Rosenthal Wins Opera Prize

Claudia Rosenthal '08 '14MM receives another honor highlighting her talents in singing (CR photos)

Claudia Rosenthal ’08 ‘14MMus., who trained at Yale and grew up in Edgemont, was named a winner at the George London Foundation competition Feb. 19. The competition honors outstanding young opera singers from America and Canada. She was among six winners who each received a $10,000 prize. The event in Manhattan at the Morgan Library featured 83 singers.

The competition, named for the bass baritone George London, has awarded prizes annually since 1971 and encourages young, talented singers to pursue long careers in opera. Judges this year included a notable list of opera singers.  Soprano Harolyn Blackwell, tenor George Shirley, mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, and baritone Richard Stilwell, who himself was a George London winner at the first competition, helped select the 2016 winners.

New York Times music critic James Oestreich assessed Rosenthal's final performance as one of his four favorites in the competition.  Rosenthal sang Poulenc's "Les Mamelles de Tiresais."

Rosenthal is a first-year Resident Artist at Pittsburgh Opera. In recent years, she has sung with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Yale Opera (Yale in New York) in Carnegie Hall, and Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and at Tanglewood Music Center. She has received other prizes, including the Rohatyn Great Promise Award from the Metropolitan Opera National Council (East Region) and the Alumni Prize when she graduated from the Yale School of Music.

Also at Yale, she was a featured performer at the 2013 inauguration concert in Woolsey Hall for new President Peter Salovey ’86 Ph.D. As a student, she sang in six different productions (in the undergraduate and graduate programs) and performed at the YWAA banquet in 2008.

In 2016, at Pittsburgh Opera she will sing in performances of The Barber of Seville (Rossini) and The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky).