UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eisenhower Auditorium will celebrate its 50th anniversary on April 25 with a performance that reprises the auditorium’s first performance in 1974.
The grand performance of “50 Forward: Beethoven’s Ninth Revisited” will feature an orchestra (Penn State’s Philharmonic Orchestra), a mass choir (composed of all six Penn State choirs) and four soloists (a soprano, an alto, a tenor and a bass).
Julia Wolcott, soprano soloist
A State College native, Wolcott graduated from Penn State in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in voice performance.
“Whenever something great would happen, whenever I’d have a really great meal, I would just burst out singing,” Wolcott said. “I grew up in a family of people who are much quieter than me, and so they would beg me to stop. [And then] at one point, they said ‘We have to get her some voice lessons.’”
Growing up in region, one of the first venues Wolcott performed in was Eisenhower Auditorium. Now, the New York-based soprano is returning to perform Beethoven’s Ninth.
“I’m just excited to bring this music to my community,” Wolcott said. “Getting to bring it to the town that raised me, it feels very personal. It’s almost like getting to say thank you in the best way that I know how, which is through music.”
“Ode to Joy” began as a poem by German poet Friedrich Schiller in 1785. Ludwig van Beethoven then adapted the text and gave it a melody in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony in 1824.
“I think the beautiful thing about music is that it is a living, breathing organism,” Wolcott said. “I think what’s so amazing is getting to put your imprint on that music for a moment, and then you give it to the next person. And I think that’s such a special human idea … First Schiller wrote the poem, and then Beethoven was like, ‘Oh, let me put my imprint on that piece of art.’ And then now it’s passed on to us in State College, [and] who knows where it’ll go next.”
Wolcott said it’s so important for young musicians to never stop learning, asking questions or being curious.
“When you are open to learning, when you are open to receiving the world around you, I think that’s how you broaden yourself as an artist,” Wolcott said. “Accept that you will be an eternal student if you choose a life in music.”
Lisa Marie Rogali, alto soloist
Rogali, from Hawley, Pennsylvania, graduated from Penn State in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in music education.
“At the time, I didn’t really know much about opera,” Rogali said. “I liked to sing, and obviously, I was there to study music. But my professors were really the ones who pushed me into the opera field. They saw something in me, they heard this voice, and that’s kind of where it all started. And ever since then, I just started pursuing performance as opposed to teaching.”
For the past 50 years, Eisenhower Auditorium has been a hub for the fine arts in Centre County, and Beethoven’s Ninth represents that legacy.
“Everybody knows the ‘Ode to Joy,’ but it’s a theme that has become kind of universal with unity and hope and inspiration,” Rogali said. “It feels very symbolic in that way, keeping the arts alive, keeping ourselves positive, through all this stuff that’s going on in the world right now.”
Rogali’s hope for the next 50 years is that people keep coming out to support the arts and trying new things.
“People might not even know that they know the music from [Beethoven’s Ninth],” Rogali said. “And the only way you’re going to be able to know if you like something is if you give it a try. So I’m always pushing on people, ‘Come to the opera, you might like it.’ You never know, right?”