It's time to announce the Verdi Prize!
Happy Spring everyone!
As the cold temperatures abate, and there appears to be some light at the end of the covid-tunnel, it is now time to launch our 4TH ROBERT PRESLEY MEMORIAL VERDI PRIZE, due to happen this year on 17th OCTOBER 2021 at the Royal Academy of Music.
One of the - perhaps unexpected - outcomes of the pandemic, has been a huge spate of both online performances and online competitions. The former have varied hugely - as indeed have our own offerings; our Ride of the Valkyries in Isolation and our Die Walküre Act I are still garnering views, and we’re proud of them both, albeit in somewhat different ways!
One of the issues that has certainly happened with online competitions is that singers have had to pay, often multiple times for multiple rounds for their entry fee, and often the competition’s purpose has been far from clear. What does the competition seek to reward? And if it’s alleging that it is without an age limit, then have any singers over the age of 34 actually been taken through to the final? This issue is particularly pertinent to us, as our late friend Robert was so very passionate about age bias, when competitions only glorified younger singers (who were excellent, of course).
All of the prizes are now completely covered by donors, and we are heartily grateful to Laura Devine Immigration, Irene Richards and John Roussety, and Jan Wiener for their assistance with this. We’re therefore really pleased, that we can drop the entry fee for this competition down by 50% to a mere £20, which in a (nearly) post-pandemic world should be affordable.
So what are we hoping to reward? Simple: the best possible singing of the works of Verdi on the evening of Sunday 17th October. If that comes from a 21 year old or a 66 year old, we frankly don’t care!
So please, singers, do throw your voice into the fray. We’ve done everything we possibly can to make this process as fair and as painless to enter as possible. If you need recommendations for people to help you make recordings, just ask.
In August we then send all of the recordings to a handful (usually about 8) of pre-judges all over the world who are extremely unlikely to know you, and ask them for their ideal concert of 10 singers. Then we try and shoehorn those answers into a pleasing evening’s entertainment.
It is for the glorification of Verdi, for the support of excellent singing, and in memory of Robert, who did both of those things throughout his life.