Luciano Pavarotti Foundation Opera Naples International Voice Competition

Sherrill Milnes is universally acclaimed as the foremost operatic baritone of his generation, receiving the kind of adulation that is usually reserved for tenors.  Milnes sang over 650 performances at the Met and was a leading artist in all of the world’s great opera houses.  He performed and recorded with contemporaries like Domingo, Pavarotti, Sutherland, Sills, Horne, Price, and Tebaldi.  He is the winner of three Grammy Awards, and the most recorded American singer of his time.  In 2008 he received the Opera News Award for Distinguished Achievement.

Mr. Milnes showed an affinity for Verdi, whose works formed the cornerstone of a repertoire of over 70 roles.  His autobiography, American Aria: Encore, is available from Amadeus Press.  Driven by his dedication to make the vocal arts vibrant in today’s world, he continues to give masterclasses, judge competitions, and mentor new generations of singers.  With his wife, Maria Zouves, he co-founded the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs: VOICExperience and the Savannah VOICE Festival, which provide training and performance opportunities for aspiring young artists while fostering new audiences for the arts.

RAMÓN TEBAR is considered one of the leading Spanish conductors of his generation. Recently appointed new Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of Valencia Symphony Orchestra in Spain for a first period of four years, he holds other positions in both America and Europe such as: Opera Naples (Artistic Director, 2014-…), Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofia (Principal Guest Conductor, 2015-…); Florida Grand Opera (Music Director and Principal Conductor, 2010-…, being the first Spanish conductor to be appointed Music Director of an American opera company); Palm Beach Symphony (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor, 2007-…); Santo Domingo Music Festival (2009-2015). Acclaimed for his musical versatility, compelling interpretations and orchestra building skills, conductor Ramón Tebar’s international reputation in both the opera and orchestral arenas continues to expand. Among the orchestras and opera companies he has conducted and will conduct are: Philharmonia Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Petersburg Symphony, Moscow State Symphony, Malasyan Philharmonic, Orchestre de Rouen, Het Gelders Orkest, Bulgarian National Radio Symphony, Munich Radio Symphony, Prague Philharmonia, Spanish National Orchestra (OCNE), Spanish Radio Television Orchestra (ORTVE), Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC), Galicia Symphony Orchestra (OSG), Valencia Orchestra,…Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Regio di Parma, Cincinnati Opera, Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), Gran Teatre del Liceu, Kremlin Palace, Royal Festival Hall, Kölner Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wiener Staatsoper,… Ramón Tebar has been recognized with various honors and awards, including the Henry C. Clark Conductor of the Year Award by Florida Grand Opera in 2010 and 2013, The Miami Herald as “Top 20 under 40” and “100 españoles by Marca España”. In 2014, he was bestowed the Cross of Officer of the Order of Mérito Civil in recognition of his cultural accomplishments by His Majesty, the King of Spain Felipe VI. Tebar has recorded for UNIVERSAL MUSIC, UNITEL CLASSICA and DECCA.

