Join us from 3 to 6 pm on July 8th for a real treat! Nearly 1,500 singers between the ages of 20 and 30 competed in this year's Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions - considered the most prestigious opera competition in North America. Five were ultimately selected, and will be heard in our broadcast on Sunday.
The talented winners of the competition each received a monetary prize of $15,000 along with notable career recognition. The following five winners are featured in the Grand Finals Concert: Janai Brugger, soprano from Darien, IL; Anthony Clark Evans, baritone from Owensboro, KY; Matthew Grills, tenor from Newtown, CT; Margaret Mezzacappa, mezzo-soprano from Euclid, OH (and an AVA resident artists!); and Andrey Nemzer, countertenor from Moscow, Russia. The winners were selected from nine finalists who performed arias with the Metropolitan orchestra, conducted by Andrew Davis.
Past winners include many of today's most famous operatic artists such as Renee Fleming, Hei-Kyung Hong, Angela Meade, Susanna Phillips, Sondra Radvanovsky, Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham, Stephanie Blythe, Dolora Zajick, Nathan Gunn, Lawrence Brownlee, Thomas Hampson, and Samuel Ramey.
The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions is a program designed to discover promising young opera singers and assist in the development of their careers. The auditions are held annually in fourteen regions of the United States and Canada. There are 42 districts within these regions, each providing an opportunity for talented singers to enter the Auditions Program at the local level. The Auditions are administered by National Council members and volunteers in each region.