AVA Opera Blog

To the winner's circle...

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions comes to a dramatic ending this Sunday, April 1 at the Metropolitan Opera House, with a concert and the announcement of the winners. The concert is open to the public, and from what I remember the tickets fly out of the door.

  AVA is well represented with soprano, Angela Meade and tenor Michael Fabiano making it to the final eleven competitors.

The semi-finals were held on Sunday, March 25 in NYC. Angela sang "Casta Diva" from Norma and the "Czardas" from Die Fledermaus, and Michael sang "Questa o quella" from Rigoletto and "Torna ai felici di" from Le villi.

They will stay in NYC most of the week coaching and getting ready for the concert this Sunday with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The winners will be announced that day.

The concert itself will be recorded for radio play, and as soon as I know the date of that broadcast, I will send the information on to you.

As you know Sunday is the AVA gala called Viva la Voce!, and I’m sure many of us will have our cell phones on and ready to hear the results of the competition. How exciting, and how nerve-wracking!

Send your good vibes to both Angela and Michael.

Spring Beak #2

I told you yesterday about the ins-and-outs of the auditions process, which always happens during the spring break for the resident artists.

I don’t know any of the singers who rush off for a week in the sand and surf, except, perhaps, resident artist, soprano Zulimar Lopéz-Hernández who was able to fly home to Puerto Rico to see her husband. If she happens to find herself on the beach -  I’m jealous!

Some of the resident artists have gone home for a visit. I know that fourth year baritone Eric T. Dubin is visiting his family in Chicago, and first year baritone Stephen LaBrie is home is Houston for the week.

The beginning of this semester has been crammed full of work and music. If you think about it, AVA has produced a concert opera in January (Der Freischütz), a staged opera in February (Vanessa), and a sacred music concert in March (Jubilate!). That alone is mammoth, especially when you add to the mix the rehearsals for our April production of Manon.

I guess you can say that the Jubilate! concert was like a ‘mid-term final’, with three concerts spread over two weekends. The concerts were amazing, with beautiful singing with a very spiritual aura. One audience member wrote to me and said, “Be sure to tell them that the beauty of their voices made me weep.”

As I said some were lucky to ‘get out of town’, and other are here in Philadelphia for different reasons. Maestro Macatsoris, along with hearing the auditions is also doing musical rehearsals for Manon with some of the principal singers.

Three of the resident artists are getting ready for the MET semi-finals in New York City on Sunday, March 25th. We wish Angela Meade, Michael Fabiano and Christopher Bolduc much luck with this round of competition…I know I’ll have good news for you next week.

Baritone José Adán Pérez has been chosen to be one of the performers on Saturday, March 24th for the Hispanic Choice Awards in Philadelphia. He’ll be accompanied by José Meléndez.

On Sunday the 25th (along with the Met competition), Steven Costello and master vocal coach Richard A. Raub will be performing a small private concert at the home of one of our generous ‘Friends of AVA’ members. Also the afternoon soprano Joyce El-Khoury, mezzo-soprano Filomena Francesco Tritto, and baritone José Adán Pérez will sing a community concert at Cabrini College just outside of Philadelphia. They will be accompanied by Michele Scanlon.

So as you see, sometimes there’s no rest for the weary!

Spring Break #1

This happens to be spring break for the resident artists at AVA, but as most of you know that AVA isn’t your usual school of learning.

Although there are no classes scheduled this week, both the music and administration staffs are busy at work on their own projects.

On Monday the 19th AVA began auditions for the new resident artists who will arrive in September of 2007. The process began a few weeks ago when Mr. McDowell, our executive director and master vocal coach Richard Raub flew to Chicago to hear auditions. Singers were heard live, and a video was made of each singer for review back at AVA.

Val Starr, our Dean of Students has been the audition coordinator for many years, and has the process down pat. Not to say that it is easy when dealing with lively personalities, but she tries to make each singer feel comfortable before the audition.

The auditions are broken into two events. Monday and Tuesday are the preliminaries, which are heard by the executive director, music director and the coaching staff. Singers are called back in the evening and told whether or not they made it to the final round, which is held on Wednesday. On Wednesday the same group, plus voice teachers hear the finalists. The hard work comes when everyone has been heard and decisions have to be made as to who will be invited to AVA.

Into that mix, you have to add singers who were not able to make it to Philadelphia for the live auditions, and have sent audition tapes.

For any of you who have never sung a major audition, well, it’s not always peaches and cream. I you wake up not feeling well that day you have to decide to sing or cancel. If your transportation is late, you have to consider that your warm up time might be shorter than usual. Most of all, it’s the last few minutes wait before actually ascending to the stage to sing, when you need to get your nerves in check and be ready to be “on”.

