Twenty-five contestants from all over the world – only one representative per country – traveled to Cardiff, Wales last June to compete for the grand prize of 10,000 pounds (roughly $17, 000) and the distinguished title of “1999 Singer of the World.” Organized and founded 18 years ago, this competition takes place every two years, this was its ninth event. The judges this year were Dame Joan Sutherland, Sherrill Milnes, Carlo Bergonzi, Eva Randova, General Director of the Welsh National Opera Anthony Freud, General Director of the Munich Opera Peter Jonas and Director of the Edinburgh Festival and past Chairman of the competition Brian McMaster. Past judges have included Regina Resnik, Gerard Souzay, Ileana Cotrubas, Marilyn Horne and administrator Matthew Epstein. Agents and managers come from all around the world, ready to hand out their calling cards to their new “discoveries” in hopes of finding a singer who is ready for representation and not already on someone else’s list. People come from all over the world for the six-night event (five concerts for the preliminary and one final round concert) to hear their country’s representative (I sat next to somebody from San Francisco the first evening). The competition takes place in St. David’s Hall, right in the heart of a very charming Cardiff (spelled Caerdydd in Welsh). The broadcasters for the TV spots and the announcers for the live rounds speak in both English and Welsh. The competition seems to be a great point of pride for the people here who take great interest in their past winners and local stars. After all, some famous Welsh singers include Gwenyth Jones, Margaret Price, Geraint Evans and Bryn Terfel.
This competition is directly linked with the deep musical traditions of both the amateur singing competitions called Eisteddfod (pronounced Iestethfod) and the Welsh National Opera which holds a 53 year tradition in the development of young artists. “This disproves the idea of never being able to be a ‘profit in your own land,’” remarked Anthony Freud, the WNO’s administrative director and chairperson for the judge’s panel. His philosophy is simple: “A competition is only as good as the quality of experience it gives to each contestant.” Organizer and director of the Cardiff Competition, Anna Williams shares the same idea: “…to make it possible for the singers to get out on that stage and do the best they can.” And much to my pleasant surprise, that’s exactly what seems to take place.
Aside from its classy organization and great track record for winners – Bryn Terfel, Dimitri Hvorostovsky and Karita Mattila are just a few among many – the most amazing part of this competition is the fact that, unlike any other in the world, this one is televised. Throughout the week, the BBC carries the event complete with commentary and projections of the next day, and European stations broadcast it at a later date. (I recall having watched the 1997 event in Japan, not knowing what it was at the time but being pleasantly surprised!) In Great Britain the preliminaries are a day delayed and the finals are broadcast live. Being allowed the time slot of a major sporting event gives great credence to our art form. (Would this ever wash in the US? How we’d love to think it would!) The contestants get to sing their 20 minutes of music with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra or the BBC Wales Radio Orchestra – preliminaries with orchestra unheard of anywhere else – and they are in front of a very enthusiastic audience. They are given exposure on the greatest vehicle of public relations we have; the omnipotent television set. Herein, as they say, lies the rub.
The only downside this observer noticed is the way the preliminaries are divided. Only five singers appear each night, the judges choose a winner for each night and those five winners are the finalists for the last evening. The five are divided in no particular order and a special second place lieder winner is picked from the entire group, so if you haven’t made the finals, you still have a chance to win a prize and a bit of money (about $5,000 US equivalent). But the problem is in the division, if you happen to be scheduled for a night when your fellow contestants are much better than the night before, your chances decrease due to the luck of the draw. So in essence you are only competing with four other singers and not the entire 25. Administrative Director Anna Williams is aware of this problem. It is possible to get in the finals and be dropped from them even after you have emerged a winner of the preliminaries as the judges review the tapes of the previous five evenings and add or subtract, as they need. It still seems a somewhat flawed system, however. “We are trying to find a better way,” states Williams.
Nevertheless, the Singer of the World holds great prestige. “It’s a career-maker, but fortunately, not a career-breaker” states former head of the Welsh National Opera and past adjudicator, Matthew Epstein, now artistic director of Lyric Opera of Chicago. “The cameras are rolling, and it’s a huge freak out.” According to Epstein, winning the Cardiff can be a terrific responsibility for young singers, one they can’t always handle. “Winning isn’t always a blessing, and being only a finalist can be exactly the right thing. Sometimes the emotional stability isn’t there.” He is referring to the famous year of the “battle of the baritones” when Bryn Terfel lost to Dimitri Hrostovsky. “They were like apples and oranges; Hrostovsky just had a better night in the finals.” It was a hard thing for the young baritone from Siberia to be coined the “Singer of the World” with very little experience. According to the general consensus, it threw him into the whirlwind of opera too fast, something for which he was not entirely prepared. “He has worked hard to come out of it,” Epstein said. Bryn Terfel, as Anthony Freud, WNO Director stated, “was a bit rough around the edges at that time, he wasn’t ready to take on the world. Not winning helped him to take more time to slowly refine his art.” Now, as the opera world knows, they are equal in stature and fame. The downside, then, to a competition like the Cardiff seems an unexpected one, with hoards of managers, agents and directors in the audience ready to grab “fresh meat” for their promotion.
