<span style="font-weight: 400">The Franco-American Vocal Academy (FAVA) is a pillar of the summer programs for singers. Read on for more information about the approach William Lewis and Frédérique Added take with the young singers who attend.
Happy New Year! Here’s to a year of music and health, artistry and growth! Classical Singer’s summer program issue has long been a resource for highlighting the many opportunities available to singers wishing to globalize their educational experience. Finding the right program for you or for your students is worth the time and the research. Summer intensives and Young Artist Programs carry the potential to offer student singers and emerging professionals crucial connections, coveted stage time, and the opportunity to learn from a variety of experts in a short time.
Summer programs can also serve as an oasis for young artists: a safe place to explore and be challenged in their craft. And international summer programs offer globalization and cultural and language immersion opportunities many young singers don’t even realize they need until they step off the plane and onto a campus overseas.
In this article, I’ll highlight a program that has long served as a first-class example of such program offerings—The Franco-American Vocal Academy (FAVA), in Angers, one of gems in the Loire Valley of France. FAVA is a part of the William Lewis School of Opera, which also annually presents the Austrian American Mozart Academy (AAMA) in Salzburg. The Franco-American Vocal Academy is an intensive-study program designed for emerging, talented singers who seek a professional career in opera, operetta, and concert work—or who seek experience and knowledge as future voice teachers. FAVA is open to all nationalities and it is a tuition-based summer program with no application fee that also offers generous scholarship opportunities.
To offer CS readers a closer look at the program, I interviewed FAVA’s head administrator, Frédérique Added, and her husband, celebrated Metropolitan Opera tenor, educator, and founder of FAVA and AAMA, William Lewis. Lewis and Added are married, and our conversation about their summer programming (including how it came about and their scores of alumni—many of whom are now high-profile artists) carried the warm dynamic of a couple reporting with pride on the accomplishments and plans of their family.
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FAVA holds auditions (many in-person on university campuses) for both singers and the intern-pianists (usually masters- and doctoral-level pianists). Each year FAVA also engages professional collaborative pianists, who join a robust and decorated faculty of directors, coaches, language teachers, directors, and composers.
When asked to describe a typical day for a singer at FAVA, Added shares the daily itinerary: “Both programs [FAVA and AAMA] have a bit of the same rhythm. A typical day would be voice lessons in the morning and coaching on either Lieder or French art songs, and some coaching on the opera. Then at lunch time—from 11 to 1, more or less—you have language. And we really put the emphasis on spoken language, because in school, people mostly study grammar and they don’t really have an opportunity to speak, so we ask our teachers to focus on the spoken part of it. And then in the afternoon, they do music rehearsals for the opera, whichever it is, and then staging. They do their daily life in the city…Angers is a university city.”
Lewis says, “We get really first-class singers. This year we had a mezzo-soprano from Finland, a soprano from Turkey…we have people from all over the world, from South Africa, France, Italy, Australia, and many from the U.S.” He continues, “They’re in Europe. They learn the language—they learn German and French in both places, and they work hard at it. Many schools don’t give as much language, but these students learn how to speak the language of every day to get them into the auditions and so forth, and so I think that’s a very important part too, that they learn the language.”
Added shares further about solo opportunities for singers: “And we almost always do Bastien und Bastienne for younger singers, so that they can perform a role onstage, and Der Schauspieldirektor—we really love these operas because they’re really good for young, young singers.” She further notes that the newer, French program has had multiple campuses: “We began in the southwest of France in 2007—that was the first time we did the program in France—after I met my husband.”
Looking to Lewis, Added smiles and recalls, “Why not in France?” Lewis grins, “Let’s do it!” as they continue the story together, sharing how Angers—a sister city of Austin, TX—lured the program to this city in western France, beside the Maine River at the western edge of the Loire Valley.
Like most opera-focused summer programs, FAVA students are expected to come with their music learned. Lewis stresses the importance of how FAVA aids in bolstering a singer’s resume, “For each student who comes, they have at least one total, complete role for their repertoire. It’s vital when they go to agents in Europe or wherever else, they want to know—they like your voice—but then they want to know what kind of background you have, and they like young people, too.”