I was in contact with one of the singers who sang on Monday and she had wonderful insight into her time at AVA when she wrote to me, “Can I just say, the audition panel was so nice, these guys just didn't give off that...audition panel vibe.  They seemed to actually enjoy the music. Refreshing, for once.”

So now comes the hard part, finding the right singers to join the AVA family. It’s not an easy thing for the singers to wait, and it’s not much easier for the staff to make the final decisions. I’m always asked online “what is AVA looking for?” and I have to say, great singing, and everything else falls into place after that.

I commend all the singers, and the music staff at AVA…

I have created a monster!

As many of you know, I try my best to blog every weekday but sometimes it gets away from me. I have actually had people write to me and ask if I was sick when I didn’t blog for three days.

The system that I use (typepad.com) for the blog is a great program. Letting you in on my secret, I tend to do up to six blogs at a time and schedule them for specific days when I want them to hit. That way I can spend just one day doing the writing. The hardest part of getting the blog to you is researching the information, putting it into blog form and adding all the correct links, so that all you need to do is click through to see all the information to complete the story.

For some of you who read the blog in the morning might notice that every so often there’s a correction that needs to happen (misspelled name, incorrect link), and I can do those at any time to bring the blog up to speed.

I have added a counter at the bottom of the blog just for some fun. It’s always nice to see how many people are reading what you have written. Since the beginning of the blog in November 2006, we have had almost 8,000 hits from all over the world to the AVA blog.

So bear with me, I’ll keep all that great news coming your way, but if you don’t see it for a day or two, don’t start calling the emergency rooms of the local hospitals!

Great News!

Every so often a piece of news comes to me that I can’t wait to share. I must admit that I have known for a while, but was asked not to mention until the time was right…well the time is now!

It’s with great pleasure that I tell all of you that resident artist tenor Stephen Costello will be making his Metropolitan Opera debut on opening night of the 2007-2008 season on September 24, 2007.

Stephen will sing the role of Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor, starring Natalie Dessay and Marcello Giordani, under the baton of James Levine. He is scheduled to sing all eleven performances in the fall and spring season.

That’s only beginning of a whirl-wind opera season for Stephen, who by then will be one of AVA’s newest graduates. It’s a full season, and although I don’t have all the dates, I’ll keep you undated with future blogs.

The Dallas Opera
Camille in The Merry Widow on 11/30, 12, 2, 5 & 8, 2007

January of 2008 – Vocal Recital in London, UK (location TBA)

Opera Company of Philadelphia
Christian in the premiere of Cyrano on 2/8, 10, 13,15 & 17, 2008

Baltimore Opera
The title role in Roméo et Juliette on 3/27, 4/2, 4 & 6, 2008

In Colorado
Concert version of The Flying Dutchman with alumnus James Morris

Forth Worth Opera
A Spring 2008 production – I’ll keep you posted

The Summer of 2008 - big things are planned, but I can't let the cat out of the bag yet.
Let's just say you may hear him at one of the largest music festivals in Europe!

I’m exausted just typing this list!

AVA Summer Camp 2007…

Truthfully AVA is not holding a summer camp this year, but many of the resident artists are staying in the area this summer while singing in Princeton, NJ.

New Jersey Opera Theater has been producing a summer season since 2003-2004 and this year there will be six AVA resident artists in two of their three productions.

Their season opens in July with Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, starring Kisma Jordan as Pamina, Coleen Daly as Queen of the Night, Jessica Julin as 1st Lady and Ben Wager as the Speaker.

The season closes with Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with AVA soprano Manon Strauss Evrard as Juliette and mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen as Stéphano.

Scott Altman, a bass-baritone well know for his New York City Opera performing days is the Artistic Director of NJOT and has filled a void with wonderful summer opera productions less than an hour from Philadelphia, in the beautiful college town of Princeton. Alumnus Allan Glassman just sang the role of the Calaf in Turandot in NJOT's semi-stage production.

Check their website for the complete summer schedule, and if you do go, stop and say hello to all the AVA’ers who will be there this summer.

Umbria Serenata

I try my best to send you news of the music staff at AVA and their performances outside of the school. Sometimes a faculty member does something that sounds like so much fun that I want to be a part of it.

Holly Phares wears a few hats at AVA. She teaches piano, music theory and solfége to the resident artists with one-on-one sessions to sharpen their skills. She also is the coordinator for the Opera Outreach Program which helps AVA bring singers and productions into local schools. One program she brings to the schools is called “Build Your Own Opera,” where the students interact with AVA singers, and with the use of music, costumes and props, design an opera scene.

