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Master Classes
This academic year's Master Class teachers are Dominic Cossa and Marilyn Horne.
Past Master Class teachers include:
Tom Stewart
Evelyn Lear
Louise McLelland
Dominic Cossa
Harolyn Blackwell
John Shirley-Quirk
Steve Rainbolt
Janice Chandler
Elly Ameling
Carol Weber (Eastman Faculty)
Dalton Baldwin
Ken Noda (Met Opera Coach)
Susan Webb (Met Opera Coach)
Vinson Cole
James McDonald and Ruth Ann McDonald
Elaine Bonazzi
Janet Bookspan
John Aler
Paul Plishka
Seth Riggs
Dominic Cossa - January 25, 2010
Goodwin Recital Hall, 1:30pm
Mr. Cossa has sung as leading baritone with the Metropolitan, the New York City, and the San Francisco Opera Companies, as well as the opera companies of Washington, Houston, Montreal, Vancouver and Philadelphia. His wide variety of roles include Germont in La Traviata, Zurga in The Pearlfishers, Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Pierrot in Die tote Stadt, and Yeletsky in Pique Dame.
He has concertized at London's Albert Hall, and has sung operatic performances at Strasbourgh's Opera du Rhin, Milan's Teatro Nuovo, Florence's Teatro della Pergola, and Teatro Bellini in Catania, Sicily. In addition to performing a repertoire of more than fifty operas, he has appeared in recital and in concert with the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, and the Israel Philharmonic. He has worked with eminent conductors such as Ozawa, Bernstein, and Solti. Mr. Cossa has toured the Far East extensively with concerts in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taiwan, Singapore, and Kuala Lampur.
Mr. Cossa's recording credits include complete operas with Beverly Sills (Julius Caesar: RCA), Joan Sutherland (Les Huguenots: London), and Luciano Pavarotti (Elixir of Love: London). He has also recorded When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd with the Boston Symphony for New World Records. He was chosen by Gian Carlo Menotti to appear in two premiers, The Hero in which he sang the title role and Tamu-Tamu in Spoleto, Italy.
Mr. Cossa has taught for many years in Salzburg, Austria for the Miami Summer Program. He is now associated with the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska. Mr. Cossa holds a B.S. from the University of Scranton, and a M.A. from the University of Detroit. He currently on the voice faculty at the University of Maryland.
Marilyn Horne - March 4, 2009
Goodwin Recital Hall, 2:30pm
She has been called the "Star Spangled Singer" and "the Heifetz of singers." In 2002, after a career in which for over four decades Marilyn Horne had dominated her field, Opera News said, “Marilyn Horne – whose face and song have been in the light – in so many places, in so many styles, through so many media, for so many years – may be the most influential singer in American history.”
Marilyn Horne continues to be one of America’s most beloved artists and one of the busiest, with a full schedule of concerts, recitals and teaching activities. She has received numerous accolades and honors in the arts as well as academia. President Clinton named her a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1995. In 1992, she received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bush and the Endowment for the Arts. Miss Horne sang at the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton White Houses and at President Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. In October of 2000, Miss Horne returned to the town of her birth, Bradford, Pennsylvania, where a street on the public square was named in her honor. On that occasion, she also presented the opening season gala for the Bradford Creative and Performing Arts Center, where she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Distinction from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.
Among Marilyn Horne's many worldwide prizes are the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters from France's Ministry of Culture, the Commendatore al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the Fidelio Gold Medal from the International Association of Opera Directors, and the Covent Garden Silver Medal for Outstanding Service. Miss Horne's international success in the most difficult of coloratura mezzo-soprano roles led to the revival of many of Rossini’s and Handel's greatest operas. In an unprecedented move, Marilyn Horne received Italy’s first Rossini Medaglia d’Oro, created especially for her.
She celebrated twenty-six years as a leading lady at the Metropolitan Opera, and was honored at the San Francisco Opera for her thirty-nine seasons there in October 1999. Her many academic awards include numerous honorary doctorates from schools including the Juilliard School, Johns Hopkins University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1999, Miss Horne was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. In 2001, Miss Horne received a President’s Merit Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame.
Grammy Awards have been presented to Miss Horne for several of her operatic recordings. These include Handel's Semele (Deutsche Grammaphon), Presenting Marilyn Horne, In Concert at the Met with Leontyne Price and Marilyn Horne, and Carmen (conducted by Leonard Bernstein). In April, 2008, Decca released an 11 CD set entitled Marilyn Horne, The Compete Decca Recitals as well as re-released Souvenir of a Golden Era, to highlight Miss Horne’s appearance as Host/Narrator for the North American premiere of “Pauline Viardot and Friends,” under the auspices of San Francisco presents, also starring Frederica Von Stade and Vladimir Chernov. Additional releases include a collection of songs of Bernstein, Barber and Bolcom, entitled I Will Breathe a Mountain, on BMG and a recording of the songs of Irving Berlin that was released by VAI in 2000, and in 2005, BMG-Sony re-released two of Miss Horne’s CDs – Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and All Through the Night, a collection of the world’s most beloved lullabies for children. A two CD compilation entitled Just for the Record – The Golden Voice of Marilyn Horne, from Universal Classics, was released for Miss Horne’s 70th birthday celebration in 2004. Also released for this occasion, was Miss Horne’s updated autobiography, The Song Continues, from Baskerville Press.
