MADDALENA BOREA HONORED FOR WORK WITH YOUNG OPERA SINGERS

By Nancy DeSanti

At the end of the Washington National Opera’s season in late May, the successful season was celebrated with a dinner at the home of one of the donors. Afterwards, awards were presented to those who worked with the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program. AMHS member Maddalena Borea was among those honored.

Maddalena, who has worked at the WNO for 20 years, says she loves working with the young singers, teaching them diction, or how to correctly pronounce the Italian words, but more than that, how to give meaning and expression to those words. She also inspires them with a love of opera, and gives them a deep understanding of each of these beautiful musical work.

Maddalena says she gives a lot of love to her students because she “adores” them, and since working hard makes them hungry, she enjoys preparing for them some of her Italian cooking too. Two of the young artists she has been working with are pictured in the photo above. Allegra De Vita, whose parents are from Calabria and are presently engineers living in Connecticut, performed in last month’s II Barbiere di Siviglia (Barber of Seville). Alex McKissick, whom Maddalena calls “the next Pavarotti,” will soon be performing in Europe. The Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program was begun in 2002 by Placido Domingo to offer to exceptionally promising young singers two years of intensive training, study and career guidance with WNO faculty and a team of world-renowned visiting master teachers and coaches. Graduates of the program have gone on to perform at the world’s leading opera houses.

Meanwhile, as its last opera of this season, WNO presented Candide, Voltaire’s work put into music by Leonard Bernstein and starring opera legend Denyce Graves. After the final performance, Maddalena said she had the honor of seeing her backstage. Maddalena calls Denyce Graves ”one of the best sopranos in modern America” and noted that she became world famous in the 1990s for her role as Carmen at the Met in New York as well as for her role in Samson et Delila. Maddalena calls Denyce Graves “a beautiful person, inside and out” and a friend of the opera.

Ms. Graves, who was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and lived in Paris for a time, returned to the area after marrying the doctor who is chief transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She now teaches voice and sometimes sends her students to Maddalena to study diction. Right now, the WNO is taking their summer break, but in the fall they will stage Verdi’s famous opera La Traviata.