This is the second summer that Holly and her co-artistic director Paulo Faustini offer a program in Italy called Umbrian Serenades. It is a 13-day choral and cultural adventure in the medieval town of Spoleto, in the mountainous and lush region of Umbria.

This is not one of those “on-the-bus, off-the-bus” tours of Italy. Part of their mission is the forming an a capella chorus to perform while enjoying the sites, sounds and tastes of the region (see, food is always involved!)

The culmination of the summer program will be a choral concert (that the attendees will sing) in Spoleto, as well as the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi and in the Palazzo in Perugia. Check their web site for more information. It sounds like a great program of choral singing, so get those chords ready and live a fantasy!

All aboard the winners train…

In the world of vocal competitions there is neither rhyme nor reason for the time it takes to go from the first auditions to the naming of the winners….each one is different and on their own agenda.

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions begin sometime after the beginning of each year and end in April. The Loren Zachary Vocal Competition began its auditions last month and will not complete its finals until early June (see my blog of  February 28th).

That brings me to the George London Vocal Competition. It began as a lamb and roared into March like a lion with seven AVA finalists, and many AVA winners. It all happened so fast last week in the middle of AVA’s run of Vanessa, that there was no time to mention it until now.

The finals of the London Competition were held on Thursday, March 1, with the winners named later that evening. That was also the night of a Vanessa production at AVA, and a few of the singers for that evenings performance did double duty, by being in NYC for their later afternoon time slot to sing for the finals and then back to Philadelphia for a 7:30 p.m. curtain at AVA.

Maybe rushing like that is the way to go, because it did pay off ….

Winners included AVA soprano alumna Ellie Dehn and resident artist tenor Bryan Hymel.

Encouragement Awards were received by  two resident artists -- soprano Angela Meade and tenor Michael Fabiano -- and AVA alumnus tenor Noah Stewart.

Finalists included soprano Takesha Meshé Kizart and baritone Christopher Bolduc, both current resident artists at AVA.

Two out of three ain’t bad….

We think of all our AVA singers on the stage, fully costumed in an opera, but there are more ways to make money and sing than that.

This week a new production of Orff’s Carmina Burana opens on March 8 – 17 with the Pennsylvania Ballet at the Academy of Music.

As anyone who knows about music can tell you, this piece is a musical powerhouse for a trio of singing soloists, and AVA will be represented by in this series of performaces by two wonderful alums: tenor Richard Troxell and baritone Levi Hernandez.

Levi is in from Chicago where he has been a regular performer with the Chicago Lyric Opera since graduating AVA in 2002. He will be featured next season as Schaunard in their production of La bohème. Although he makes his home in the Windy City, he has also performed with Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, El Paso Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera.

Richard Troxell, as many already know, lives locally in the Philadelphia suburbs. He has just returned from a concert engagement in Flint, Michigan, and will perform the National Anthem on opening day for the Baltimore Orioles on April 8th at Camden Yard – play ball!

On the road to Egypt....

I think most of us in the Philadelphia area, and for that matter most of the US is tired of the winter weather. But Sunday some of us got a treat and went to Egypt for a few hours….

One of the highlights on the AVA social calendar is the yearly gala (Viva la Voce!) which is held each Spring. This year it will be held at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia with an Egyptian theme since the King Tutankamun exhibit is in residence there.

As a prelude to the actual event, a cocktail party is thrown for the Angels and Benefactors to meet some of the artists, and this year it was a grand night.

The event was held in the offices of the Independence Foundation, one of AVA’s major funders, in the historic Bellevue Building, the location of the original Bellevue-Strafford Hotel. There was nothing “office” like with the décor, especially being greeted by two sphinx. Traveling into in the main party area you got a peek at a six foot camel, no not a real one, but none the less as big as one! The cuisine for the event was all middle-eastern and the beverages were pure Australian wines!

As with all our events, we have the pleasure of hearing the AVA resident artists and for this event soprano, Joyce El-Khoury, tenor Michael Fabiano, baritone Christopher Bolduc and Luke Houser at the piano were the entertainment. An added treat was having AVA Music Director and conductor Maestro Christofer Macatsoris saying a few words to the audience.

The gala itself will be held on April 1, and this will be my third gala while working for AVA. It will be a great night of singing and food, with this year’s special guest being alumni sopranos Indra Thomas and Ailyn Perez. They will be joing by the some of this years graduating class, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Husing-Halili, tenor Stephen Costello and baritone Eric T. Dubin. It’s a great event, with all the proceeds going to the AVA scholarship fund, helping to keep AVA a tuition free institution.

If you’re interested in coming to the gala, drop me an email.