The season 2008-2009 was another filled with very special milestones and achievements for Marilyn Horne. She was honored as a recipient of the prestigious Opera News Award, the highest honor given within the opera industry, to recognize distinguished contributions from leading figures in the world of opera. In January of 2009 she celebrated her 75th Birthday and the 15th Anniversary of the founding of the Marilyn Horne Foundation with a star-studded Gala concert at Carnegie Hall. In addition to her on-going teaching residencies at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the University of Oklahoma at Norman, University of Maryland at College Park and the Manhattan School of Music, Miss Horne was part of the inaugural season of a new master class program, Lieder Alive! at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
In the 2009-2010 season, Ms. Horne will offer master classes for the first time at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, MD and at St. Joseph College in Hartford, CT. She will return to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Oklahoma at Norman, and the Manhattan School of Music for long- term residencies. Miss Horne will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2009 and the next month will be honored in Washington, DC as the 2009 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors.
In celebration of her 60th birthday in January of 1994, Miss Horne launched The Marilyn Horne Foundation, dedicated to the art of the vocal recital and presentation of young singers in recital throughout the United States. Every January since then, the Foundation, now in partnership with the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, presents a week of master classes taught by artists such as Dame Joan Sutherland, Maestro James Levine, Christa Ludwig, Grace Bumbry, Thomas Hampson, Regine Crespin, Warren Jones, Brian Zeger and Martin Katz, and seminars featuring topics on the vocal arts, offering educational experiences for collegiate singers and pianists, as well as the public. In January of 1998, an anniversary benefit gala celebration took place at Carnegie Hall featuring Miss Horne with her colleagues and friends, and the debut of young artists supported by the Foundation. The gala in 1999 featured six young Foundation artists. In January 2000, the Foundation presented another gala concert at Carnegie Hall as a gift to the City of New York for the Millennium, free to the public, with over 600 tickets being given to students of all grade levels throughout New York City. Since its inception, the Foundation has introduced over 30,000 students to the vocal recital and classical song through more than over 300 education programs across the country along with full recital appearances in New York City and many cities throughout the country. In 2004 the Marilyn Horne Foundation inaugurated a new collaboration with Carnegie Hall, which will now be the presenter of The Song Continues in Carnegie’s new performance space, Zankel Hall. In early fall of 2009, Miss Horne will personally host a two week Mediterranean Celebration cruise in honor of the Foundation’s 15th anniversary.
Marilyn Horne is on the faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. As Vocal Program Director, she is teaching public master classes and private lessons to some of the world's most promising young artists. Miss Horne has been responsible for reviving full length staged opera performances at the Academy with brand new productions of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims - a smashing success - and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 1997 and 1998, followed by Handel's rarely performed opera, Rodelinda in the summer of 1999, Richard Strauss’s masterpiece, Ariadne auf Naxos in the summer of 2000, and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande (the Peter Brook, 90-minute, two piano version) in 2001. Productions of Benjamin Britten’s opera Albert Herring and Mozart’s great masterpiece, Le Nozze di Figaro followed respectively in 2002 and 2003. 2004 brought Nino Rota’s Il Cappello di Paglia di Firenze and Mozart’s classic Cosi fan Tutte was presented in 2005. Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims made its second appearance in 2006 and Puccini’s La Bohème made its Music Academy debut in 2007. William Bolcom’s The Wedding, received high acclaim as the 2008 production and in 2009, Thomas’ Mignon received a rare and highly anticipated staging.
Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Marilyn Horne began her musical studies with her father and first sang in public at the age of two. When she was eleven, her family moved to Long Beach, California. After completing high school at Long Beach Polytechnic, she studied voice with William Vennard and song/recital works with Gwendolyn Koldofsky (her accompanist thereafter for ten years) at the University of Southern California. During that time, she also participated in master classes with Lotte Lehmann at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and Cal Tech in Pasadena. At the age of twenty, she made her operatic debut with the Los Angeles Guild Opera and, at that same age, dubbed the voice of Carmen in the highly successful film of Carmen Jones starring Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen. Her early operatic career included three years at the Gelsenkirchen Municipal Opera, Germany where she sang a wide variety of starring roles. In 1960, she returned to the U.S. where she presented her sensational debut in Berg's Wozzeck with the San Francisco Opera Company, followed by her Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in 1961. In September of 1999, Miss Horne fulfilled a personal goal of singing in all of the fifty states with an engagement in Laramie, Wyoming.
In the year 2000, Marilyn Horne stopped programming classical repertoire in recital, and began to offer programs that reflect her deep and abiding interest and experience, since childhood, in American folk and popular songs. In collaboration with Tony Award winning pianist, arranger, and conductor Don Pippin, she presents to this day, An Evening of Great American Popular Songs, which debuted in 2000 at the Bradford Creative and Performing Arts Center. Additional programs in recent years have included Steppin’ Out with Irving Berlin, with tenor Robert White and pianist Dick Hyman, which opened the concert series of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in October 2000 and Stephen Foster: Songs of America, which debuted with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for the 2002-03 opening season gala. Just Between Friends with Barbara Cook which debuted in spring of 2002 at the Wharton Center, in East Lansing, MI, continues to receive rave reviews, with performance at Symphony Hall, Boston, The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Florida Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, MD, and, most recently, in May 2008, at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara, CA.
Actively dedicated to excellence in vocal art, Miss Horne has ongoing commitments for private teaching and master classes throughout the world - well into the next decade.