Added offers, “This is one of our principles when we do that [cast students in complete roles, versus opera scene work]. We do operas onstage—with or without orchestra—the full staging, because there’s no way to learn to be on stage except by being onstage. You can’t understand how it is to sing a role except by singing a role. You can’t explain it—it’s not explainable, they have to live it.”
Chris Truong as Le chat, Erin Koolman as La chatte and Brittny Goon as l’enfant. In FAVA Opera’s production of L’Enfant et les sortiléges, 2015.
Lewis is quick to mention a recent example of an alumnus who’s continued to “live it” in a big way: “This morning I was speaking with one of my tenors who is in Frankfurt, and he’s been there something like 20 years. He’s a Kammersänger now. And [when] he started in the program [he] didn’t have any German—so we got him going with the German, got him with an agent in Munich, and he’s had a big career.”
Throughout our conversation, Lewis and Added continue to focus on the importance of language immersion and cultural exchange, with Added noting, “The French people are very happy to see all the young Americans coming and singing in French…. They’re so happy—our French composers, pianists—they’re so happy to work with American singers. They find the American singers so enthusiastic and flexible and resilient.”
Julia Hamon as Eurydice and Christopher Lopez as Jupiter in FAVA Opera’s production of Orphée aux Enfers, 2014.
Lewis and Added were eager to connect me with alumni from both programs—from AAMA and FAVA. I reached out to baritone DeMar Austin Neal IV, who attended the AAMA program in 2005 and 2006, singing the roles of Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Osmin in Zaide, and Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. After his stints with the Austria program, he joined FAVA in 2008, singing Raoul de Gardefeu in La vie Parisienne and Don Andrés de Ribeira in La Périchole.
Neal shares how AAMA and FAVA helped him moved forward artistically and professionally afterward, “AAMA allowed me to whet my operatic appetite as an undergraduate, providing full-role experience with an orchestra and conductor. At FAVA, it allowed me to explore valuable repertoire that is not often performed in the United States. Both experiences gave me unique insights to cultures of France, Austria, and Europe in general, expanding my worldview as an aspiring classical musician…. In Salzburg, having access to myriad performances during the Salzburg Festival was transformative. Opera, choral, and instrumental concerts abounded with some of the top names in the industry. In France, morning runs in the idyllic countryside served as a restorative backdrop to the intensity of coachings and rehearsals for our various concerts.”
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Shelley James as Berginella, Jahi Mims as Don Pedro de Hinoyosa, Nathan Létourneau as Piquillo, and DeMar Neal IV as Don Miguel do Panatellas in FAVA Opera’s productoin of La Périchole, 2012.
Tenor Sahel Salam shares his experiences with CS readers as well. Salam attended AAMA in 2014, singing Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, and FAVA in 2016, adding the role of Vincent in Gounod’s Mireille to his resume. “Tamino at AAMA was my first leading tenor role, and that experience helped me to understand so much of what it took to build a character in all its parts, musically and dramatically.”
“The program showed me that the freedom to express is always derived from discipline—and to get that discipline, you really have to fall in love with the art form and the work of the great masters who came before us. Professor Lewis shared his stories with me from his time at Teatro alla Scala, City Opera, the Met, and beyond. Those stories still live with me and continue to inspire me…. The work is never done, and we are always supposed to be students in our field.”
Sahel Salam as Vincent and Madeline Judge as Mireille. In FAVA Opera’s production of Mireille, 2016.
Salam’s favorite memory of the program carries with it the magic and romance of a romcom-meet-cute opera style, “My memories from FAVA are priceless! [A favorite] memory was how supportive everyone was. I was nervous and excited on the first day of the program in France. But after I introduced myself by singing the aria from Faust, many singers congratulated me. One soprano even changed her introductory aria to Marguerite’s aria from the same opera because she felt called to pair it with my performance. My heart melted when she sang it…and now that soprano, Natalia Pérez Rodriguez, and I are married!”
FAVA’s 2025 season programming includes Offenbach’s La belle Hélène with orchestra.
- Application form and material should be received by March 1, 2025.
- All application material and tuition information is available at favaopera.org/application.
