BONFILS-STANTON FOUNDATION
ARTISTS TRAINING PROGRAM
2021 ARTIST SPONSORSHIPS Central City Opera Guild Michelle Monroe • Denver Lyric Opera Guild Dylan Davis • El Pomar Foundation Eric J. McConnell
left: eric j. mcconnell in a live-streamed concert with central city opera and lone tree arts center. right: carla vargas fuster promoting her igtv projects.
THEY CAN’T BE KEPT FROM SINGING BY MARGARET SIEGRIST The path of an opera singer is not for the faint of heart. During a regular season, close to 900 young singers compete for 20-30 slots in Central City Opera’s acclaimed Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program. Those who make the cut immerse themselves in a jam-packed eight-week season, devouring courses in language and diction, movement, acting and stage combat; then immediately putting those skills to use rehearsing and performing roles in Festival productions. This year’s young artists were selected through the same rigorous audition process and will hone their craft in a season chock-full of performance and professional development. But after 15+ months innovating in order
16
C e n t r a l
C i t y
O p e r a
to perform in the digital world, learning skills never-before required of their profession and absolutely scrapping their way through 2020 for the love of this art form — what they bring to our Festival is unlike any group before them. Like most of the Festival company, members of the training program work primarily as freelancers. They travel the nation, sometimes the world, on a job-to-job basis — appearing in competitions, singing roles, participating in young artist programs, often a bit of everything. When COVID-19 shut down our industry, emerging artists faced an especially challenging situation as they’re at such a crucial moment in their careers. Each singer is working to bridge the gap from training into main stage contracts. Most are
