Spotlight: Matthew M. Spellberg '09 & John M. Sullivan '09

Every February, the Dunster House dining hall transforms from eating place to opera house as its Opera Society’s production takes the stage. Last year, “The Marriage of Figaro” was a huge success, and this year’s production of “Cosi Fan Tutte” (February 8-9 and 13-14) marks the 15th anniversary of the Dunster House Opera (DHO) series. To learn more about this year’s opera, The Harvard Crimson caught up with stage director Matthew M. Spellberg ’09 and musical director John M. Sullivan ’09.

Spellberg and Sullivan worked the DHO’s “Marriage of Figaro” last year as well. At last year’s Arts First festival, Spellberg took his opera-directing talents outside of Dunster. Both have also participated in many other musical activities that the college has to offer: Sullivan sings in the Harvard University Choir and Glee Club and Spellberg in Harvard’s Early Music Society. However, Sullivan feels that involvement in opera in particular helps raise awareness of a genre that has often been regarded as inaccessible by students.

Sullivan: I think a lot of people who might not have had the chance to go to an opera before take the opportunity to go to a Dunster House Opera production. It’s a really important aspect of the opera’s mission to make the genre available to people who might not have very much experience with opera at all. All productions are in English so people who show up can understand them without having done preparatory work in Italian.

Acting as a director rather than a producer (a role he filled last year), Spellberg says he enjoyed incorporating his own ideas into the production.

Spellberg: It’s a more fun job than producing. It is more daunting but more interesting—you have more agency over the show and can really say what you want to say: you have so much control over the design scheme, the movement, and the costuming.

For example, Spellberg opted to stage Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte” in an English country house during the 1920s rather than the original 18th century Italy. The show makes use of gramophones and cameras to make the production authentically anachronistic.

Spellberg: It’s a darkly funny show and lends itself to a certain kind of flamboyance. It’s an opera that enjoys a touch of extravagance in a way that the ’20s had. To set it in the twentieth century would be to set it in a moment in history where the social world is about to crumble. The aristocratic social world is on its last legs, and the servants are smarter in a certain way than the wealthy, foolish lovers.

While it is certainly an arduous task to put on an opera in a dining hall, Spellberg and Sullivan believe that the finished product and the experience are definitely worth the time and effort.

Sullivan: Having done opera for two years at Harvard, it’s amazing to see how many dedicated people there are involved with opera. Everyone who I’ve worked with has been helpful in making it into such a good production as possible. It’s been great to work with them.

Spellberg: Having to integrate technical objects into the space takes a lot of people and it’s a cool experience to watch it all materialize overnight and then disappear again in time for breakfast the next morning.



—Elizabeth L. Mead