Overview

Each season, Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Development Program provides up to eight young singers with the opportunity to study and perform under a highly prestigious professional staff of teachers and performers.

The program is intended to benefit Canadian singers who have completed pre-professional training at an opera program. It will serve as a bridge between academic programs and the professional world of opera, offering the experience and practical skills necessary to succeed as a self-employed professional in a highly competitive international environment.

Interaction between the professional staff, visiting artists and the Emerging Artists is an integral professional training function of the program.

Background

In the 2004-2005 season the program underwent a pilot year that saw the emerging artists take the production Turtle Wakes across Calgary and southern Alberta with public and school performances.

In the spring of 2006 auditions took place across Canada to choose the eight singers (two of each voice type) to participate in the first full-scale 22-week residency program for Emerging Artists, which took place during the 2006-2007 season, and Mel Kirby was hired as Coordinator of the program. Mel Kirby is a well known member of the Calgary music community as a performer, teacher, and conductor. He has served as Artistic Director of the Festival Chorus of Calgary since 1991, and has held positions with the U of C Music Department, The Banff Centre's Music Theatre Program, and the Conservatory of Music at Mount Royal College.

The first company of Emerging Artists included Stephen Bell (Tenor), Andrea Hill (Mezzo-Soprano), Derek Johnson (Tenor), Michelle Keobke (Soprano), James Levesque (Baritone), Andrew Love (Bass-Baritone), Michelle Minke (Soprano), and Dionne Sellinger (Mezzo-Soprano). 

During their year, the Emerging Artists participated in a semester of advanced training in acting, movement, voice, and stage fighting; they performed in the world premiere of the new opera Frobisher by Estacio/Murrell; took excerpts from Frobisher on a Northern tour to Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Norman Wells; and performed Dean Burry’s The Brothers Grimm to school audiences in Calgary and southern Alberta.

They were also actively involved in workshops for the commission of The Hannaraptor, by Allan Gilliland and Val Brandt, which will be taken to Alberta schools in the spring of 2008.

2008-2009 Emerging Artist Development Program participants have recently been announced! To learn more about next year’s participants, click here.