On Sunday,
January 11, 2009, Opera
Index will present its
2009 Distinguished
Achievement Award to
Julius Rudel at its
annual Winter Gala to be
held at 6 p.m. in the
Grand Salon at the
Jumeirah Essex House,
the luxury hotel on
Central Park South.
Opera Index is a
non-profit organization
that since 1984 has
boosted the careers of
more than 250 young
singers through its
annual vocal
competitions. Each year
it also recognizes the
opera legends of our
time with its
Distinguished
Achievement Award.
The Opera Index Winter
Gala is the highlight of
the organization’s year
of activities. Under
the artistic direction
of celebrated opera
soprano Elaine Malbin
and hosted by New York
City Opera dramaturg
Cori Ellison, the Winter
Gala is a black tie
affair where attendees,
including many opera and
theater stars, will
celebrate the
extraordinary career of
Julius Rudel and have
the opportunity to hear
Opera Index’s major
competition winners—the
opera stars of
tomorrow—accompanied by
James Besser. The
Distinguished
Achievement Award will
be presented to Mr.
Rudel by his son,
Anthony Rudel, writer,
broadcaster, and
classical music expert,
whose new book
Hello Everybody! The
Dawn of American Radio
has just been
published by Harcourt.
Tickets for
the Opera Index Winter
Gala range from $300 to
$1000 and will be
available beginning
mid-November by
contacting Opera Index
Executive Director
Robert F. Crosby
at
oirfc@aol.com or
212-721-9828.
About Julius Rudel
Opera has been Julius
Rudel’s passion ever
since his earliest years
in Vienna when he was a regular in the
fourth-floor
standing-room gallery of
the Vienna Staatsoper.
His seven-decade career
that has taken him to
the stages of the
world's greatest opera
houses where he has
conducted a repertoire
that numbers some 165
operas spanning four
centuries, is one of the
legendary careers in
music history. During
the course of that
career, he also led six
American arts
institutions. His
22-year tenure as
general director and
principal conductor of
New York City Opera,
where his advocacy of
contemporary music,
resulting in a legacy of
19 world premieres and
seven U.S. premieres, as
well as three seasons of
all American operas,
stands unchallenged.
Mr. Rudel was the first
artistic director of the Kennedy Center, where he commissioned Leonard
Bernstein's
Mass and led
the World Premiere of
Ginastera’s
Beatrix Cenci;
the first music director
of the Wolf Trap
Festival; and the music
director of the
Cincinnati May Festival,
Caramoor, and the
Buffalo Philharmonic.
He has also conducted
major opera companies
throughout the world,
including more than
twenty-five years of
performances at the
Metropolitan Opera.
Julius Rudel has earned
the respect of
colleagues, critics,
audiences, and the
hundreds of singers he
has conducted. Known as
a "singer's conductor,"
he has nurtured the
careers of many
prominent vocal artists,
among them Beverly
Sills, Placido Domingo,
Samuel Ramey, and some
who have also been
honored by Opera Index,
such as Catherine
Malfitano and Sherrill
Milnes. Mr. Rudel is
currently in rehearsals
at Washington National
Opera, where he will
conduct performances of
Bizet's
Carmen
starring Denyce Graves
from November 8 through
19.
About Opera Index
Opera Index, composed of
opera devotees, is an
outgrowth of The New
York Opera Club, which
was founded in the late
1950s by William Wells,
an opera lover and radio
personality well known
for his interviews with
opera singers of the
day. Opera Index, its
name taken from Mr.
Wells’s file of opera
singers, became a formal
non-profit organization
in 1982 and two years
later inaugurated its
first annual opera
competition for singers
in the early days of
their careers. Among
the prize winners of the
first competition were
Suzanne Mentzer and Gary Lakes. Later winners have included
Deborah Voigt, Susan
Graham, Stephanie
Blythe, Andrea Gruber,
Michelle DeYoung,
Elizabeth Futral, and
Christine Goerke. Last
year tenor Michael
Fabiano was awarded the
top prize of $10,000.
The first recipient of
the Opera Index
Distinguished
Achievement Award was
Zinka Milanov.
Subsequent honorees have
included Birgit Nilsson,
Leonie Rysanek, Marilyn
Horne, Roberta Peters,
Samuel Ramey, Anna Moffo,
Grace Bumbry, Rose
Bampton, Theodor Uppman,
Renato Scotto, Martina
Arroyo, Regina Resnik,
Jon Vickers, Sherrill
Milnes, James Morris,
Catherine Malfitano,
Jessye Norman, and
Aprile Millo.
For more
information and a
complete list of
competition award
recipients, visit
www.operaindexinc.org