Region Finals 2015 Last November, 90 singers kicked of the 62nd edition of the National Council Auditions in the Eastern Region. They sang in front of a distinguished panel of judges consisting of Susan Ashbaker, Richard Bernstein and Cori Ellison. Eleven singers were selected to move on to the Region Finals, while four received Encouragement awards (Emily Blair, James Edgar Knight, Nikhil Navkal and Alexis Rodda). We asked our Finalists to answer a few questions about themselves, and you can read the full interviews at nycmonc.org/operaidols. These are the answers of some of them to the question: "When did you know you wanted to be an opera singer?" “I'd seen professional opera as a kid and in college, but none of it had as big an impact on me as the first time I heard my colleagues at Mannes, my first opera school. The opera studio had us all sing for each other on our first day in the program in this small, unassuming white room. If you've never heard operatic voices in a space that small before, I can't recommend it enough; it absolutely changed my life. Opera up close is so big, beautiful and exciting, and I was just in awe. I think that was the beginning of my trip down the rabbit hole.” - David Leigh “I always instinctually knew that I wanted be a singer. It was after my first recital at UCLA that I realized that opera was what I wanted to pursue as a career. The first opera I saw was The Marriage of Figaro. I remember thinking that opera as an art form was crazy and wonderful, and I was in awe of Mozart.” - Leela Subramaniam “Rigoletto is the first opera that I saw. That opera influenced me to become an opera singer.” - Kidon Choi “I always loved singing growing up, and I decided to be an opera singer the first time I saw La Bohème. I remember that it was a DVD I got from the library at home, and I was sitting comfortably on the sofa wondering what this was, and I completely fell in love. Freni was Mimi, and I cried so badly watching the opera. If this was an art form with beautiful stories, gorgeous music and magical singing, how could I not love it?” - Boya Wei “I remember as a child being obsessed with the Ingmar Bergman movie of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte- I think we rented that video at least once a month! Though it was sung in Swedish, I was enraptured with the story, the characters, and the music. During the opera's intermission, Bergman cuts to scenes of the singers chatting and playing chess, and I remember being struck by the fact that these people weren't just characters in an opera, but actual people in real life...I could do that!” - Claudia Rosenthal “I knew when I was about 25 or 26. I didn’t start singing classically until my early 20’s and it took me a few years to catch the opera bug. I sang in a NATS competition and I loved the feeling of being up on stage and having my voice reach the corners of the room. I received a great response from the audience and realized that this training not only can train your voice to reach every part of the hall, but it can reach inside of people and change them for the better.” - Joseph Dennis “My German grandmother took me on my “7-year-old trip” to Germany. There is a photo of me squinting through opera glasses at a children’s version of The Magic Flute being staged on some random steps in Stuttgart. I remember the fantastical costumes and thinking how amazing it was to experience a full musical-theatrical performance on the steps of a city - no stage, no microphones, just people doing everything.” - Kirsten Scott “In college, in a bit of a fit, I quit singing cold turkey. In short, I felt I needed to save the world in my own little way, and that singing wasn't saving the world. I switched my studies at school from music to environmental science, and more or less shut classical music and opera out of my life. But seven or eight months into life without opera, I started to yearn for it, deeply. I missed singing and music and opera in a way I didn't know I could. Singing is both physical and emotional. Music really becomes part of us as singers--our bodies are engaged so intrinsically in the process of making this art that it is as if it leaves a kind of imprint on us.” - Joshua Arky “There was never a moment where I thought, “yes! this is what I want to do!” The idea solidified gradually as I took one step at a time down this path. Growing up, the only thing I really wanted to be was a healer. I thought seriously about nursing school. But music seemed to come into my life almost forcefully, and it came out of me with great impulse, so there was no way I could avoid it. I have since realized that music provides healing in a way that is arguably more important than anything I could do with a nursing degree. I love everything about it.” - Amy Owens Region Finals 2015 - January 14th at Merkin Hall nycmonc.org Judges' Bios - Full bios at nycmonc.org/operaidols/judges15 A native of Pittsburgh PA, Richard Bado made his professional conducting debut in 1989 leading Houston Grand Opera’s acclaimed production of Show Boat at the newly restored Cairo Opera House in Egypt. Since then, Mr. Bado has conducted at Teatro alla Scala, Opéra National de Paris, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, the Aspen Music Festival, the Tulsa Opera, the Russian National Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, Wolf Trap Opera, Houston Ballet, and has conducted the Robert Wilson production of Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts at the Edinburgh Festival. An accomplished pianist, this past season Mr. Bado appeared in a recital tour with Renée Fleming. He has also played for Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Marcello Giordani, Ramon Vargas, Samuel Ramey and Nathan Gunn. Mr. Bado, who holds music degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where he received the 2000 Alumni Achievement Award and West Virginia University, has studied advanced choral conducting with Robert Shaw. Mr. Bado is the Director of the Opera Studies Program at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He also is the Chorus Master for the Houston Grand Opera, where he received the Silver Rose Award in 2013. (...) Susan Graham's operatic roles span four centuries, from Monteverdi’s Poppea to Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which was written especially for her. Graham won a Grammy Award for her collection of Ives songs, and her recital repertoire is so broad that 14 composers from Purcell to Sondheim are represented on her most recent album, Virgins, Vixens & Viragos. Throughout her career, however, this distinctly American artist has been recognized as one of the foremost exponents of French vocal music; a Texas native, she was awarded the French government’s prestigious “Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur,” both for her popularity as a performer in France and in honor of her commitment to French music. The mezzo’s earliest operatic successes were in such “trouser” roles as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Her technical expertise soon brought mastery of Mozart’s more virtuosic roles, like Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, Idamante in Idomeneo, and Cecilio in Lucio Silla, as well as the title roles of Handel’s Ariodante and Xerxes. She went on to triumph in the iconic Richard Strauss mezzo roles, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier and the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos. These brought Graham to prominence on all the world’s major opera stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Covent Garden, Paris Opera, La Scala, Bavarian State Opera, Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, and many more. In addition to creating the role of Sister Helen Prejean in the world premiere production of Dead Man Walking at San Francisco Opera, Graham sang the leading ladies in the Met’s world premieres of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby and Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, and made her Dallas Opera debut as Tina in a new production of The Aspern Papers by Dominick Argento. (...) It was in an early Lyon production of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict that Graham scored particular raves from the international press, and a triumph as Massenet’s Chérubin at Covent Garden sealed her operatic stardom. Further invitations to collaborate on French music were forthcoming from many of that repertoire’s preeminent conductors, including Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, and Seiji Ozawa. (...)This season, she returns to the Met in the title role of Susan Stroman’s new production of Lehar’s The Merry Widow, before closing the season opposite Bryan Hymel in a new staging of Les Troyens at San Francisco Opera. She also looks forward to headlining gala concerts at Los Angeles Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she joins Jane Lynch, Renée Fleming, Ramsey Lewis, and others to celebrate the latter company’s 60th anniversary. Graham’s affinity for French repertoire has not been limited to the opera stage, and serves as the foundation for her extensive concert and recital career.