On March 17, Evan Rogister will lead the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Grand Finals Concert. The Met’s Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition is a nationwide program designed to discover promising young opera singers and assist in their artistic and professional development. If you can’t make it in person, tune into the Met’s free live audio stream of the concert on March 17, starting at 2:55pm ET.
Each season, more than 1,000 applicants participate in a series of auditions leading up to the Grand Finals Concert in which a small group of finalists compete for cash prizes and the chance to launch a major operatic career. Since the program’s inauguration nearly 70 years ago, the competition has discovered generations of star singers, including Jessye Norman, Frederica von Stade, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Stephanie Blythe, Sondra Radvanovsky, Lawrence Brownlee, Lisette Oropesa, Jamie Barton, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Nadine Sierra, and Ryan Speedo Green.
Additionally, Rogister returns to the Metropolitan Opera in April to lead Terence Blanchard’s Grammy Award-winning work, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. For more information and tickets, please visit the Met’s website.
© Chris Gonz