One of the things I occasionally think about is how stupendous our summer opera workshop performances have been in recent years and yet no one outside of our students and those audiences know how good they are. Yes, they can tell their friends or I can mention to someone that the performances were of professional quality, but others can not experience that quality for themselves and may think “Yeah, sure. He’s just trying to make himself feel good.”

We have been blessed with many wonderful, professional level voices or potentially professional level youngsters attending our workshops. Add to that, the singers are hard-working, serious and very nice people in every instance. Our staff has been thrilled to work with this high quality of singer. As a result, many of our performances could easily be on professional opera stages.

Several years ago a fine young tenor from University of Texas at San Antonio attended our workshop in Washington along with a wonderful mezzo from there. They have both returned, the tenor several times, and so impressed their fellow students at UT that last summer five sopranos, a tenor and a baritone from that university attended our Boston workshop. WOW! They were all excellent singers with professional quality voices, eager to learn, hard-working, and had wonderful personalities. The aforementioned tenor came to our Washington workshop again and is now attaining a great skill in his stagecraft. But, we also had singers from around the country who were on that same level. What was so noteworthy was that so many wonderful singers came from one school. They certainly must be doing something right. In the past couple of years we have also welcomed quite a few professional quality singers from the University of Arizona, Westminster Choir College and before that a number from Brigham Young University. As usual, outstanding talent is coming from The Boston Conservatory and New England Conservatory. My point is that there is some great vocal teaching all around the country that we have been fortunate enough to attract.

Our biggest news is that we will be using the facilities at The Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland for our Washington workshop this summer. Landon is one of the elite boy’s schools in the country and has first-rate facilities. This is very exciting for us, although we have been very pleased with our recent Washington facilities. There are prospects for more involvement at Landon for the following year as part of an expanded program.

We were fortunate to hold our Boston Workshop last summer at the United Parish Church in Brookline. The convenient facilities and the all the nearby restaurants made our stay there a pleasure. We will again be there this summer and expect to have smashing performances again.

People’s schedules are in constant change, often due to new opportunities. We have been blessed with a musical and directing staff of the highest quality who have been returning regularly to take part in our workshops. They are an integral part of this whole operation. They buy into our general atmosphere of hard-working, focused, professional instruction combined with much humor and personal encouragement. What a great group!

We are heading into our 23rd year this coming summer with much anticipation due to our joy with working with talented and enthusiastic singers. To those singers from the last several years, thank you for your effort, successes and tears, your desire to improve and the fun we have had. Always remember – if you are not struggling, you are not improving.

Richard Crittenden