The North Dakota District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions will hold its 49th annual auditions on Saturday, November 17, 2012 in the Josephine Campbell Recital Hall in Hughes Fine Arts Center on the UND campus.  Auditions begin at noon, and will be followed later that afternoon by a public master class conducted by internationally acclaimed singer Johanna Meier.  The auditions continue to be free and open to the public.  This prestigious competition is made possible due to the generous support of the University Fellows and the UND Music Department.

This competition is open to aspiring opera singers between the ages of 20 and 30 and aims to identify exceptional young talent and provide a venue for these young singers to be heard by representatives of The Metropolitan Opera.  Three judges at the ND District will listen to the singers perform at least two opera arias and select winners to advance to the Upper Midwest Regional Finals held in Minneapolis, MN in February 2, 2013.  Winners from the Regional Levels are sponsored to go to New York in March for the National Council Semi-Finals, and the Finalists selected from that round will perform at the Grand Finals Concert on Sunday, March 10, 2013 on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.  Throughout the four levels of the National Council Auditions, singers compete for nearly half a million dollars of prize money and the prestige of being a “Met Winner.” The ND District Auditions attracts singers from our region, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Manitoba, but has also included competitors from as far away as Texas and New York.

The afternoon master class, held after the conclusion of the auditions and also open to the public, will be conducted by soprano Johanna Meier, considered “one of the foremost Wagnerian sopranos of her era.” In the master class, she will provide singing advice and guidance to several of the competitors from the auditions.  Among other career accomplishments, Ms. Meier was the first American to sing Isolde in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany.  She was raised in Spearfish, SD, where she founded and is the artistic director of the Johanna Meier Opera Theater Institute at Black Hills State University now in its sixteenth year.  Ms. Meier is one of the ND District audition judges and is joined on the audition panel by Nicholas G. Russell, Director of Artistic Operations, Boston, Lyric Opera and Bruce Stasyna, Director of the Young Artist Program, Palm Beach (Florida) Opera.

Applications must be received by November 10, 2012, and singers interested in entering the North Dakota District should contact G Paul Larson, ND District Auditions Director, at gpaul_larson@yahoo.com.  Individuals or organizations interested in donating to the ND District may contact G Paul Larson, at the above address, or Louise Pinkerton, ND District Auditions Co-Director, at louise_pinkerton@hotmail.com Information is also available online at www.metopera.org or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NDMet