AVA Opera Blog

But the pictures are good...

The opera season is beginning earlier these days, and I sometimes miss telling all of you about recent productions that our alums performed. Thank goodness for my AVA alumni group on Facebook and the great photos I can find on there. Here are a few I recently unearthed.

 
Bass Burak Bilgili as Ferrando in Il trovatore with San Francisco Opera. With a quick goodbye to California, Mr. Bilgili is not at Michigan Opera Theater for their production of Nabucco, along with fellow alumna Carla Dirlikov, with opens this weekend.

 
Most recent alumna Jessica Rose Cambio as Mimi in La boheme at Teatro Sociale di Como in Italy. Ms. Cambio wrote to say that "soprano superstar, Mirella Freni was in the audience, and it was a great thrill to have sung my first Mimi for her." From Como the production moved to Cremona, Brescia, and Pavia.

  Soprano Othalie Graham as Turandot with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. mline.com said of Ms. Graham "She made the Turandot part entirely her own. With a big sound and able upper tessitura..."

 
  We hit paydirt with San Antonio Opera! Three alums in Madama Butterfly. Baritone Luis Ledesma as Sharpless, tenor Jeffrey Halili as Goro, and bass Matthew Arnold as the Bonze.

Stage director, John de Lancie, of Star Trek fame set this production in the future. AVA master vocal coach, and wife of Mr. Ledesam, Danielle Orlando said that it was quite interesting and actually worked.
From the photo, I can't quite tell who Mr. Arnold, as the Bonze, is supposed to be, but makes for good conversation.

San Antonio Express news said of Luis, "the performance by the U.S. consul, Sharpless, sung by baritone Luis Ledesma, was the strongest."
 
 
 
 

The winner and new champion...

Yesterday I announced that the winner of AVA’s Bel Canto competition was mezzo-soprano Margaret Mezzacappa. Now you get to meet her…

Margaret is from Euclid, Ohio, and she received a B.M. in Music Performance from the Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music, where in 2008 she was the winner of the Baldwin-Wallace College Concerto Competition.

While at Baldwin-Wallace College her roles included Public Opinion in Orpheus in the Underworld, Baba in The Medium, Juno in Semele, Mum in Albert Herring, Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, and The Sorceress in Dido and Aneas.

She moved to Philadelphia with her best friend, a five-year-old pug named Wheezer. You’ll be able to see her in all of AVA’s performances of Falstaff, where she sings the role of Dame Quickly.

The cat's out of the bag...

Last Tuesday night was AVA’s annual Oreste Giargiari and Son Arturo Bel Canto Competition at the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center.

This is an AVA vocal competition in which the resident artists partake with a first, second and audience favorite awards given out at the end of the evening. This year’s judges were Harold Evans, Julian Rodescu, and Barbara Silverstein, and the singing field was wide open, as they say, with anyone one of the twenty singers taking the prize.

Master vocal coach Danielle Orlando was the music director and pianist, and Mr. Rodescu mentioned how she made the piano sound like an orchestra.

And now for the moment you have all been waiting for – the winners…

First place was awarded to first year resident artist, mezzo-soprano Margaret Mezzacappa
Ms. Mezzacappa won by performing the aria Voce di donna from La Gioconda by Ponchielli

Second place was a tie
Third-year soprano Michelle Johnson
performing "Ebben?...Ne andrò lontana" from La Wally by Catalani
and
First-year soprano Na Li Youm
performing "Tu che di gel sei cinta" fromTurandot by Puccini

Audience Favorite was third year tenor Taylor Stayton
performing "É la solita storia del pastore" from L’Arlesiana by Ciléa

This past Sunday AVA took to the airwaves and broadcast on WRTI 90.1 FM the entire competition for the listening audience. Last year’s winner and alumna, soprano Jessica Julin was on hand for a live interview, while the listening audience was asked to choose their favorite.

The votes were counted and the listening audience’s favorite was first-year soprano Na Li Youm.

To hear all the above winners, go to the AVA web site front page.

Can't stop Texas...

One new AVA resident artist from Texas is wonderful, BUT two new AVA singers from Texas is amazing!

Baritone Norman Garrett hails from Lubbock, and  received his M.M. in Voice from The College-Conservatory at the University of Cincinnati and a B.M. in Vocal Performance from Texas Tech University.

He has performed with Cincinnati Opera and Cedar Rapids Opera in such roles as Escamillo in Carmen, with Texas Tech University; Thoas in Iphigenie en Tauride, and Alcindoro in La bohème, both with the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Berlin has the best...

Berlin, Germany has been the location of two AVA alum debuts this month, in two different major opera houses!

Most recent graduate Ben Wager is spending a year at Deutsche Oper Berlin. He follows in the footsteps of baritone Markus Beam and mezzo-soprano Nicole Piccolomini who also spent time at Deutsche Oper at the beginning of their careers.

Ben recently sang the role of Zuniga in Carmen, his first production in his new home. His manager, Neil Funkhouser was in Berlin to hear Ben sing, and sent the above photos for all the blog readers.

Neil did double duty while in Berlin. He also had the chance to see Ailyn Perez sing Violetta in La traviata (click here for photos) at the Staatsoper unter den Linden on September 20. Ailyn is singing three performances of this, one of her signature roles, in Berlin. She has also sung it for San Francisco Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Opera Theater of St. Louis. She has one more performance on October 10. 

Following her performances in Berlin, Ailyn will be back in London for a solo recital as part of the Rosenblatt Recital Series on October 15, followed by a duo recital at the Morgan Library in NYC with fellow alum, James Morris on December 13 at 4:30 pm.

Before her debut in Berlin, Ailyn Pérez made her debut with the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile as Leila in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles opposite Dimitri Korchak and conducted by Alain Guignal. Read more about this production on Neil's blog.