"Life Is Short, Opera Is Long" - The New York Times

Watch a behind-the-scenes video of young singers from this year's Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/05/19/magazine/100000000823450/life-is-short-opera-is-long.html.

Is Michelle Johnson The Next Great African-American Star?

"Io son l'umile ancella"
Adriana Lecouvreur (Cilea)

"Ms. Johnson seems to have the vocal goods as well as star power," wrote The New York Times about the 28-year old soprano who last week won a $15,000 prize at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Grand Finals concert in New York. Michelle Johnson hails from Pearland, Texas, and has received degrees from New England Conservatory of Music and Boston University. She is a former member of the Young Artist Programs of Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Opera Tampa, as well as participating in the International Institute of Vocal Arts (Chiari, Italy), Tanglewood Music Center and the Music Academy of the West. Winning important competitions since 2006, she is currently a third-year artist resident at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia. Her repertoire includes the title role in Suor Angelica, Countess in Capriccio, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Monisha in Treemonisha, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni and Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. She is clearly a singer on the rise destined to have contracts floated her way from companies all around the world, surely it is the moment of a lifetime. Let's hope it is not fleeting.

Looking back at a dozen African-American sopranos over the last three decades that have been in Ms. Johnson's position and were hailed as the new great singer to take up the mantle of the lyric, spinto or dramatic repertoire, somehow they have lacked staying power to reach the heights that Marian Anderson forged the groundwork for 56 years ago and that Leontyne Price cemented as the standard for performance. Ms. Johnson will have to work hard in order to have a career that lasts more than a debut at the Metropolitan Opera and remain a household name. [Source, Source, Source]

Wilhelmenia Fernandez "Ebben? ne andrò lontana" La Wally (Catalani)	Carmen Balthrop "Che sento? Oh Dio!" Giulio Cesare (Händel)	Indra Thomas "Pace, pace mio Dio" La Forza del Destino (Verdi)
Marvis Martin "Glück das mir verblieb" Die tote Stadt (Korngold)*	Cynthia Haymon "Signore, ascolta" Turandot (Puccini)	Angela Brown "Ecco l'orrido campo" Un Ballo in Maschera (Verdi)
Michele Crider "Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore" Tosca (Puccini)	Cynthia Clarey "My Man's Gone Now" Porgy & Bess (Gershwin)	Leona Mitchell "Ernani, involami" Ernani (Verdi)
Faye Robinson "Quel guardo il cavaliere" Don Pasquale (Donizetti)	Jonita Lattimore "Canción de amor" (Villa-Lobos)	Measha Brueggergosman "D'Oreste, d'Ajace" Idomeneo (Mozart)

*bonus: second clip will automatically play "Io son l'umile ancella" Adriana Lecouvreur (Cilea)

Five Winners Chosen in MET National Council Auditions

Finalists pre-concert (left to right): Joseph Lim, Joseph Barron, Deanna Breiwick, Ryan Speedo
Green, Philippe Sly, Sasha Djihanian, Michelle Johnson and Nicholas Masters (Photo: Gothamist)

Of the eight singers selected from 1,500 that participated in the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, five were each named winners of a $15,000 prize yesterday. Curiously no mezzo-soprano or tenor voices were represented, except the emcee Joyce DiDonato and the entertainment for the day Lawrence Brownlee. The winners included Michelle Johnson, Joseph Barron, Ryan Speedo Green, Joseph Lim, Philippe Sly. The Sunday concert was conducted by Patrick Summers and the audience nearly filled the cavernous Metropolitan Opera.

How ever you want to describe it, not politically correct, tasteless or even uncouth, the writer Mike Silverman of the Associate Press ends his review thusly: "Brownlee is probably the closest thing there is to a black American superstar in opera these days, so it was especially heartening that two of the winners, Johnson and Green, also are black." [Source, Source]