Nurturing the Singers of Tomorrow, Part 2

Last week, Jason Victor Serinus investigated singer development in the San Francisco Opera Center's Merola and Adler Fellows programs. In this week’s conclusion of his two-part article, he explores the programs at the New York Metropolitan Opera and Houston Grand Opera.

Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program

Talk about big guns. The Met has them all. As if names, reputation, and New York location were not enough, the Met and Juilliard announced on February 27 that they are merging their training programs. Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine, who founded the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in 1980, will serve as the program’s artistic director and make all final decisions, including participant selection. Dr. Brian Zeger, artistic director of Juilliard Vocal Arts, will serve as executive director. As of the 2010-2011 season, participants will have access to both organizations’ resources and personnel. In addition to making appearances in productions at the cavernous Met, participants in the three-year Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program in Partnership with the Juilliard School (LYADP) will be cast in one fully staged or concert opera production each year in Juilliard’s 900-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theater, accompanied by the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Maestro Levine. Participants will receive a yearly stipend from the Met, as well as musical and language coaching with the opera company's artistic staff. Vocal coaching, master classes, acting and movement classes, and related educational courses from Juilliard are also part of the new program. In addition, participants will be able to use practice rooms and studios, as well as the Juilliard Library’s extensive resources. “We’re creating a continuum of education that can take a student from their early studies to advanced work,” Zeger explained by phone. “Students will have access to the resources of both programs. It’s our responsibility to give them first-rate coaching. “One big difference between us and Adler [the Adler Fellows program] is that not all our young people end up on the big stage. If it’s more important in this phase of their training to do studio work instead, that’s not a demerit. Every single one of our artists gives a song recital every year, half recitals the first two years, and a full recital in the final year.” Among the program’s highpoints are two- to three-week stints with guest master teachers. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, José van Dam, Thomas Allen, and Renata Scotto are among honored teachers on the faculty; Scotto has taught for perhaps a dozen consecutive years. Master teachers often work with Juilliard undergraduates, as well. “We are certainly willing to take on someone who is an unusual size,” says Zeger in response to Sheri Greenawald’s comments on some singers' frame [see the first part of this article]. “An unusual body shape is not a deal breaker. But one of our goals is to get them to a healthy weight, which is sustainable not only for their career but also their health. A lot of singers have a big struggle with their weight. We recognize where the profession is going, and want to help people become as marketable as they can within the bounds of their own capabilities.”

Singers to Watch

Zeger, who also directs the three-week summer vocal program at the Steans Institute at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, told me that Amanda Majeski “blew us all away in the summer of 2007.” He also brought attention to three singers now in the LYADP.

Third-year Lindemann mezzo Sasha Cooke, originally from Texas, recently sang the female lead in the Met’s production of the revised version of Doctor Atomic. “Sasha has gotten extremely good press,” Zeger declared with pride. “She’s gone from talented, shy young lady to someone who can hold her own on the Met stage next to Gerald Finley.”

Photo by Ken Howard for the Metropolitan Opera

On April 14 next year, Cooke will appear in the Young Concert Artists Gala Irene Diamond Concert at Lincoln Center, performing Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, under Giancarlo Guerrero. Closer to the Bay Area, she appears in recital on April 25-26 at the Mondavi Center in Davis, as well as in the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe with the San Francisco Symphony, on June 18-21. Expect to see a host of SFCV critics in the audience. Before I spoke with Zeger, the Met sent me an mp3 audio file of soprano Erin Morley singing Zerbinetta’s big aria (“Grossmächtige Prinzessin”) from Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Although she does not exhibit all the shading and nuance you might wish for, her voice is so beautiful and secure that, given time, she’ll knock it out of the park.

Now in her second year at Lindemann, Morley first got her master's degree, and then spent four years at Juilliard. There she sang Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and the lead in Mozart’s La finta giardiniera. Her success led to her audition for Levine. She has already appeared in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades at the Met, and has sung the three soprano roles in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortileges under Bernard Haitink. “When you see them pop like that,” says Zeger, “there’s nothing more exciting. Erin is certainly a coloratura who is dipping her toes into the lyric-coloratura pool. The voice has such a nice body to it.” Zeger’s other rave, totally validated by the gorgeous singing I heard on the three arias the Met sent on CD, is bass Shen Yang, aged 24. Named the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World for 2007, he also won the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2008. Now in his second year of the Lindemann Program, the native of China is slated to make his Met debut as Masetto, and will also sing a debut recital in Alice Tully Hall. In addition, he will sing Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer at Carnegie Hall with none other than Sasha Cooke, James Levine, and Daniel Barenboim, and will take a role in Veniamin Fleishman’s Rothschild’s Violin with James Conlon at the Juilliard Opera Center.

