It’s officially the off-season for opera, which means institutions such as Eastman School of Music and its opera program take a breather while summer stock companies like Finger Lakes Opera and high-profile festivals like Glimmerglass in Cooperstown take center stage. But that doesn’t mean that emergent young opera singers who performed at Eastman Opera Theatre and the Lotte Lenya Competition, held annually at Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall, are taking a break.

The Glimmerglass Festival’s 2023-24 season, which runs through August 20, prominently features professional singers with strong Rochester connections. Glimmerglass’s production of Handel’s fantastical Baroque opera “Rinaldo” is perhaps the most high-profile example: soprano Eastman alumnus Keeley Futterer, as well as soprano Jasmine Habersham, a recent collaborator with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, star alongside Metropolitan Opera standout and Glimmerglass Artist-in-Residence Anthony Roth Costanzo. The popular countertenor, whose portrayal of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten in Philip Glass’s opera mesmerized audiences, will also lead the Young Artists in a cabaret-style concert on August 11 and 14.

This year’s class of Young Artists at Glimmerglass has numerous links to Rochester.

Tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, who graduated from Eastman in 2020, sings the role of spirited sidekick Cacambo in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”

He says versatility is an important skill as a Young Artist, and singers need to demonstrate their ability to perform everything from early music and 18th-century Bel Canto opera to Broadway and everything in between at a place like Glimmerglass. His understanding of diction, languages, musicality, and character-building — all of which he developed while at Eastman — is put into practice on the job in a Young Artists Program. It’s about evolving from student into professional singer.

“All those different components we drill into ourselves in school are now put to the test in a Young Artist program,” Rhodes said. “It becomes less about perfection and more about artistry, more about who you are as an artist.”
Other Young Artists with Rochester connections are tenor Ryan Johnson and sopranos Taylor-Alexis Dupont and Amanda Sheriff, all recent first prize winners of the Lotte Lenya Competition, a prestigious annual vocal contest based at Eastman.



The year Sheriff won first prize, in 2022, was an exception, however — final performances were held in New York City. Sheriff felt she missed out by not performing at Kilbourn Hall. “I'm upset that I didn't get to do it in Rochester, because that stage everyone performs on at Eastman is such an important stage and a pillar in the operatic community,” she said.

After the Lotte Lenya Competition, Sheriff received new opportunities and her profile as an artist was amplified. Now at Glimmerglass, she said the three-month, 12-hours-a-day schedule tests an opera singer’s mettle in dealing with the realities of professional life.

“It really does show you the nitty gritty side of this industry — if you can do a Young Artists program, then you can absolutely do this as a career,” said Sheriff, who stars in the youth opera “The Rip Van Winkles” while also singing in the chorus of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Candide.”

“It's a great insight into what a career could look like, and how you would mentally, emotionally, and physically handle that,” she said. “In a lot of jobs, once you graduate college, you can do internships. And this is essentially an operatic internship.”

The Glimmerglass Festival continues through August 20. For more information on the festival, go to glimmerglass.org.

Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].