Two Mannes students, Ricardo Rivera and Annie Rosen, will advance to the Metropolitan Opera Semi-Finals Competition to be held Sunday, March 11, at Lincoln Center. Rivera, a current Mannes Professional Studies Diploma student, won the Eastern Region competition, while Rosen, a 2010 graduate, walked away as winner of the New England Region.

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions is a program designed to discover promising young opera singers and assist in the development of their careers. Winners of the District auditions advance to their Region Finals where they compete to win a trip to New York to participate in the National Semi-Finals, a competition held on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Approximately ten of the Semi-Finalists are selected as National Finalists and compete the following Sunday in a public concert, the Grand Finals Concert, accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The jury awards approximately five Grand Winner awards of $15,000 each. The concert is broadcast nationwide on the Metropolitan Opera Radio Network. The remaining National Finalists receive $5,000 each, and those singers who were National Semi-Finalists but did not advance to the National Finals will be given $1,500 to further their studies.

Many of the world’s foremost singers, among them Ren√©e Fleming, Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson, Ben Heppner, Jessye Norman, Samuel Ramey, Deborah Voigt, Dolora Zajick, and Mannes alumni Frederica von Stade and most recently Nadine Sierra in 2009, received awards from the National Council. Annually, approximately 100 former auditioners appear in Metropolitan Opera productions.