CCM student Elena Villalón (center) with the other winners of the 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. From left to right: Miles Mykkanen, William Guanbo Su, Elena Villalón, Thomas Glass and Michaela Wolz. Photography courtesy of Ken Howard.
We are thrilled to report that current CCM student Elena Villalón has been named a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019 National Council Auditions! After a months-long series of auditions involving more than 1,000 singers at the district, regional and national levels, a panel of expert judges named Villalón and four other singers as the winners of the 65th annual Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Each winner receives a $15,000 cash prize. You can learn more about all of the 2019 National Council Winners by visiting www.metopera.org/about/auditions/national-council-auditions/winners.
Senior Voice Performance major Elena Villalón has been named a Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019 National Council Auditions.
A soprano from Austin, Texas, who studies with CCM Professor William McGraw, Villalón joins Houston Grand Opera’s studio artist program in the 2019-20 season, after being a finalist and winning the audience prize in the 31st annual Eleanor McCollum Competition. She has been a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and at Houston Grand Opera’s Young Artist Vocal Academy. Her CCM performances include the roles of Adele in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, Lucy in Menotti’s The Telephone and Miss Wordsworth in Britten’s Albert Herring.
As previously reported, fellow CCM-trained singers Joshua Wheeker, tenor (CCM Voice 2007-2012); Murrella Parton (MM Voice, 2017) also advanced to the Met’s National Council Semi-Finals this year.
This marks the second consecutive year that CCM singers have “won the Met,” as CCM alumna Jessica Faselt (MM Voice, 2016) was one of five singers who won the 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. You can learn more about Faselt’s win courtesy of the Cincinnati Business Courier.
CCM alumni and students frequently advance to the final rounds of the Met’s National Council Auditions, which is widely considered to be the nation’s most prestigious vocal competition. In 2017, four CCM alumni competed in the semi-finals, including Faselt; Summer Hassan, soprano (MM Voice, 2014); Andrew Manea, baritone (MM Voice, 2016); and Cody Quattlebaum, bass-baritone (BM Voice, 2015) — who was chosen as a finalist during that year’s national competition.
About the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions
Following the creation of the Met’s National Council in the 1952-53 season, the first Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions took place in 1954 in the Twin Cities. For over 60 years, the annual competition has helped launch the careers of countless young singers, including some of opera’s greatest stars. Every season, over 100 former participants in the National Council Auditions appear on the Met roster.
The district-level and regional auditions, held across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, are sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera National Council and administered by National Council members and hundreds of volunteers from across the country. Currently in its 65th year, the program has launched the careers of such well-known stars as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt, Lawrence Brownlee, Thomas Hampson, Eric Owens, Angela Meade, Nadine Sierra, Jamie Barton and Ryan Speedo Green. The competition garnered international attention with the release of the 2008 feature-length documentary The Audition, directed by award-winning filmmaker Susan Froemke, which chronicled the 2007 National Council Auditions season and Grand Finals Concert.
Known for her “keen expression and impressive delivery” (Music in Cincinnati), soprano Jessica Faselt hails from Iowa. Faselt completed her master’s degree at CCM, where she was the recipient of the Corbett Award, and she earned her Bachelor of Music from the University of Iowa. Faselt has sung with the Institute for Young Dramatic Voices, studying with mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, and will return there in 2017. She was a Gerdine Young Artist with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2015 and was engaged there in 2016 to cover the role of Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos. Other roles include: Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Hanna in The Merry Widow, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito and Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw.
Soprano Summer Hassan is a member of LA Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program. She made her company debut in 2014 as the Second Lady in Dido and Aeneas and returned as the Ghost Quartet Soprano in The Ghosts of Versailles in 2015. Her LA Opera appearances in the 2015/16 season include the Second Lady in The Magic Flute. Recent performances include Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle under the baton of Placido Domingo, as well as Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Colburn Orchestra. She was featured as Musetta in Wolf Trap Opera’s 2016 production of La Bohème and in recital with Steven Blier at The Barns at Wolf Trap. Ms. Hassan made her Carnegie Hall debut as Second Niece in Britten’s Peter Grimes with the St. Louis Symphony, and in 2014 she made her debut as the Second Lady in The Magic Flute with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis where she was a Gerdine Young Artist. Other roles have included Mimì in La Bohème, Betty in The Threepenny Opera and Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito. She received her Master of Music from CCM and her Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory.
Lauded for his, “charming…robust baritone…,” Romanian-American baritone Andrew G. Manea has been continually rising to the top of the opera world at an impressively young age. Andrew’s recent roles include Marcello in La Bohème, No. 7 in Transformations, Forester in The Cunning Little Vixen, Escamillo in Carmen, Danilo in The Merry Widow and the Father in Hansel and Gretel. In a very successful 2016 season, Andrew was awarded first place and audience favorite in the Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year Competition with Shreveport Opera, second place and audience favorite in the Opera Columbus Cooper-Bing International Vocal Competition, Finalist in the Jensen Foundation Vocal Competition and he was a Career Grant recipient in the Giulio Gari Foundation Competition. Continuing to rise to success, Andrew has been awarded a position as a new member of the San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellowship program. This coming season at San Francisco Opera, he will be performing Marullo in Rigoletto, covering Marcello in La Bohème, performing Marchese d’Obigny in La Traviata, performing in a world premiere of John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West and performing a Schwabacher Debut Recital with esteemed pianist Warren Jones. Andrew holds a bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a master’s degree from the CCM, where he studied with 
Bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum from Ellicott City, Maryland, is currently earning a Master of Music in Voice Performance at the Juilliard School. He received his bachelor’s degree from CCM. He has performed Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro, Lautsprecher in Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Der Fischer in Matsukaze, Melisso in Alcina and Colonel in a premier workshop of Daniel Catán’s Meet John Doe. He recently performed Guglielmo in Così fan Tutte with Merola Opera. He won the Seybold-Russell Award in the 2015 Corbett Opera competition, first place and “Audience Favorite” award at the 2016 James Toland competition and second place in the 2016 Gerda Lissner Liederkranz competition. He recently performed Claudio in Handel’s Agrippina in Alice Tully Hall and Wilson Theater in New York City. He will also perform under the baton of Maestro Michael Morgan with the Oakland Symphony next season.
Every year since 1976, the young vocalists of UC’s College-Conservatory of Music take the stage by storm to compete for five coveted full-tuition scholarships and $62,500 in awards that accompany them. This year, the competition will be held on Saturday, Feb. 25 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in CCM’s Patricia Corbett Theater.
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