Camps, Competitions, & Festivals
Music Competitions
Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions
The auditions for this year were held on October 28, 2007 in the Music Recital Hall. For more information, contact Dr. David Cody at 406-243-4691 or david.cody@umontana.edu.
The purpose of The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions is to:
- To discover exceptional young talent.
- To provide a venue for young opera singers from all over the country and at all different levels of experience to be heard by a representative of The Metropolitan Opera and to assist those with the greatest potential in their development.
- To identify new talent for The Metropolitan Opera and for possible participants in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
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 sixteen Regions of the United States and Canada. There are fifty 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.
Winners of the District auditions advance to their Region Finals where they compete to win a trip to New York to participate in the National Semi-Finals, a competition held on the stage of The Metropolitan Opera. Approximately ten of the Semi-Finalists will be selected as National Finalists, and will compete the following Sunday in a public concert, the Grand Finals Concert, accompanied by The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The jury will award up to five Grand Winner awards of $15,000 each. The concert is broadcast nationwide on The Metropolitan Opera Radio Network. The remaining National Finalists will receive $5,000 each, and those singers who were National Semi-Finalists, but did not advance to the National Finals will be given $1,500 to further their studies.
Many of the world’s foremost singers, among them Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Ben Heppner, Jessye Norman, Samuel Ramey, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt and Dolora Zajick have received awards from the National Council. Annually, approximately 100 former auditioners appear in Metropolitan Opera productions.
The University of Montana is the host for the Eastern Washington/Idaho/Montana District. The 2007 Auditions are scheduled for Sunday, October 28th. For application information, contact:
Dr. David Cody
MONC District Director
Music Department
The University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812
(406) 243-4691
david.cody@umontana.edu
Or, you may download an application from this website:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/auditions/national/application/app.aspx
- 2007 Metropolitan Opera Audition Winners:
- Brittany Ann Winberg, Graduate Student at The University of Montana (student of Dr. David Cody.)
- Debra McKinney, Undergraduate at BYU-Idaho (student of Kristine Ciesinski.)
- Bray Wilkins, Graduate Student at The University of Idaho (student of Pamela Bathurst.
- Three Encouragement Awards were also given to:
- Katie Denise Morgan (Idaho State University.)
- Alyssa Doggett (BYU-Idaho)
- Other UM students and recent graduates who performed were:
- Mercades McCann, Joel Wolcott, Margie Hunt, Veronica Turner, and Kathleen Regan.