About "Si parla, si canta"

The 2012 edition of “Si parla, si canta” boasts a faculty of internationally recognized performers and pedagogues.

American conductor, composer, pianist, and pedagogue BENTON HESS, the founder and Artistic Director of “Si parla, si canta,” began musical studies with piano and several orchestral instruments at age five, encouraged by musical parents. By his early teens, he was already performing professionally and winning piano competitions. After finishing his own studies at the New England Conservatory, Hess was named Musical Director of the Opera Department at Boston University at age twenty-one and began conducting opera professionally, mentored by impresario Boris Goldovsky, for whom he conducted several national tours of the Goldovsky Grand Opera Theatre.

Since then, he has conducted hundreds of performances encompassing a myriad of musical styles for dozens of opera companies, including Annapolis Opera, Augusta Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Lake George Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Minnesota Opera, Mobile Opera, New York Lyric Opera, Opera Memphis, Opera Theatre of Rochester, Shreveport Opera, Tacoma Opera, Tulsa Opera, and Washington Summer Opera, among others. He has led several world premieres, including works by Greg Sandow, Lee Hoiby, Charles Strouse, and two operas by Libby Larsen. Mr. Hess has assisted many other noted composers in preparation for premieres of their works, Karel Husa, Daniel Pinkham, David Amram, Luciano Berio, and Robert Ward, to name but a few.

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JEANNE-MINETTE CILLIERS is among the most versatile musicians of her generation. The South African pianist has been called “a pianistic poet”, garnering rave reviews for her color-rich and imaginative performances. Starting piano lessons at the age of three, she made her orchestra debut at the age of 12 in her native South Africa playing Joaquín Turina’s Rapsodia sinfónica. Click here to read more.

ROBERT COWART is the Italian diction coach for "Si parla, si canta." He works in all aspects of the language-voice connection: diction, interpretation of text, and vowel resonance, which he believes to be the basis of Italian vocal tradition. He is currently a faculty member of the Juilliard School and a former faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music, and the Curtis Institute. Since 1981 he has coached in the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artists Development Program, where he holds the title Head of Linguistic Studies.

Mr. Cowart has been associated with numerous summer programs for singers, including the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, Montreal, Puerto Rico and Japan, the Chautauqua Institute, the Aspen Festival, the Blossom Festival, the Opera Foundation of Australia, the European Center for Opera and Vocal Art, and the Tanglewood Festival.

KRISTIN DITLOW, vocal coach, is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Westminster Choir College, and is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music.

She has performed as a soloist and collaborative pianist throughout the United States and abroad, appearing at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

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HÅKAN HAGEGÅRD will be in residence with "Si parla, si canta" for three weeks in 2012, from June 25th to July 14th, giving master classes and private coaching.

Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård was catapulted to fame with his role of Papageno in Ingmar Bergman's film version of Die Zauberflöte.

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LYNDON MEYER is happy to be returning to Si parla, si canta for the third time, and for the first time on the faculty.

As a pianist and vocal coach with great versatility and insight, Lyndon has held positions with the Eastman School of Music and Mercury Opera Rochester, and has been a vocal coach for the Druid City Opera Workshop and Si parla, si canta.

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HUGH MURPHY is a highly respected New York City-based conductor, pianist and vocal coach whose recordings and performances have been positively reviewed in The New York Times, Opera News Magazine, Fanfare Magazine, The American Record Guide. His conducting has been praised for it’s musical sensitivity and attention to detail, and featured on-line by PBS and Channel 13’s Sunday Arts Weekly Showcase.

Mr. Murphy coaches professional classical vocal artists who appear with the world’s leading conductors, orchestras and opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera of New York, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, and the Bayerische Staatsoper. He has held coaching positions with the Santa Fe and Wildwood Opera companies, served on the faculty of the New School’s Mannes College of Music in New York, and as a Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music.

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BRIAN OSBORNE returns to “Si parla, si canta” for the fourth time, bringing with him the expertise of one who is both a singer and a collaborative pianist.

Mr. Osborne joined the music faculty at Oklahoma City University in the fall of 2008 as vocal coach/accompanist and teacher of French lyric diction and French vocal literature. While at OCU he has served as music director for The Consul, Too Many Sopranos, and as recitalist, pit continuo player and rehearsal pianist for a variety of productions.

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FEDERICO SACCHI will be in residency with "Si parla, si canta" from June 2nd to June 22nd, 2012.

Federico Sacchi, the italian bass, made his debut at a very young age performing the title role in Massenet’s Don Quichotte, presented in several theatres throughout Northern Italy. Amazingly, he holds college degrees in both piano and law! As a singer, he attended the Opern Studio International courses of the Opernhaus Zurich during the year 2002-03.

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ALBERTO ZEDDA will be giving a master class on Tuesday, July 10, 2012.

Alberto Zedda was born in 1928 in Milan, where he began his humanistic and musical studies. In 1957 he won the RAI International Conductors Competition, a success that opened the door for him to the most important Italian institutions, La Scala, Santa Cecilia, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, RAI, and abroad in Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Israel, the United States, China and Japan.

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