The prize dubbed the Heisman Trophy for singers is going to a Georgia native with an earth-shattering voice — and an earthy style. Announced Sunday, the winner of the 2015 Richard Tucker Award is mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton. The opera star recently appeared barefoot in jeans, giggling and cradling a glass of Oregon wine — offstage, chatting with a friend on YouTube. Onstage in costume, she's being compared to the past century's finest vocalists.
Read MoreThe rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has been awarded the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, the foundation that administers the award announced on Sunday night. The $50,000 prize, which commemorates Tucker, the great Brooklyn-born tenor, was the latest in a series of accolades for Ms. Barton, a rising star. She previously won both the main prize and the song prize at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2007 — a lively competition that was featured in Susan Froemke’s film “The Audition.”
Read MoreMezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has added the 2015 Richard Tucker Award to her trophy case, a $50,000 prize granted annually to an American singer “on the threshold of a major international career.” Actually, Barton, 33, is already well on her way, having been named the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World and granted the mantle of “fresh wonder of the opera world” by the ever-influential New Yorker. She is also a winner of the 2007 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the Kennedy Center’s 2014 Marian Anderson Award.
Read MoreIt's understandable that Rome could be an inspiration for an opera singer. That's certainly true for mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who will give a recital at 8 p.m. Feb. 7 in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, for the Artist Night program presented by Music Worcester Inc. Cardiff, Wales, has also been important for Barton, who won both the Main and the Song Prizes at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, a biennial event that has helped several winners achieve sustained international success and acclaim in the opera world. But Rome is where the singing started for Barton. The city of Rome, Georgia, that is (population 36,000 approximately), in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.
Read MoreOn a recent afternoon backstage at Lyric Opera, Sondra Radvanovsky and Jamie Barton were behaving like the gal pals they are, hugging each other and singing each other's praises. Quite the contrast to the emotional sparring partners the singers are playing in Lyric's new production of Gaetano Donizetti's Anna Bolena — the castoff consort Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, Anne's lady-in-waiting and rival for the affections of the cruel King Henry VIII. Indeed, in conversation, neither the Berwyn-born soprano nor the Georgia-native mezzo-soprano came across as your standard-issue diva, however imperious they behave in the long-awaited Lyric return of Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece, which opens Saturday night at the Civic Opera House.
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