How are these singers chosen? According to Brian McMaster, co-founder and judge of the competition, it’s a process that had to evolve. “We started by involving television stations from around the world so that the BBC Wales had a collaborative effort with the stations and would eventually fund a telecast of the event in their country. The problems we got into involved the inequality of finances between countries.” According to McMaster, “some of the poorer countries either couldn’t afford to finance the search for a singer or would choose their talent in a ‘personal manner.’ We’ve had a relative or girlfriend of a TV executive who wasn’t very good. After having some rather unbalanced talent, we learned our lesson and began choosing the talent ourselves.” Now, through recommendations from organizations – for the US, it’s the Young Artists programs at the Met, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Merola and Houston – singers are heard through auditions by one representative of the event. That person for the past few years has been Julian Smith, Head of Music at Welsh National Opera. “We are still trying to find a better way to choose our talent,” remarked Anna Williams. “It’s still an imperfect system and a lot of pressure for one person to do all the listening. Also, the expense of flying that person around the world is a large one.”
Once the singers are chosen, their fate is sealed. They are financed and provided for to the nth degree, including translators, flights, hotels, a meal stipend and anything else they may need. “We had a young girl who could not afford an evening dress for the event. We took care of it. The singers need to feel their best so they can perform at their optimum.” stated Williams.
How do they fund all of these expenses? A lot of it comes from the collaborative efforts of the BBC Wales, the WNO and their current sponsor, BP Amoco. The concern, at this point, is that BP Amoco will be pulling out its sponsorship and The CSOW is searching for a new backer. As of March, 2000, Anna Williams reports that they are still looking. This venture will not be an easy one. Even though there are sold-out audiences, the financial needs for this project are tremendous. Rehearsal time is abundant and the competitors are giving the opportunity to treat the event as a serious artistic venture. You need a lute player for your aria? They’ll provide the best in Wales! When it is time to do your art songs, a grand piano is wheeled out in front of the orchestra and a pianist of the first rate is provided for you.
Singers are given piano rehearsals with the conductor. The orchestra then goes through the music before the singers join them. This takes up one and one-half hours of the six-hour session. The singers then join orchestra and work as long as is needed to get through their literature. On average it is about thirty minutes. The day of the performance, (which I found a bit hard on the singers) a three hour tech rehearsal with orchestra is held in the hall.
How did this “dream child” with all its ups and downs come into being? It was basically a labor of love by two people, Mervyn Williams, Head of Music at BBC Wales, who thought of the idea as he was taking a bath and contemplating the opening of St. David’s Hall in Cardiff in 1982/83. He then took the idea to Brian McMaster, who at the time was the WNO’s general director. BBC Wales executive, Geraint Talfan Davies, was also supportive of the project and guaranteed the funding to run the competition in the early years.
What drove them? After adjudicating several competitions that were rigged or run in an unethical manner, they decided that the only way to beat it would be to create their own version of a competition. One in particular pushed McMaster over the edge. “They had already chosen their winners, putting their students first. I had no say at all.” When Williams and McMaster saw the opportunity to create a kinder, gentler event, the television camera was their main audience. “We really gear the whole thing towards the telecast itself,” states McMaster. Even though they sell out their tickets within days of the opening of the box office, it seems to be a television event with a live audience. Even the Masterclasses that the adjudicators give the singers who don’t make the finals are edited, formatted and given airtime during the proceeding holiday season throughout Great Britain.
The singers came from Albania to Yugoslavia, alphabetically speaking. Contrary to the normal soprano-dominated competition, 1999’s contestants included 14 men and 11 women, and the baritones dominated. They all had something in common: they were refined artists. Their voices varied in size, strength and in some cases (but very few), quality. This extremely high level creates a more exciting concert situation for the audience than the usual competition. Choosing what to sing was almost as important as how it was sung. Some singers took risks and failed; others played it safe and were judged harshly for it. It’s a hard call. The interesting part was how those twenty minutes on stage allowed one to truly see the personality of each artist. In some cases, you loved them and even though they weren’t the best, you wanted them to do well. In other cases… well, need I go on?
Once in the finals at the Cardiff, it’s more a matter of preference than who is better than whom. Barbara Bonney was the commentator for the evening, giving her blow by blow on how each artist was doing and who may – or deserves to – win. In the town of Cardiff, the finals were on every television screen; including the local pubs. People were stopping the judges beforehand to give their opinions. Again, one is reminded of the sporting event and all of its excitements. It is a little bit like a music school twilight zone to watch everyone getting fired up about singing!
This year’s winner was a soprano, a Greek-German (a very proud moment for this Greek-American writer), Anja Harteros. She electrified the audience in a way that could be likened to a 1950’s Callas at Scala performance. There were great singers who competed with her, but it was clear that she was a front-runner. Daesan No, a Korean baritone, won the lieder competition. As a result of her win, Ms. Harteros is debuting at the Wiener Staatsoper, Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Semperoper Dresden. Prior to the competition she was fest singer in Bonn, Germany, virtually undiscovered. Mr. No is now in the US as an Artist in Residence at the Academy of Vocal Arts and has sung at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Our American representative, Tenor Tom Studebaker, was one of the preliminary winners.
To investigate entering the 2001 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, Anna Williams suggests writing to her directly at the address listed below. “We do ask for letters of recommendation from an opera company or conservatory of music,” she said, adding that she will then arrange for an audition by Julian Smith when he visits the US in the fall. Auditions will be held in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Houston.
Ms. Anna Williams
Cardiff Singer of the World Competition
BBC Wales
Broadcasting House
Cardiff CF5 2YQ United Kingdom
Tel/Fax: +44 1437 563834
