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| Living the dream: Faculty of Music benefactor Desautels sings with WSO | | Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2012 4:45 PM |
| | NEWS |
| St. Boniface-born philanthropist Marcel Desautels was just a bit nervous while donning his black tie and tails on June 19 to perform opera with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra at the Centennial Concert Hall.
The music lover and benefactor of the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music has performed with some regularity, including at music faculty events and at the annual homecoming concerts, but this concert drew over 2,000 audience members. “You’d better be nervous,” he quipped at rehearsal. “It keeps the adrenaline flowing.”
It’s been a lifelong dream of his to perform with a full orchestra. In fact, he’d considered entering a lottery with a chance at performance as the prize. Then Desautels met WSO conductor Alexander Mickelthwate at a dinner hosted by President David Barnard. It was at that event that Mickelthwate learned Desautels is a classically-trained singer who loves opera.
As a result of this meeting, Alexander contacted Edmund Dawe, dean of the Faculty of Music, to discuss the possibility of having Desautels sing with the WSO in an upcoming Solstice concert celebrating the symphony’s 65th anniversary. At the concert, the tenor fulfilled his dream and sang “Vesti la Giubba” from Pagliacci and “Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz” by Franz Lehar, accompanied by the WSO, to a standing ovation.
Kathleen Twaddle, coordinator of the opera theatre program at the U of M, attended the concert and said the night was electric. “There was a real vibe in the air,” she said. “It was a packed house and just a lovely evening.”
A love of music has inspired the enormously-successful businessman’s philanthropy as well. In May 2008, the U of M’s Faculty of Music was recipient of a $20 million gift from Desautels and his Foundation, establishing it as the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music. The gift has been divided into two parts: $10 million to help fund construction of a state-of-the-art concert hall in the Taché Arts Project and the remaining $10 million to create an endowment fund in support of the activities of the Faculty of Music.
Dawe said work is progressing well on the 500-seat Marcel A. Desautels Concert Hall and new teaching and rehearsal spaces for music. The Taché Arts Project is slated to open in the fall of 2014.
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| | | For more information, contact:
Mariianne Mays Wiebe
Editor, The Bulletin
Marketing Communications Office
bulletin@umanitoba.ca
Phone: (204) 474-8111
Fax: (204) 474-7631
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