Testimonials

I have taken part in a number of artist development programs with various opera companies in the US and Canada. While these programs serve an important purpose for the companies that host them, many of them are of dubious benefit to the young singer in the early stages of his or her career. Many offer young performers understudies and token-bit parts on the mainstage, and may sweeten the deal with the promise of extensive coaching and training. While coaching is certainly important, stage experience and exposure are two of the most crucial elements in the early development of a singer's career--elements many programs only scarcely provide. In order to work in this business, one needs to be heard, but singing two-line-roles on a major stage is not going to give anyone in the audience a halfway-decent idea of one's singing and acting skills. Additionally, the experience of performing these bit-parts generally afforded to young singers is a far cry from the experience of performing a featured role on a company's mainstage. The process of preparing a role for high-level performance and dealing with pressure of the performance itself can only be learned by doing. Having a good coach work through a role with you can be a great help, but no amount of coaching is going to prepare you for the feeling of stepping out into the lights with an audience of thousands before you.

This is why the experience Highlands Opera Studio offers is so important. Highlands engages singers with a wide range of experience levels--some will be university students with little to no professional experience, a few will be in the early stages of a successful career with several mainstage credits already on their résumé, and many will be somewhere in-between. The most developed singers receive the featured roles where they will be seen and heard most often by guests, critics, and audiences. The greenest singers receive smaller assignments where they can grow in a lower-pressure environment, and learn from their more experienced colleagues. Valerie and Richard treat all their artists like artists, rather than students. This model results in a supportive environment where everyone's artistic input is valued. I feel this kind of environment provides much better preparation for working on the professional operatic stage than the typical educational or young-artist-program model in which young singers' artistic choices and opinions are rarely heard or considered. The experience at Highlands helps a singer become a collaborative artist who actively participates in creating the performance, and this is precisely what is expected of a professional working in the mainstage opera world.

There are very few artist-development programs in Canada that provide such a valuable experience, and Valerie and Richard's decades of experience at the top level of this business brings a very high profile to the productions. Performing a featured role at Highlands lends an air of legitimacy to an emerging artist's résumé, and can act as a springboard to the next level of a singer's career, be it graduate school, season-long young-artist programs, or transitioning to the mainstage. Of all the development programs I've gone through (and there have been a few), I honestly feel like my experience at Highlands Opera Studio was the best. Highlands young artists are not there to fill out a chorus or sing small roles at a discount. They are not their to fulfill an outreach commitment so a company can access more funding. They are there to sing and create art at a high level, and to be seen and heard in their element by influential figures in the business. Highlands exists for the sole purpose of advancing burgeoning careers, a quintessential niche that few other organizations can fill."

Michael Nyby, baritone
HOS 2015–16