Wow David, that's quite impressive, in my humble opinion anyway. I'm probably the baby of the group, I don't post much because I have the least amount of knowledge and experience since I'm only 22. I find it very interesting though, to read about what everyone else has to say.
As far as what I'm doing, I'm a senior vocal performance major at the University of Northern Iowa, and I will hopefully be going to Indiana, CCM, or USC this fall for grad school. On 1/12 we had district Met auditions, and I had a lesson with my voice teacher the day before, in which she advised me to withdraw since I have a small problem with my middle range, and it would be unwise to waste one of my chances. I disregarded her advice though, because I had a heck of a time getting into the auditions to begin with. I opened with "Martern aller Arten", and closed with "Ah fors' é lui...Sempre libera". I felt that I did a good job, but I was up against some tough competition. I didn't advance to regionals, but I won a $1000 career-development grant, which was a huge surprise since that prize is almost always given to a winner. I also got to talk to Tom Muraco of the Manhattan School, who was one of my judges, and he was very enthusiastic about me. He said that there was a lot of debate amongst the judges about whether or not to send me on, because they were all very impressed, but they all noticed my middle voice problem. Mr. Muraco gave me his phone number and said that he would be very interested in working with me. I will have a coaching/masterclass with him this September.
Besides that, I have my senior recital this April, in which I will open and close with the arias I mentioned earlier, respectively, as well as the finale from Thaïs with a baritone friend of mine and a violinist. Probably the thing I'm most excited about is that the director of our School of Music approached me last summer and asked if I would like to sing in Costa Rica this May! For some reason our school has a connection to something called the Centro Cultural Costariccense Norteamericano, which puts on a concert series called "Promising Artists of the 21st Century". Last year we sent two jazz musicians, and this year our dept. head wanted to send opera singers, so he's sending me and a baritone. It's an all-expense paid trip and we'll be there for a week in May. We'll be giving several recitals, and it sounds like we may be giving a masterclass to local high school or college kids.
Sorry that this was such a long post! If you want you can check out my website at http://www.geocities.com/msopran
Molly
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