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Pictured above from left to right the fourteen prize winners of Connecticut Opera Guild's 52nd Annual Young Artists Competition held at The Wallace Stevens Theater in HartfordConnecricut, Saturday afternoon, April 22, 2006: mezzo-soprano Meridith Zigler, recipient of of the "Judith Bardi Rosenthal Award" and $2,500; baritone Andrew Garland, recipient of the "Andrew & Anne Pinto Award" and $1,500; soprano Sarah Callinan, recipient of the "Del Drummey Connecticut Opera Guild Award" and $5,000; tenor Michael Paul Krubitzer, recipient of the "Maestro Willie Anthony Waters Award" and $1,000; baritone Daniel Ihn-Kyu Lee, recipient of the "Micki Savin Award" and $1,000; baritone Erik Nelson Werner, recipient of the"Joseph Frank Spada Award" and $500; tenor Hak Soo Kim, recipient of the "Sylvia E. & Martin A. Rothman Award" and $1,000; soprano Ji Young Yang, recipient of the "Frank and Carmelia Pandolfi Award" and $1,000; tenor Eric Margiore, recipient of the "Sue M. Wiesen Award" and $1,000; soprano Audrey Luna, recipient of the "Samuel & Norma Elli Miller & Charlotte Miller Sutner Award" and $750; bass baritone Colin Brady, recipient of the "Highwood Award" and recipient of $750; and soprano Mela Dailey, recipient of the "June Miller Rosenblatt Award" and $750.

Connecticut Opera Guild’s 52nd Annual Young Artists Competition was held at the Wallace Stevens Theater in Hartford, Connecticut on a cool and cloudy Saturday afternoon April 22, 2006. A couple years earlier the temperature outside was 89 degrees, hot and humid, and the theater’s air-conditioning was on full blast, making it a little dry for singer’s throats and chilly for those in the audience who came unprepared.
This Saturday, things were different. The warmth of the theater was a welcome change from the rawness outside.
The competition pitted thirty singers who were “blindly” chosen from over 100 unmarked tapes and CD submissions reviewed by Connecticut Opera’s conductor, Willie Anthony Waters, last January, and selected based strictly on merit. The Guild is fastidious to bring this to the audience’s attention, adding that Maestro Waters disqualifies himself from actually judging singers whom he knows personally or through professional relationships. The rule applies to all the judges.
This year, as last, said co-chair of the event Amy Cohen, the prizes are in the form of fourteen awards, totaling over $18,000 in “no strings attached” grants. In other words, she added, “the winners can use the money for music lessons, transportation, resumes, anything they want. There are no restrictions.”

Top prize this year, as last, is a five thousand dollar check given in honor of Del Drummey and the Connecticut Opera Guild. Other prizes range from $2,500 to $500.
As in previous years the atmosphere prior to the competition is relaxed inside, as Guild members busily go about preparing snacks, lunches and ticket tables for visitors. Indeed, this year over 100 patrons attend and fill the theater to quarter capacity – not bad for a young artists' competition.
As the starting time approaches, the five adjudicators show up and singers follow, dressed in casual attire, although in this competition, as previous, it would be unheard of for a singer to actually appear on stage in anything less than “appropriate” clothing, which they all wear when performing.

The spacious, airy and well-lit lobby begins to fill slowly as singers check in.
Doug Dickson, accompanist, sits in the anteroom before the competition and enjoys a snack with others. When asked if he is at all apprehensive about playing for twenty-eight singers whose sheet music he will see for the first time that afternoon -- after all in every competition you will likely find

sandwiched in between the standard Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and Handel repertoire, a Mark Adamo selection that challenges even the most astute pianist, Dickson ponders the question for a nanosecond and answers cooly, “Not really. Most come with a standard repertoire.” He then added, “Once in a while they’ll bring something that I’ve never seen before; but I don’t mind site reading in front of the public.”
On the faculty of the Yale School of Music and music teacher at Quinnipiac College, Dickson has been playing the piano since he was three years old, he said, and playing in accompaniment professionally since he was eighteen. “The only time it gets nerve-wracking,” he added, “is if you’re with a singer who’s insecure. You never know if they’re going to skip two measures. But in competition you tend to get singers who are more experienced, and that makes it much easier.”
In the lobby there’s a familiar face, to this writer at least. He is bass-baritone Colin Brady (30), winner of a $1,000 grant a couple years ago, back again this year to give it another go. “I don’t know if it’s easy cash” he responded when asked if he feels any advantage over those for whom this is their first event, “I think this year it’s even more competitive than it was a couple years ago. But being a young artist it’s difficult to avoid all the financial constraints: going to lessons . . . I go for lessons in New York, so there are a lot of financial costs (associated with) being a young singer to get better. So we need the cash to do this. It all goes to the furtherment of my career.”

