As many of you already know, the Dallas Opera gives fully staged opera performances for school children across North Texas.
In 2009, the company gave four performances of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux to an audience of around 12,000 students of various ages, at the same time that we were presenting the opera for our subscription audiences. These school performances were given with an alternate cast of young American singers just launching their careers.
I was delighted to read today that Angela Meade, the soprano who sang “Elisabetta” in the school cast of that production just a little over two years ago, is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Beverly Sills Award, given to an important young artist at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Angela, who earlier this season appeared at the Met in the title role of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in a run of performances following Anna Netrebko, can be heard and seen on the Met’s February 25th HD transmission of Verdi’s Ernani, both at local movie theaters and on radios around the world.
I am simply delighted that Angela has been recognized in this way, and is already well on her way to becoming an important singer of the “next” generation.
I am even more pleased that the Dallas Opera was able to give this artist an opportunity to take on such a challenging Donizetti heroine at the very beginning of her professional career.
Brava Angela!