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OPERA INDEX TO HONOR EVE QUELER
WITH
DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
AT ITS ANNUAL WINTER GALA
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2012
Gala Program Features Six Prize Winners from the 2011
Opera Index Vocal Competition
Opera Index presents its 2012 Distinguished Achievement
Award to opera pioneer and Opera Orchestra of New York
founder Eve Queler at its 28th annual black-tie winter gala
on Sunday, January 15. The gala, held in the Grand Salon of
the Jumeirah Essex House, at 160 Central Park South, begins
at 6 p.m. with a reception in the Petit Salon. Presenting
the award to Ms. Queler will be Renata Scotto, her longtime
friend and colleague. Last year Opera Index presented
Distinguished Achievement Awards to tenor George Shirley and
posthumously to mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett.
The Opera Index Winter Gala, hosted by its president Murray
Rosenthal and including guests from opera and the theater,
is the highlight of the non-profit organization’s year of
activities, which since 1984 has boosted the careers of
almost 300 young singers through its annual vocal
competition. This year prizes totaling more than $40,000
were awarded to fifteen rising young singers.
Under the artistic direction of celebrated opera soprano and
Opera Index artistic director Elaine Malbin, the Winter Gala
will not only celebrate the extraordinary career of Eve
Queler, but will also feature performances by six of the
fifteen 2011 Opera Index competition winners in a program
accompanied by pianist Michael Fennelly. They are baritone
Zachary Nelson, who won the top prize of $10,000;
mezzo–soprano Margaret Mezzacappa, who received $5,000;
bass-baritone Joseph Barron, $4,000; tenor Paul Appleby,
$3,000; baritone Steven LaBrie, $2,500, and Maria D’Amato,
who received a $1000 Encouragement Grant.
Soprano Jennifer Rowley and baritone David Pershall, who
both received $5,000 prizes, are unable to attend, since
they will be in Oslo performing in La Bohème.
Seven additional $1000 Encouragement Grants were also
awarded to soprano Allison Sanders, mezzo-sopranos J’nai
Bridges and Kristina Lewis, tenors Viktor Antipenko, Adam
Bonanni, and Kevin Ray, and baritone Julian Arsenault.
Tickets for the Opera Index Winter Gala range from $350 to
$1,000. More information and tickets are available by phone
at
212-706-9550 or by e-mailing Opera Index at
operaindex@rcn.com
About Eve Queler
Eve Queler, the internationally renowned conductor and a
native New Yorker, is recognized as a pioneer in the world
of opera. As a guest conductor of orchestras of many
international opera companies, and through her work as music
director of The Opera Orchestra of New York (OONY), she is
well known for conducting high-quality performances of
seldom-heard masterpieces. She founded OONY in 1971 after
having worked as a staff pianist and conductor at New York
City Opera.
Last year she received the 2010 National Endowment for the
Arts Lifetime Achievement in Opera Award, the nation’s
highest honor for lifetime achievement in the field of
opera, for her focus on rarely performed operas and her
dedication to emerging singers. Eve Queler has led over 100
operas-in-concert at Carnegie Hall and her worldwide career
has included opera engagements on four continents conducting
such legendary singers as Carlo Bergonzi, Stephanie Blythe,
Montserrat Caballé, Placido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Nicolai
Gedda, Marcello Giordano, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Aprile Millo,
Renata Scotto, Richard Tucker, and Dolora Zajick. Equally at
home with symphonic repertoire, Ms. Queler has conducted
numerous symphony orchestras including the Philadelphia
Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, the Montreal Orchestra, and
the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Palermo, Sicily. In
addition to her 2010 National Endowment award, she has
received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
(arguably the highest award presented by the French
government) and the Sanford Medal, Yale University’s highest
musical honor. Eve Queler has been a member of Opera Index’s
advisory board since its inception and has attended galas
and served as a judge for several of its vocal competitions.
About Opera Index
Opera Index, composed of opera devotees, is an outgrowth of
The New York Opera Club, which was founded in the late
1950’s by William Wells, an opera lover and radio
personality well known for his interviews with opera singers
of the day. Opera Index, its name taken from Mr. Wells’s
file of opera singers, became a formal
non-profit organization in 1982 and two years later
inaugurated its first annual opera competition for singers
in the early days of their careers. Among the prize winners
of the first competition were Suzanne Mentzer and Gary
Lakes. Later winners have included Deborah Voigt, Susan
Graham, Stephanie Blythe, Andrea Gruber, Michelle DeYoung,
Elizabeth Futral, Christine Goerke, Bejun Mehta, Angela
Meade, Eric Owens, and Anthony Roth Costanzo.
The first recipient of the Opera Index Distinguished
Achievement Award was Zinka Milanov. Subsequent honorees
have included Birgit Nilsson, Leonie Rysanek, Marilyn Horne,
Roberta Peters, Samuel Ramey, Anna Moffo, Grace Bumbry, Rose
Bampton, Theodor Uppman, Renata Scotto, Martina Arroyo,
Regina Resnik, Jon Vickers,
Sherrill Milnes, James Morris, Catherine Malfitano, Jessye
Norman, Aprile Millo, Julius Rudel, Patrice Munsel, George
Shirley,
and Shirley Verrett.
For more information and a list of previous competition
award recipients visit
www.operaindexinc.org
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