About the Festival

Joint BCO and CUA summer opera festival is a highly professional training opera program for rising professionals. Singers that have been selected to participate in the program this year will receive individual attention from the leading teachers, coaches and professionals in the area.

Two weeks of the festival will include voice lessons, coachings in style and diction, daily yoga sessions, various workshops, master classes and vocal performance seminars. A variety of classes will be offered in such areas as vocal technique, acting in opera, Italian, Russian and German language, audition technique, Italian recitative and more.

The purpose of this valuable workshop is to focus on developing the singing actor. The singers, their dramatic intentions and their voice will be the primary focus in each opera.

Two intense weeks of staging and music rehearsals will result in four performances of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro and Bizet's Carmen. For younger singers the festival will produce an opera workshop of opera scenes and arias.

All performances are fully staged, in costume, sung in Italian (Le Nozze di Figaro) and French with English spoken dialogs (Carmen) and projected English supertitles. The performances of the operas as well as the concert of the opera scenes and arias are accompanied by BCO chamber orchestra.

Dates: June 1-17, 2012

Venue: Catholic University of America.

Who: College-age and Young Professionals.

Materials: 1. Application fee $36.50 (PayPal)
2. Application (download)
3. Head shot (online and bring a hard copy for auditions)
4. Current resume (online and bring a hard copy for auditions)
5. Recent mp3 recording, Youtube or DVD if available
6. Costume measurements (download)

sent to auditions@belcantanti.com marked "Summer Festival".

Tuition: $1300 (Tuition is Non-Refundable after March 1, 2012).

Housing for out of town singers will be provided on campus of CUA ( the cost is not included in tuition).

Food: Bel Cantanti Opera provides a full dinner for the students and faculty every night and lunch (selected days).

Payments: Pay an audition fee online with your credit card through PayPal (PayPal). You do not have to have a PayPal account and can use any major credit card.
Audition Fee is $36.50 ( $35 plus $1.50 PayPal fee).
Tuition is paid by check sent to Bel Cantanti Opera, 13007 Prairie View Pl. Germantown, Md, 20874.
Check has to be postmarked not later than February 20th, 2012.

Festival Performances: June 15, 16 and 17, 2012 at the Ward Hall of Benjamin T. Rome School of Music. All operas as well as opera scenes are fully staged, in costume. Accompanied by BCO chamber orchestra.

Festival Faculty and Guest Artistis

Katerina Souvorova: BCO director, festival producer, artistic director.

Rick Christman: voice technician; Fabiana Bravo: voice lessons; Sharon Christman: voice lessons.

Henriette Lund: French diction, coachings (Carmen), Mattia D'Affuso: Italian diction (Le Nozze di Figaro).

Guillaume Toirniaire: stage director (Carmen), Peter Kozma: stage director (Le Nozze di Figaro).

Kathleen Scott: conductor (Le Nozze di Figaro); Joel Borrelli - Boudreau: conductor (Carmen).

Giovanni Reggioli: Italian Bel Canto; Katerina Souvorova: Russian Diction; Kethia Clairevoyant: Yoga.

James Parker: vocal coachings; David Ballena: vocal coachings; Nicholas Catravas: rehearsal pianist, coachings; Seyoung Jeong: coachings, accompanist; Kaime Henkel: accompanist; David Hill: vocal coachings, accompanist.

Festival Performances

Friday, June 15, 7:30pm, C. Bizet Carmen

Saturday, June 16 , 3:00pm, W. Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro

Saturday, June 16, 7.30pm, An Evening of Arias and Opera Scenes

Sunday, June 17, 3:00pm, C. Bizet Carmen

Sunday, June 17, 7.30pm, W. Mozart Le Nozze di Figaro

All festival performances are presented at the Ward Hall of the Benjamin T.Rome School of Music, at Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Ave., N.E., Washington DC 20064

Sample Day's Schedule

9:45 am - Check In.

10:00 am - Yoga session

11:00 am - Coachings / voice lessons / music rehearsals / staging rehearsals

2:30pm - Short break, Lunch

3:00pm - Guest-Artist Event / Master Class / Performance seminar

5:30 pm - Short Break / Dinner.

6:00pm - Voice lessons / Music Coachings / Staging rehearsals

10:00 pm - Participants released.

Each individual schedule will be different depending on participation.

Mission of the Festival

Members of Bel Cantanti Opera company strongly believe that giving a chance to young singers to develop their talent makes a big difference in the future of Opera.

Our mission was greatly understood and supported by late critic emeritus of the Washington Post, Joseph McLellan, who wrote:

"As often as I have enjoyed rich costumes, elaborate scenery, spectacular stage effects and a virtuoso orchestra in opera productions from Vienna to San Francisco, I keep coming back to the idea that the voices are what matter the most, the reason that people choose to go to an opera rather than a spoken play that is likely to come across with more clarity and logic.
Next to voices, I would put acting skills: the ability to portray character and tell a story while singing, usually, in a foreign language.

Opera Bel Cantanti reaffirmed my long-held belief that we are living in a golden age of opera. And my hope that opera, specifically opera in America, has a promising future. Bel Cantanti is not prominent among America's thousand-plus opera companies, and perhaps never will be. But it makes the special magic of opera happen."