Photo by Kristen Loken
Any day now, the San Francisco Opera will announce the list of the 2013 Adler Fellows, the program — named for the late great SFO General Director Kurt Herbert Adler — That provides a few of this year's Merola Opera Program participants advanced training and performance opportunities.
Current Adlers — some of whom will continue for another year — are:
Marina Harris, soprano
Nadine Sierra, soprano
Laura Krumm, mezzo-soprano
Renée Rapier, mezzo-soprano
Brian Jagde, tenor
Joo Won Kang, baritone
Ao Li, baritone
Ryan Kuster, bass-baritone
David Hanlon, coach and accompanist
Robert Mollicone, coach and accompanist
(Likely holdovers are Kang, Krumm, Rapier.)
From the 2012 Class of Merolini, based on listening to performances in the summer, these are some of my candidates for "promotion," and only so few because of the program's space limitation, else I'd have them all stay with the company:
Hadleigh Adams, bass-baritone, New Zealand; Jennifer Cherest, soprano, Maryland; AJ Glueckert, tenor, Portland, OR; Chuanyue Wang, tenor, China; Erin Johnson, mezzo-soprano, New Jersey; and Sun Ha Yoon, apprentice coach, South Korea