6 young singers top Met Opera auditions

NEW YORK (AP) — From a starting field of nearly 1,500 aspiring opera singers across the U.S., it came down to 10 — three sopranos, one tenor and six deep male voices — on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

The contestants, all in their 20s, got to perform two arias with full orchestra Sunday, and when it was over, a panel of judges named six of them winners of the 60th annual National Council Auditions.

The heavy concentration of bass-baritones was a random occurrence, but it made for some unusual duplication in the program. Brandon Cedel and Richard Ollarsaba both chose the same aria from Rachmaninov's "Aleko." Cedel sang his version with a beautifully burnished tone that put him in the winner's circle; Ollarsaba, almost as good, had to settle for being a runner-up. Earlier, Cedel brought elegant phrasing to the long lines of an aria from Bellini's "La Sonnambula"; that piece was also performed by another winner, bass Musa Ngqungwana, originally from Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

The day's only tenor, Michael Brandenburg, won a top prize by displaying an intriguingly distinctive sound, ardent and tinged with a slightly acidic vibrato, in arias from Cilea's "L'Arlesiana" and Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin."

The youngest contestant at 21, soprano Rebecca Pedersen, used arias from Massenet's "Le Cid" and Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci" to highlight a polished technique and potent sound that suggested she might grow beyond lyric roles. The lighter-voiced Sydney Mancasola sang with sparkling high notes and expressive nuance in "Caro Nome," from Verdi's "Rigoletto," improving on an uneven first outing in an aria from Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment." Both were among the winners.

Dramatically, the standout was bass-baritone Thomas Richards, who gave a chilling interpretation of Claggart's soliloquy from Britten's "Billy Budd," and then closed the competition with a rollicking account of "La calunnia" from Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia."

Besides Ollarsaba, the runners-up were baritone Matthew Anchel, soprano Tracy Cox and baritone Efrain Solis.

The winners receive a $15,000 grant for further study, while the others get $5,000 each.

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and bass-baritone Eric Owens — both competition winners back in the 1990s — acted as co-hosts, and Radvanovsky helped fill the time during the judges' deliberations by unleashing an imposing but at times earsplitting version of "Pace, pace, mio Dio," from Verdi's "La Forza del Destino." Marco Armiliato conducted the Met orchestra.