Rockwell Blake Administers Honest Advice To Young Singers

"Ignore almost everything you were taught when you were in school and move yourself toward an ethic of aesthetic....The ethic is simple. You want to take your audience. You want to pick up your audience. You want to shape your audience. And, you want them to thank you for doing so." [Source] Watch a video of the tenor singing "Ah! Dov'e il cimento" from Rossini's Semiramide, after the jump.

New Orleans Snags Mezzo-Soprano Luretta Bybee For Loyola Position

Ms. Bybee recently sang Fricka/Flosshilde
in the Ring Cycle with Minnesota Concert
Opera and Mary in The Flying Dutchman
at Opera Carolina.

"Loyola University has recruited opera star Luretta Bybee to help train a new generation of singers at the New Orleans school. The mezzo-soprano brings extra luster to Loyola's voice program, which has produced many top singers in recent decades, among them, her husband, Greer Grimsley. Bybee will join the music faculty in August. She is relocating from Boston where she served as part of the leadership team for the New England Conservatory's Opera Studies program. Loyola spokesman Mikel Pak said Bybee and Grimsley were drawn to New Orleans because of family connections and the Crescent City's rich opera heritage. Both singers tour internationally and have performed in New Orleans. This February, Bybee appeared in the New Orleans Opera production of Massenet's Cendrillon. As an associate professor of music at Loyola, Bybee will teach studio voice classes—which are one-on-one private lessons with students. She joins a program that helped form many contemporary singers, including international stars such as Alfred Walker, Bryan Hymel and Melody Moore, and respected American singers such as Sarah Jane McMahon, Suzanne DuPlantis and Brandy Lynn Hawkins. [Source]

Edith Wiens Teaches After Leaving Opera Stage A Decade Ago

The soprano today spreads
knowledge through teaching

"The world-renowned soprano has been feted in Berlin, Vienna, London and Buenos Aires. She can now add her hometown to that list. Wiens returned to the city this fall for the first time in 'quite a while' to receive her honorary doctor of letters from the University of Saskatchewan. 'It was just fabulous. It made me feel very patriotic,' Wiens said. Although she retired from performing 10 years ago and now teaches at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, Wiens sang at the TCU Place ceremony this fall. 'I love to teach, but there’s nothing like singing,' she said. Wiens has taken on some of the most challenging pieces by Mozart, Wagner, Brahms and others. For her work, she won a Grammy Award and was installed as an officer of the Order of Canada. Born in Saskatoon in 1950 to Mennonite parents, Wiens later attended bible college in Vancouver and earned a master’s degree in music at Ohio’s famed Oberlin College, the first U.S. post-secondary institution to regularly admit female and African-American students. Her singing career was launched after a first-place showing at a European competition in 1979. Over the next two decades,

Edith Wiens with conductor Kurt Masur in earlier days

she would perform with the top symphonies and opera companies in the world, including 14 appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Wiens, whose husband and two sons are acclaimed musicians, accepted a position in New York at the Juilliard School several years ago to teach others. Several of them have already achieved high honours at global competitions. Wiens is spending six weeks in at a Munich fine arts school, evaluating and hosting auditions for 120 applicants vying for the 15 spots. In 2014, she’s scheduled to teach “master classes” in Frankfurt, London and Zurich." [Source]