The American Opera Project is proud to announce the two honorees for our 2020 fermata benefit: Angel Blue, the recipient of our first ever Van Blazer award, and the enduring legacy of AOP’s Charles Jarden.
ANGEL BLUE
Angel Blue has emerged in recent seasons as one of the most important sopranos before the public today. On September 23, 2019 she opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019/2020 season as Bess in a new production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. These performances follow her internationally praised French Opera debut and role debut as Floria Tosca at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July of 2019. Earlier, Ms. Blue made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Violetta Valery in La Traviata, after which she returned to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in the same role. She has also been praised for performances in many other theaters, such as the Vienna State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Theater an der Wien, Oper Frankfurt, San Diego Opera and many others.
Alongside her musical activities, Angel Blue, who was raised in California and completed her musical studies at UCLA, is dedicated to the support of inner city youth. She is the founder of the non-profit organization Sylvia’s Kids Foundation, an organization that is dedicated to helping America’s teenagers continue their studies in either a trade school, community college, or four-year university once they have completed high school. The SKF scholarship award is given every year in the month of May. To learn more about Sylvia’s Kids Foundation visit www.sylviaskids.org
For Angel’s complete bio click HERE.
VAN BLAZER AWARD
CHARLES JARDEN
As one of the founders of AOP, Charles was General Director from 2002 to 2019, having held positions early in his career at The Santa Fe and Philadelphia Opera Companies and his work internationally included the Paris Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Hong Kong May Festival and The Drottningholm Palace Theatre.
Charles guided AOP’s partnerships with institutions such as Lincoln Center Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Spoleto Festival USA, and with presenters in Austria, Germany, Poland and the UK.
Charles is proud of AOP’s long-established track record of commissioning, developing and producing works. Charles and AOP have advocated for the workshopping of new operas to be a vital activity in a company’s programming and having composers and librettists look to their own personal stories for subjects and inspiration for the opera stage.
Charles and AOP awards: OPERA America for “dynamic leadership,” and The New York City Arts and Business Council’s “Encore! Award,” recognizing innovative collaborations that bridge profit and nonprofit worlds.
The American Opera Project is proud to announce its first Van Blazer award, created in 2020 to honor a vanguard trailblazer changing the way opera is made and experienced. The award celebrates an iconoclastic artist who has fostered resiliency and inclusivity within their communities by the very way they have shaped their life and career.