Houston Grand Opera has announced the nine finalists for this year’s Concert of Arias, the 34th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, to be presented live from the Wortham Theater Center on January 21, 2022, at 7 p.m. CT.
University of Kentucky graduate Key’mon W. Murrah has been selected to compete in Operalia, The World Opera Competition 2021. Murrah travels to Moscow, Russia, this week to compete against classical singers from around the world.
Imagine you are a young singer, hoping for a career in opera and you ve worked hard enough, been good enough and had enough stamina to reach the finalist stage of a competition where you ll be performing before a theater jammed with opera lovers.
But now instead of facing a live audience at your big moment, you are instead greeted with facsimiles of people: 2D cardboard cutouts filling the seats as you sing two arias in the course of the evening before a panel of judges. The rewards are still the same recognition, prize money, possible accepted into a respected training program but the ambience, well it ll be a bit different.