This year Brady was the recipient of the “Highwood Award” and a check for $750.
His story and reasons for competing are pretty much echoed by each singer: they enjoy the competition and need the cash.
Of course there are other benefits, too. They get to add the Award to the list of their credits, and maybe, just maybe, as happened with Brady, they’ll get picked up by the Maestro to sing with Connecticut Opera’s “Connecticut Opera Express” (recitals in the community and at schools) and find themselves on a main stage for one of the season’s productions. This was the case with other singers who competed as well. In Brady’s case he certainly displayed the charm, audience connectivity and mastery of technique to distinguish himself and Maestro Water’s obviously agreed. Of the program, Brady said, “It’s very beneficial because we get to perform every day.”
When the doors to the theater open the audience files in. The singers do not enter until they are scheduled to sing. The format is the same this year as last. Co-Chair Ruthanne Sullivan announces that the competition is about to begin and explains to the audience what it can expect. There will be one break half-way through the event and prizes and awards will be made at the end.

With house lights on dim, the stage is bathed in bright light. A piano, also on stage, is off to the audiences’ left. The event begins without fanfare or further introduction. It starts with a singer (unannounced) walking to the front of the auditorium, climbing the half-dozen steps, passing his or her sheet music to Dickson, facing the judges and introducing themselves: “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, my name is (fill in the blank) and this afternoon I will be singing (fill in the blank) from (fill in the blank). It’s that simple.
The show begins at Noon and ends sometime after 3:30.
During the break I get an opportunity to say hello to soprano Jacqueline Noparsak, mezzo soprano Meredith Ziegler and soprano Sarah Callinan who are seated in the lobby chatting. Ziegler will end the day with the “Judith Bardi Rosenthal Award” and a check for $2,500 and Callinan will end up with the “Del Drummer/Connecticut Opera Guild Award” and a check for $5,000. While Noparsak didn’t walk away with an Award

or check, she can boast, at least, that she was a finalist in the Guild’s annual competition, and given the large number of singers hoping to make that select list, she, like all the others who didn’t receive an Award, can count herself among the delighted chosen to compete.
Callinan, who was the big winner for the day, says she was as surprised as anyone that she won, having spent the past several days visiting her mother and coming to Connecticut only to compete and return to her mother’s side. “I thought I sounded alright,” she said in an interview afterward, “but truth be told, I’ve been in the hospital with my mother for the past several days and I just came up to do this today, and was planning on going back to the hospital after this. However, she got out, so I really wasn’t paying that much attention.” Now, she says, the first thing she wants to do is call her mother and tell her she won.
Callinan (24), who won the “Sylvia & Martin Rothman Award” last year says she plans on using her earnings this year for “boring stuff”, like paying off student loans and maybe “take a little longer vacation”. The Opera Express, she says, is a taxing tour. “I’m going to regroup . . . take a break because the tour is pretty extensive here (and) just spend a lot of time with my family whom I don’t get to see very much.”

As for the thrill of winning the grand prize she says she was completely unprepared. “I didn’t expect it, not at all, not even for a second. I didn’t figure anything. I had no idea.”
Since she can’t compete again (no grand prize winners can compete a second time), she says her focus, right after her summer vacation, is going to be on her future. “I plan to stay for another year, and If I’m invited back to this program I will certainly do that again. This has been the defining experience for my career. It’s been wonderful”
As for not being able to come back and compete in the 53rd Annual competition she says it’s a nerve-wracking experience she knows is important to her career, but one which she can do without. Preparing for competition, she says, is much more difficult than preparing for a main stage production, which she has done with Connecticut Opera, “because in a production you have costumes, the audience – you can’t see them because of the lights, and you’re up there with other colleagues and you just become the character. And while I always try to become the character in an audition there’s still that feeling that ‘This is me. I hope you like me.’ And that can be a little more nerve-wracking than a well-rehearsed performance.”

If nervousness gripped her, it didn’t show any more than it showed on the faces, in the voices, or through the performance of any of the other finalists to this year’s competition, one of whom was in an automobile accident on the way to the theater, and one of whom had to leave before prizes were announced, to go to New York for an audition. Such is the life of young singers: filled with confidence, a healthy does of expectation, some disappointment and just enough hope to fill the biggest of hearts. They may look in their mirrors and see their faces looking back, but from the audience's perspective, we look at the same faces and see opera’s future and count ourselves lucky.