“Shen Yang is a very interesting case,” says Zeger. “He came to us through Renée Fleming after he attended her series of master classes in Shanghai, but was so young that he needed to come to Juilliard first. Now he’s playing lead in two James Conlon operas at Juilliard. “Not only is he getting his Russian chops together, but director James Marvel is also teaching him how to do comedy, and Conlon is helping him learn to work with an orchestra. Who knows where the voice will go? I think he may end up a Hans Sachs [in Wagner’s opera The Mastersingers of Nuremburg] one day.”

Houston Grand Opera Studio

“We fall bang in the middle,” says brand-new HGO Studio Director Laura Canning. “Merola and Adler participation includes performing on main stage and covering roles, while Lindemann offers very few opportunities on the main stage. We fall right in the middle. “We are a really great and comfortable place to learn roles, if they are the right ones for a particular applicant. We have really exciting and major performing opportunities for all our artists, but our limited seasons of six operas per year necessitates that we take someone on whether or not we can offer immediate performance opportunities. We would never take them on without main stage potential, but we might not have an opportunity for them in the first year.” One thing Houston does not offer is a summer program equivalent to Merola's in San Francisco. “No one wants to be in Houston in the summer,” says Canning, who formerly worked at the Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne, and whose resume boasts that she has a “full, clean, driving license.” Instead, HGO encourages its studio artists to enroll in summer programs such as Tanglewood, Wolf Trap, Chautauqua, Merola, and St. Louis. This year, the studio’s students include eight singers and three pianists. The youngest singer is 23, the oldest 29. One ancient pianist is 30. Had applicants been in the “right stage” of their development, Canning would have welcomed one or two more. The Studio has also enrolled conducting fellows and a librettist in years past. Canning cautions that “98 percent of people don’t have fabulous voices, so every other attribute they have comes into play. That includes looks, acting ability, luck, attitude, how good a colleague they are, and their level of preparedness. Thus, we offer free gym memberships to all our singers. “We currently have two people who are losing weight. One guy has lost a lot, and a girl has just lost 40 pounds; both want to lose more. The girl has one of those fabulous voices that can get away with it, but sometimes people’s preconceptions are such that they don’t hear the fabulous voice. That’s especially the case when theater and film directors are increasingly involved in singer selection.”

Prominent and Promising Alumni

Among fairly recent, well-known, HGO Studio alumni who have made it internationally are Joyce DiDonato and Anna Maria Martinez. Both are returning to Houston’s stage this season. Less known is Alvina Shagimuratova, a Russian soprano who spent two years in the Studio program; she recently sang the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Magic Flute in Salzburg, and is returning to Houston to sing Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto as a guest artist. “Part of the purpose of the Studio is to create links with first-class artists,” Canning confesses, “so that they’ll want to come back. We know we’re not the Met. A lot of artists prefer to sing at the Met, with its short rehearsal period and New York enticements, rather than come here. Thus, we know we need to get them in early, before it’s unlikely that we can attract them. I honestly believe that if we get them either as a Studio artist or on the way up, and they experience what Houston has to offer, they’ll want to come back.” As with Greenawald when speaking about her Merola Program participants, Canning hesitated to point out specific singers, lest anyone infer that she was ignoring the rest. But once I went down on my knees and begged, she gave in. “If we take it for granted that I believe in all of them,” she said, “I would tell people to keep an ear out for Jamie Barton, our second-year mezzo. I think she has a world-class voice. She has a Carnegie Hall debut set for Weill Recital Hall in January, with the Marilyn Horne Foundation. We’re discussing at the moment if she’ll stay. Because we don’t have any great roles for her next year, she may be better off performing elsewhere.” In the end, Canning’s final words ring true for all programs and artists. “My real belief is that there is no one solution for every artist. Everyone comes having traveled a different route and being at a different point along the road. To expect a one-size-fits-all program to maximize a singer’s potential is naive. What we want to do here is empower the individual in career decisions, and create the best program for them. We give them the tools to work independently and continue their development once they’ve left here. That’s why we’re not a school. “My other honest belief," Canning concludes, "is that there is no silver bullet. There is no end point that we’re striving for. We are not trying to homogenize voices or get every person to the same place in their development before they move on. And we have quite a lot of fun along the way.”