether they’re a non-major … students that are just starting out and taking voice lessons for the very first time. But voice science and vocology, which is about working with habilitating singers, whether they’re coming back from injury, and getting them back to peak performance, is really where my passion is lying now.’…