Evelyn Lear Legacy Continued By Dolora Zajick Through Students

Queen Lear: During the zenith of her career

"Since 2013, Washington’s Wagner Society and Zajick’s institute have been linked in a partnership that picks up where the Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program left off with Lear’s death in 2012. Lear and Stewart were two leading American singers of their generation who, with the help of the Wagner Society, worked with more than 75 singers over 12 years. Their program lives on. Reborn as the American Wagner Project and funded by the Wagner Society, it now represents one of six distinct training arms of the institute. 'It’s under the umbrella of our program,' Zajick said, 'but it runs on its own engine.' It’s headed by Luana de Vol, the American Wagnerian who has sung extensively in San Francisco and Europe. 'I gave her carte blanche,' Zajick said, 'to do whatever she wants.'....Lear recognized the importance of Zajick’s program. John Edward Niles, the conductor who oversaw the Emerging Singers Program in Washington for 12 years and is now on the faculty of the American Wagner Project, recalled in an e-mail a conversation he had

Force of Nature: Dolora Zajick leads the next
 generation of large voices in opera 
(Photo: David Sauer)

with the soprano shortly before she died. 'You have got to PROMISE me,' he said she told him, 'that you will keep the ESP going and merge the program with Dolora Zajick’s Institute for Young Dramatic Voices. I know now that this is the ONLY place for the ESP.' Niles added, 'If Evelyn Lear asks you something in that tone, YOU DO IT!'"[Source]  Watch videos of big voices of the future Issachah Savage and Rachel Willis-Sørensen, as well as the possible mystery tenor mentioned in the Washington Post article, after the jump. Learn more about the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices, including the multitude of programs offered for various levels of experience, by clicking here. Also visit the official website of Dolora Zajick for her upcoming opera engagements by clicking here.