Maria Zouves is a singer, educator, director, producer and writer. She is President of the Sherrill Milnes VOICE Programs − VOICExperience and the Savannah VOICE Festival – which she co-founded with her husband, Sherrill Milnes, that mentors artists and audiences in the vocal arts.  Maria directs many of the events in the VOICE Programs, including operas such as Michael Ching’s Alice Ryley and Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Savannah VOICE Festival (SVF).  She’s directed Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro at the Estates Theatre in Prague and most recently Giovanni again with the SVF and Opera Tampa, where she served as VP and Associate General Director of the company from 2007 to 2011.  The Greek American soprano has sung leading roles in the regional U.S., and orchestral concerts globally, making her Carnegie Hall debut in 1997.  She has recorded under the VAI label and performed in the title role of the premiere of Ching’s Anna Hunter.  She has recently recorded her second album entitled Everything.  Maria writes for the music and most recently, the culinary world, as she pursues becoming a chef in Holistic Wellness and Nutrition.  Now a sought-after clinician in career development, she has aided young singers through her former feature, “A Conversation with…” in Classical Singer magazine and now with “Food for Life,” an ongoing culinary feature in the Tampa Bay Magazine.  She is a frequent guest lecturer and performer at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Tenor Bruce Ford is firmly established as one of today’s most outstanding singers. He has earned high praise for extraordinary vocal beauty and range, textual vividness, authoritative style and technical prowess.  He has recorded seventeen full-length operas for Opera Rara, including Otello, Ricciardo e Zoraide, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Maria Regina d’Inghilterra, Pia de Tolomei, to name but a few. In addition, Opera Rara has issued a recital disc, Romantic Heroes, featuring Bruce, as well as a compilation entitled ‘Bruce Ford-Serious Rossini’.  He also appears on many of the discs in the ‘Il Salotto’ series. Born in the USA, he has spent most of his 22-year long career in the leading opera houses of Europe and America. After his highly acclaimed debut at Pesaro in 1990, he has sung at Covent Garden (Almaviva, Ferrando, Mitridate, Osiride, Tito), La Scala (Uberto in La Donna del Lago and Paolo Erisso in Maometto II), The Metropolitan Opera (Almaviva), the Paris Opera (Ferrando, Almaviva, Lindoro) and the Glyndebourne, Florence, Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals.  He has sung under Claudio Abbado, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Ricardo Muti, Ivor Bolton, Alberto Zedda, and numerous other well-known conductors.

 Carrie-Ann Matheson has a multi-faceted international career as a pianist, conductor and educator.  She is currently the Artistic Director of the world-renowned San Francisco Opera Center and Merola Opera Program. A native of Canada, Matheson began her career at the Metropolitan Opera, working as assistant conductor, prompter, pianist and vocal coach.  Following a long tenure at the Met, she joined the conducting and coaching staff at Opernhaus Zurich, and also worked at festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele and the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival.

Especially in demand as a recital pianist, her collaborations have brought her to the great stages of the world with many of the world’s leading opera singers, including Piotr Beczała, Benjamin Bernheim, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Jonas Kaufmann and Rolando Villazón.  In 2024, her debut CD “Douce France” with tenor Benjamin Bernheim will be released on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophone label.

Ms. Matheson is passionate about nurturing the next generation of opera singers and pianists, and in addition to her work in San Francisco, she is a masterclass clinician and guest coach at leading institutions worldwide.  Her collaborations have included the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio,  International Opera Studio (Opernhaus Zürich), Atkins Young Artist Program (The Mariinsky Theatre), Lindemann Young Artist Development Program (The Metropolitan Opera), Ryan Opera Center (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Music Academy of the West, Aspen Music Festival and the International Vocal Arts Institute.   She is currently also a member of the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Ms. Matheson assisted such conductors as James Levine, Fabio Luisi, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, and Gianandrea Noseda, before making her conducting debut in 2015 at Opernhaus Zürich, where she has conducted works such as La Finta Giardiniera, Don Pasquale and Iphigénie en Tauride, among others.  In addition to her work with opera singers, she has performed in chamber music concerts with members of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and Philharmonia Zürich.

Ms. Matheson holds degrees from the University of Prince Edward Island (B.Mus.Ed), the Cleveland Institute of Music (M.Mus in Collaborative Piano),  the Manhattan School of Music (Professional Studies Diploma in Vocal Accompanying) and is an alumna of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.

She has served as juror for competitions including the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition, The Butler International Vocal Competition, the Schmidt Vocal Arts Competition and the Richard Tucker Foundation Auditions.

Recent and upcoming engagements for Ms. Matheson include recitals at prestigious venues across the world, including Teatro alla Scala (Milan Italy),  the Munich Opera Summer Festival (Munich, Germany), the Verbier Festival (Verbier, Switzerland), the Vienna State Opera  (Vienna, Austria), Opéra de Paris (Paris, France) and Opera de Monte-Carlo (Monaco), among others.

In addition to her work onstage and in the opera rehearsal room, Ms. Matheson is an International Coaching Federation certified personal and leadership coach, specializing in working with artists who are striving to achieve their full potential.

