Christine Goerke, one of the fastest rising young sopranos on the operatic scene, has captured the 2001 Richard Tucker Award.  The award, which includes a cash prize of $30,000, is given once a year to a deserving American opera singer poised on the brink of national and international stardom.  Ms. Goerke now joins a distinguished roster of top singers which includes Renee Fleming, Deborah Voigt, David Daniels, Dwayne Crofts, Ruth Ann Swenson, Patricia Racette, Gregory Turay, Dolora Zajick and Aprile Millo.

The Richard Tucker Award, caps a spectacular series of recent events in Goerke's short career (she made her operatic debut in 1995).  Last fall, Goerke stunned New York opera audiences with her hilarious portrayal of Armida in Handel's RINALDO at the New York City Opera with David Daniels.  Humorously costumed in leather coats, and an over-the-top leopard bustier as the over-sexed goddess, Goerke revealed a superb coloratura technique that blithely ripped through Handel's virtuostic arias with astonishing precision.  Opera News profiled Goerke's fast-track career in a multi-page interview and photo layout, and Telarc released an acclaimed original-instruments edition of Gluck's IPHIGENIE EN TAURIDE -- a moving souvenir of her first success in this part with the New York City Opera nearly four years ago.

The Tucker Foundation has bestowed two other awards and study grants to Ms. Goerke.  The first was the Robert Jacobson Study Grant in 1994 and in 1997, she was awarded the Richard Tucker Career Grant.

This young soprano possesses a sizeable and lustrous spinto soprano, and is proving her worth in a wide variety of roles including Donna Elvira and Donna Anna (a role she will sing at the opening of the Pittsburgh Opera this fall, and for her Covent Garden debut next January), the Countess in LE NOZZE DI FIGARO (sung in Japan with Ozawa last season), and Norma, which she will sing for the first time in Seattle in 2003.  Other roles include her Marggio Musicale debut as Ellen Orford in Britten's PETER GRIMES, and she has sung the New Prioress in Poulenc's DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES in Japan, and will sing the role again when she returns to the Met during the 2002-2003 season.  Her recordings include the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, the Dvorak Stabat Mater, Britten's War Requiem, and this fall she will record Ralph Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony.

Goerke, who is on tour in Japan with Seiji Ozawa singing Fiordiligi in Mozart's COSI FAN TUTTE, will be singing Britten's War Requiem with the National Symphony under Leonard Slatkin in May in Washington, D.C. She reprises the role of Vitellia at the Paris Opera (Garnier) in late May and June, and has agreed to participate in the Richard Tucker Gala at Covent Garden in London on June 10th. She sings the Female Chorus in Britten's THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA at Glimmerglass during July and August and will join Mostly Mozart in August, singing in Schumann's PARADIES UN DIE PERI (the vehicle of her London concert debut this past February).

-- BryceNYC

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