For a number of years, San Francisco Opera has had a poll of audience members to determine the "emerging star of the year," who is chosen from younger singers who've appeared at the company in the previous year. I am always skeptical about polls such as this, I never vote in them, and the nominees and winners have sometimes included singers who have appeared at multiple major companies over a period of up to 13 years. Yeah, that year's winner had emerged...years ago.
BUT this past year had an amazing number of terrific singers, to the extent that even if I voted in these polls, I would have had no idea for whom to vote. The voters spoke, in any event, and chose Yaritza Veliz, the Chilean soprano who was an absolute firecracker in Gabriela Frank's El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego.
She was fabulous, and while I have very little interest in L'Elisir d'amore, not to mention even less interest in seeing it twice in one year, I do plan to see Santa Fe Opera's production of it next season because she's in it and Roberto Kalb, who did a terrific job with Frida y Diego, is conducting.
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