Metropolitan Opera Auditions Of The Air
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Metropolitan Opera Auditions Of The Air
The Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air was an annual singing competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera of New York City for more than two decades. The competition's purpose was to find, encourage, and promote developing young opera singers with promising future careers. Winners of the competition were given a cash prize and the opportunity to perform opera selections on the radio with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. History Established in 1935 by newly appointed Met director Edward Johnson (tenor), Edward Johnson, the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air was broadcast live on NBC Radio. Given the number of contestants, the competition was heard through a series of broadcasts that spanned several weeks. Concerned that the competition was becoming merely a tool for promoting singers in NYC, the Met created the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1954 as a means of finding and bringing in talented young opera singers from all across the United States. At thi ...
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Singing
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir. Singers may perform as soloists or accompanied by anything from a single instrument (as in art song or some jazz styles) up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Different singing styles include art music such as opera and Chinese opera, Indian music, Japanese music, and religious music styles such as gospel, traditional music styles, world music, jazz, blues, ghazal, and popular music styles such as pop, rock, and electronic dance music. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged, or improvised. It may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual as part of music education or ...
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Margaret Harshaw
Margaret Harshaw (12 May 1909 – 7 November 1997) was an American opera singer and voice teacher who sang for 22 consecutive seasons at the Metropolitan Opera from November 1942 to March 1964. She began her career as a mezzo-soprano in the early 1930s but then began performing roles from the soprano repertoire in 1950. She sang a total of 39 roles in 25 works at the Met and was heard in 40 of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. She was also active as a guest artist with major opera houses in Europe and North and South America. Harshaw possessed a wide vocal range, was a convincing actress, and was particularly regarded for her portrayals of Wagnerian heroines. She has the distinction of portraying more Wagner roles on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera - altogether 14 - than any other singer in history. After retiring from the stage, she became a highly regarded singing teacher, serving on the voice faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Jacobs School of Mus ...
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Martina Arroyo
Martina Arroyo (born February 2, 1937) is an American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success. Arroyo first rose to prominence at the Zurich Opera between 1963 and 1965, and then was one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading sopranos between 1965 and 1978. During those years at the Metropolitan Opera, she was also a regular presence at the world's opera houses, performing on the stages of La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opéra National de Paris, the Teatro Colón, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the San Francisco Opera. She is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines. Her last opera performance was in 1991, after which she has devoted her time to teaching singing on the faculties of various universities in the U ...
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Leonard Warren
Leonard Warren (April 21, 1911 – March 4, 1960) was an American opera singer. A baritone, he was a leading artist for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Especially noted for his portrayals of the leading baritone roles in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, he had few rival baritones in his time. His power and range were the highlights of his vocal instrument. Biography Born Leonard Warenoff in the Bronx to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Warren was first employed in his father's fur business. In 1935, he joined the chorus at Radio City Music Hall. In 1938, he entered the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air. The Met sent him to Italy that summer with a stipend to study. Returning to the United States, Warren made his concert debut at the Metropolitan Opera in excerpts from ''La traviata'' and ''Pagliacci'' during a concert in New York City in November 1938. His operatic debut took place there in January 1939, when he sang Paolo in ''Simon Boccanegra''. A r ...
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Hugh Roderick Thompson
Hugh Roderick Thompson (June 19, 1915 – February 6, 2006) was an American opera singer. He was a leading baritone at the Metropolitan Opera between 1944 and 1953 for 238 performances. In 1967 he moved to Coral Gables, Florida, joining the Miami Opera Guild as the assistant artistic director, and later taught voice at the University of Miami. He died in Estero, Florida, at the age of 90. Early years Thompson was born in Tacoma, Washington, on June 19, 1915. His father was Oscar Thompson, a music critic and author. His grandfather was William Thompson, an author, poet, lawyer, and Olympic archer. Hugh attended the University of Washington and moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School in 1936. He made his professional debut in 1939, starring in Mozart's ''The Marriage of Figaro'' at Chautauqua. In February 1944, Thompson was on the inaugural roster of the fledgling New York City Opera. In December 1944, he won a contract with the Metropolitan Opera via their Auditio ...
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Eleanor Steber
Eleanor Steber (July 17, 1914October 3, 1990) was an American operatic soprano. Steber is noted as one of the first major opera stars to have achieved the highest success with training and a career based in the United States. Biography Eleanor Steber was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on July 17, 1914. She was the daughter of William Charles Steber, Sr. (1888–1966) and Ida Amelia (née Nolte) Steber (1885–1985). She had two younger siblings – William Charles Steber, Jr. (1917–2002) and Lucile Steber Leslie (1918–1999). She made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1940 and was one of its leading artists through 1961. She was known for her large, flexible silvery voice, particularly in the high-lying soprano roles of Richard Strauss. She was equally well known for her lyrical portrayals of Mozart's heroines, many in collaboration with conductors Kurt Adler, Bruno Walter. Beyond Mozart and Strauss her repertoire was quite varied. She was noted for success in the m ...
