Saariaho to Present Award to Soprano Karita Mattila
10th April 2012
© Opera News
Created in 2005, the Opera News Awards recognize five individuals each year for distinguished achievement in the field of opera. Proceeds from the gala—which will feature the presenters speaking about the awardees, as well as performance video clips—will benefit the education programs of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. Always a night of extraordinary star-power and glamour, the Opera News Awards celebration will once again bring together New York’s cultural and social luminaries. The corporate sponsor is BNY Mellon Wealth Management; the event has also received support from American Airlines and Trump International Hotel and Tower, New York. Tributes to the five awardees feature prominently in the just-published April 2012 issue of Opera News.
F. Paul Driscoll, Editor-in-Chief of Opera News, comments: “We have been enormously pleased with the response that the opera community has had to the Opera News Awards. The gala gives the opportunity for opera fans and professionals alike to celebrate the art form they cherish, as well as to allow friends throughout the opera community to come together for an evening that is filled with inspiration, laughter and the recounting of many vivid memories. As in previous seasons, this year’s honorees represent the very best that opera has to offer: they are all artists of prodigious skill, dedication and character, and we are proud to pay tribute to them.”
The evening’s host, Stephanie Blythe, is no stranger to Opera News. Receiving her own Opera News Award in 2008, Ms. Blythe spoke fondly in her acceptance speech about reading the magazine in her early days as a voice student at the Crane School of Music. Her first Opera News cover story was in June 2001. In 2003-04, Opera News produced a television special, "Vignettes: An Evening with Stephanie Blythe and Warren Jones," which was taped at Teatro Heckscher at El Museo del Barrio and broadcast on WNYE. The program is now in the permanent collection of the Paley Center for Media.
Opera News has been published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild since 1936; it has the largest circulation of any classical music magazine in the United States. The monthly magazine is a winner of three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for excellence in music journalism. F. Paul Driscoll has been Editor in Chief of Opera News since 2003; Brian Kellow, whose recent book Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark made many “Best of 2011” lists, is the magazine’s features editor and contributes a widely read monthly column, “On the Beat.”
Sunday, April 29, 2012, at 6pm
2011 OPERA NEWS AWARDS
Grand Ballroom, The Plaza
New York City
Awards presented to sopranos Karita Mattila and Anja Silja, baritones Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Peter Mattei, and director Peter Sellars.
Tickets are available through the Metropolitan Opera Guild at (212) 769-7009 or online here.
