Metropolitan Opera Auditions | Colorado-Wyoming-Utah-Arizona-Mexico

Where Great Opera Singers Are Discovered!
Five National Winners:
40% Are Connected
To Our Rocky Mountain Region!

 

A million congratulations to the winners of the Met Opera’s Laffont Competition. Emma Marhefka, who sings and competed in our own Arizona District of the Rocky Mountain Region, was one of the winners. And Denver’s own Luke Sutliff also took home a grand prize! Two out of the five national winners have strong ties to our Rocky Mountain Region; we outperformed even the East Coast Regions! This summer, you can hear Emma at the Santa Fe Opera as Musetta for three performances, and Luke at Central City as Figaro in Barber of Seville! 40% of the national winners have a strong Rocky Mountain presence! Thanks too to Ellie Caulkins, who presented one of the four $10,000 finalist awards.

Here are the GRAND FINALS WINNERS ($20,000)

Sadie Cheslak, 30, mezzo-soprano (Central Region; Duluth, Minnesota); The Birgit Nilsson Award of the American-Scandinavian Foundation
Michelle Mariposa, 30, mezzo-soprano (Middle Atlantic Region; Quezon City, Philippines); Faith P. Geier Award
Luke Sutliff, 28, baritone (Gulf Coast Region; Denver, Colorado); Dominique Laffont Award
Alissa Goretsky, 25, soprano (Midwest Region; Los Angeles, California); Fernand Lamesch Award
Emma Marhefka, 25, soprano (Rocky Mountain Region; Allentown, Pennsylvania); Patricia Misslin Award

FINALIST AWARDS ($10,000)

Abigail Raiford, 30, soprano (Eastern Region; Tulsa, Oklahoma); Ellie Caulkins Award
Angel Raii Gomez, 26, tenor (Middle Atlantic Region; McAllen, Texas); Pamela and William Craven Award
Samuel Kidd, 29, baritone (Western Region; Ann Arbor, Michigan); Margaret M. Dyson Award
Lauren Randolph, 24, mezzo-soprano (Eastern Region; Chicago, Illinois); Judith Raskin Award

Here is our Rocky Mountain Region winner, Emma Marhefka, who went on to win the Grand National Finals in New York on March 9. To get there, on February 8, she won the Rocky Mountain Region Finals on February 8.

This past year, our expenses added up to $26,000, similar to previous years. And that’s where you come in! We made our goal last year. Our goal is $26,000 for our annual expenses plus $5000 to rebuild our rainy-day fund post-COVID.  ($31,000 total). We are near the end of this season with around $23,000 so far. Your involvement will help singers advance their careers!

Laffont 2025 Districts

 

Our Competition began here in Denver with the Colorado-Wyoming District Competition on February 1, with 22 wonderfully talented soloists. The winners from this competition, along with winners from Arizona, Mexico and Utah, then competed on February 8.
The winners in the Rocky Mountain Region Competition were:
Emma Marhefka, winner of the Met Opera Laffont Competition Rocky Mountain Region, who won on the Met stage in March. Our other winners: Audience Award, Claudia Diaz; 2nd Place, Sam Dhobahny; 3rd Place, Cecilia McKinley; Encouragement Awards: Daniela Cortes, Misael Corralejo Garcia. All 12 of our incredible singers already won in one of our four Districts: CO/WY, Utah, Arizona or Mexico.

Support the Rocky Mountain Region: Donate Now!

Donations to our organization provide prize monies for award winners and support the costs incurred in hosting both the Colorado-Wyoming District and Rocky Mountain Region rounds of the Competition. It is important to note that even though the Colorado-Wyoming District and Rocky Mountain Region are officially sanctioned by The Metropolitan Opera and feed the national competition finals, we do not receive any funding from the national office. All funds needed for the Colorado based competitions must be raised locally through the generous donations of individual opera lovers like you.

We are very serious about doing everything we can to keep this Competition open to our local and regional singers. We recently learned that Philadelphia, a major District and home of the Curtis Institute, has had to close its doors. Let’s not allow this to happen here!

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