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Regina Resnik
Regina Resnik (born Regina Resnick, August 30, 1922 – August 8, 2013) was an American opera singer who had an active international career that spanned five decades. She began her career as a soprano in 1942 and soon after began a lengthy and fruitful relationship with the Metropolitan Opera that spanned from 1944 until 1983. Under the advice of conductor Clemens Krauss, she began retraining her voice in the mezzo-soprano repertoire in 1953 and by 1956 had completely removed soprano literature from her performance repertoire. While the Met was Resnik's artistic home, she worked regularly as a guest artist with other major American opera companies and with the top European opera houses, including La Scala, the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera, London, the San Francisco Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. After the mid-1980s, her performance career transitioned away from opera towards musical theater. In addition to performing, Resnik worked as a stage director at several Europe ...
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Northeastern University Press
The University Press of New England (UPNE), located in Lebanon, New Hampshire and founded in 1970, was a university press consortium including Brandeis University, Dartmouth College (its host member), Tufts University, the University of New Hampshire, and Northeastern University. It shut in 2018 and in January 2021, Brandeis University became the sole owner of all titles and copyrights of UPNE, excluding Dartmouth College Press titles. Notable fiction authors published by UPNE include Howard Frank Mosher, Roxana Robinson, Ernest Hebert, Cathie Pelletier, Chris Bohjalian, Percival Everett, Laurie Alberts and Walter D. Wetherell. Notable poets distributed by the press include Rae Armantrout, Claudia Rankine, James Tate, Mary Ruefle, Donald Revell, Ellen Bryant Voigt, James Wright, Jean Valentine, Stanley Kunitz, Heather McHugh, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Notable nature and environment authors published include William Sargent, Cynthia Huntington, David Gessner, John Hay, Tom Wessels ...
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Patrice Munsel
Patrice Munsel (born Patrice Beverly Munsil; May 14, 1925 – August 4, 2016) was an American coloratura soprano. Nicknamed "Princess Pat", she was the youngest singer ever to star at the Metropolitan Opera. Early years An only child, Patrice Beverly Munsil (she later changed the spelling of her surname) was born and raised until age 15 in Spokane, Washington. Her father, Audley J. Munsil, was a local dentist. She attended Lewis and Clark High School before leaving at age fifteen, accompanied by her mother, to study in New York City,''The Dictionary of Opera'', Charles Osborne, Macdonald & Co., London, UK; coached by Giacomo Spadoni (1884–1960). Career Munsel first sang at the Metropolitan at age 17 in March 1943. She made her official Metropolitan debut on December 4, 1943, aged 18, singing Philine in ''Mignon'', for which she won popular praise but poor critical reviews. Her first opera contract was for three years at $40,000 per year; with other appearances she was making ...
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Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill (June 4, 1917 – October 23, 2004) was an American operatic baritone and actor, who was also active in the musical theatre Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movemen ... circuit. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1993. Early life Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife, Lillian (née Balaban), Jewish immigrants from Pultusk, Poland, near Warsaw. His paternal grandparents were Berl Milstein and Chana (née Mlawski), both from Pultusk, Poland. His mother claimed to have had an operatic and concert career in Poland (a fact denied by her son in his biographies) and encouraged her son ...
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Lois Hunt
Lois Hunt (born Lois Harriet Marcus, November 26, 1924 – July 26, 2009) was an American lyric soprano who had spent some of her earlier career performing at New York City's Metropolitan Opera and later spent four decades performing and recording classical music and musical theater numbers nationwide together with baritone Earl Wrightson. Early life and training She was born in York, Pennsylvania, as Lois Harriet Marcus. She began singing while in elementary school and began a professional career after working with opera coaches in Philadelphia. She had been singing professionally for three years when a Metropolitan Opera assistant manager who had seen her sing in a performance in Colorado of Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, ''Fidelio'', convinced her to head to New York City. There she earned a contract with the Met after her participation in the opera company's 1949 Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air competition.Grimes, William"Lois Hunt, Half of Popular Operatic Du ...
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Variety (magazine)
''Variety'' is an American media company owned by Penske Media Corporation. The company was founded by Sime Silverman in New York City in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added ''Daily Variety'', based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. ''Variety.com'' features entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and features, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905. History Foundation ''Variety'' has been published since December 16, 1905, when it was launched by Sime Silverman as a weekly periodical covering theater and vaudeville with its headquarters in New York City. Silverman had been fired by ''The Morning Telegraph'' in 1905 for panning an act which had taken out an advert for $50. As a result, he decided to start his own publication "that ouldnot be influenced by advertising." With a loan of $1,500 from his father- ...
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