By Daily Press staff
The Emmy Award-winning Santa Monica College Opera Theatre this month will host its First Annual Spring Film Festival, featuring video highlights of past productions, many of which have been aired on television.
The festival will be held at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 12, in the SMC Concert Hall, 1900 Pico Blvd. The 1 1/2-hour program will feature the video of “Patti Gallagher & Donald Fredrickson in Concert,” which was taped a year ago and is now available in DVD and VHS, as well as clips from the Emmy Award-winning video “Faust” and the National Opera Association Video Award-winning “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The film festival is a fundraising benefit for the SMC Opera Theatre.
The Gallagher-Fredrickson program featured the acclaimed soprano — who has performed throughout the nation, including the White House — and her accompanist.
Gallagher, a retired voice, acting and speech professor at SMC and Los Angeles City College, has had a long career in opera, musical theatre, acting and television. She started her career with a tour of Menotti’s opera, “The Telephone,” and continued to tour in operas, plays and musicals throughout the Midwest and in Los Angeles, where she also had a starring role in the television series, “Someone Is Out There.”
Gallagher has been a soloist with several orchestras, most recently the Coachella Valley Symphony Orchestra.
Since retiring in 1998 and moving to Palm Springs, she has been active as a performer in the Palm Springs area. In October 2000, she won the Miss Senior America crown and in December 2000 she was a soloist in the East Room of the White House.
Fredrickson is a pianist who accompanies musical theatre, opera workshops, choral activities and applied music programs at SMC and El Camino College in Torrance. At those schools, he has accompanied performances and master classes with Roberta Peters, Sherrill Milnes, Eddie Daniels, Richard Stolzman, John Raitt, Marni Nixon, John Aler, Carol Neblett and International Pavarotti Competition winner Timothy Blevins.
Recently he was honored with an Emmy for his contribution to the video of the SMC Opera Theatre’s production of “Gounod's Faust.”
A frequent recitalist in the South Bay, Fredrickson has accompanied the L.A. Master Chorale, Welsh Choir of Southern California, and the South Bay Opera. He has also appeared at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan; Gammage Theatre in Tempe, Ariz.; and, in August 2002, on harpsichords and virginals at Fentone House in London. He is currently the organist at First Church of Christ Scientist in Long Beach and a violinist with the SMC Symphony.
Tickets are $16. Call (310) 434-3000.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 8, 2005. Read the original PDF.