The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Here are the winners of Friday night’s sixth annual Handel Aria Competition
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By Jacob Stockinger
The sixth annual Handel Aria Competition took place Friday night in Mills Hall on the UW-Madison campus at the Mead Witter School of Music.
It was, as usual, much fun.
Such serious fun deserved a bigger audience. But The Ear suspects that the opening night of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society at the Overture Center and the aria competition cut into each other’s audience. Maybe that scheduling conflict can be avoided in the future.
Everyone seems to agree that every year, as word of the competition continues to spread far and wide, the singers get better. This year, the seven finalists – five sopranos and three mezzo-sopranos chosen from 113 international applicants — were all terrific.
Special thanks should also go to the Madison Bach Musicians, who in a short amount of rehearsal time turned in outstanding accompaniment in music that can be hard to follow because or ornaments and embellishments as well as subjective interpretations and the Baroque singing style.
The wide repertoire included recitatives and arias from “Semele,” “Giulio Cesare,” “Rodelinda,” “Theodora,” “Hercules,” “Ariodante,” “Judas Maccabeus” and “Ricardo Primo, re d’Inghilterra” (Richard the First, King of England).
The biggest disappointment – in truth not very big — was that the competition had no male voices. There were no tenors, countertenor, baritones or basses to add to the variety. (You can hear the 2017 Audience Favorite, tenor Gene Stenger, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
But that is how judging on merit works, so who can argue?
Once again, The Ear and many of his voice-savvy friends disagreed with the three professional judges. That seems to happen every year. But there will be more about that, as well as some other observations, another time.
In the meantime, let us celebrate the results.
Here, from left to right in a photo by David Peterson, are this year’s winners: soprano Sarah Hayashi, Second Prize; soprano Suzanne Karpov, First Prize; mezzo-soprano Lindsay Metzger, Audience Favorite; and mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit, Third Prize.
All of the performances will be posted on YouTube at a later date, which The Ear will announce when it happens.
For more information about the seven finalists and the three professional judges, as well as updated news and how you can support the ever-expanding competition, go to:
https://handelariacompetition.com
https://handelariacompetition.com/2018-competition/
Tags: #BachDancingandDynamiteSociety, #BaroqueMusic, #BaroqueOpera, #BaroqueSingingStyle, #GeorgeFridericHandel, #HandelAriaCompetition, #HandelOpera, #JohannSebastianBach, #KingofEngland, #LindsayMetzger, #MadisonBachMusicians, #MadisonWisconsin, #MeadWitterSchoolofMusic, #NewsUpdate, #OrchestralAccompaniment, #OvertureCenter, #RehearsalTime, #SarahCoit, #SarahHayashi, #SchedulingConflict, #SuzanneKarpov, #UniversityofWisconsin, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #YouTubevideo, accompaniment, aria, Ariodante, Arts, audience, baritone, Baroque, bass, celebrate, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Competition, composer, conflict, countertenor, Early music, earlymusic, embellish, embellishment, England, favorite, George Frideric Handel, Giulio Cesare, Hercules, international, interpretation, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Judas Maccabeus, judge, King, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, merit, Mezzo-soprano, Music, news, Orchestra, ornament, photo, photograph, prize, recitative, rehearsal, results, Ricardo Primo, Richard the First, Rodelinda, Semele, soprano, style, subjective, support, tenor, Theodora, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, update, Viola, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, YouTube
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