Dr. Krzysztof Biernacki is the newly appointed Director of Bower School of Music & the Arts.  Prior to FGCU, he has held the position of Professor of Voice and Director of Opera at the University of North Florida where he distinguished himself as an award-winning professor, international performer, opera stage director and academic administrator.  He is a frequent recitalist performing a wide range of art song repertoire in numerous European languages.  His recent engagements include solo recitals at international music festivals in Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, France, Norway and Canada.  He is a researcher of vocal works by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski and his recording of Szymanowski’s art songs titled “In the Mists” is available on MSR Classic label.  As an opera singer he appeared in principal roles with Vancouver Opera, Manitoba Opera, Calgary Opera, Orchestra London Canada and Banff Center for Performing Arts. His concert appearances include Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, North Czech Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique du Nouveau Monde in Montreal and Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. As an opera stage director, he directed over 30 opera productions at UNF, University of British Columbia, Jacksonville Symphony and European Music Academy in the Czech Republic.  In 2007 he established a highly successful UNF Opera Ensemble and UNF Opera Study Abroad Program in Europe where he directed full opera productions in professional opera theaters every summer.  Dr. Biernacki is a graduate of University of Manitoba, University of Western Ontario and University of British Columbia.  Since 2012 he has served as the Assistant director of UNF School of Music, Director of Graduate Studies and Artistic Director of Cummer Family Foundation Chamber Music Series.

Jeanie Darnell is Professor of Music and Head of Vocal Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Bower School of Music.  She has been hailed by critics throughout the United States and in Europe for her “wonderfully bell-like tones” (Wertheimer Zeitung).  A regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1998, she has been in demand as soprano soloist of major concert and oratorio repertoire.  She has been a featured soloist with the Gesellschaft für Musiktheater (Vienna), Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, Southwest Florida Symphony, Opera Naples, Patronato Peruano de la Música Centenarios, Operafestival di Roma, Corsi Internazionali di Musica, Omaha Symphony, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Denver Bach Festival, Naples Bach Ensemble, Fort Myers Symphonic Master Singers, Lindsborg Messiah Festival, Colorado Music Festival, and Rocky Mountain Music Alliance.  Darnell completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2002 while already heading the voice area at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  She has lectured on the male adolescent voice at the International Congress of Voice Teachers (ICVT) 2009 Paris Conference, the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) 2008 National Conference, and the ICVT 2005 Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.  She has taught in summer music festivals to include Summer Music Study in Szeged, Hungary, and the Corsi Internazionali di Musica, Urbino and Perugia, Italy, among others.  As an adjudicator, she has judged at the 19th and 20th Concurso Internacional Canto de Lírico de Trujillo (Trujillo, Perú), El Concurso de Canto Lírico de la Radio Filarmonia (Lima, Peru), and the Denver Lyric Opera Competition.   She has taught master classes throughout the U.S. and abroad, to include: National Youth Chorus of Perú, Peruvian Ministry of Education, National Conservatory of Music (Lima, Perú), Universidad Catolica (Lima, Peru), Konservatorium Wien Private University (Vienna, Austria), Austin Peay State University, Baylor University, State College of Florida, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of North Florida, Reinhardt University, Youngstown State University, and the Opera Naples Gilbert and Sullivan Youth Program.

Baritone Louis Otey, a major stage personality noted for his incisive and provocative interpretations, has performed in the major opera houses around the world in a career spanning 30 years, five continents, and more than 20 countries.  His repertory is as varied as the geographies he has graced and includes signature performances in the great roles for his voice — Scarpia in Tosca, Count di Luna in Il Trovatore, the title roles in Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Rigoletto, and Der Fliegende Hollander, and the four villains in Les Contes D’Hoffmann.  The Otey repertory also ranges as widely as from Grandier in Penderecki’s The Devils of Loudun to the title role in Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim.  Louis Otey has performed at: The Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Rome Opera, Teatro Massimi di Palermo, Theatre des Champs Elysées, Victoria State Opera Melbourne, Teatro Municipal de Sao Paulo, Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro, Theater an Der Wien, Geneva Opera, Dusseldorf Opera, Opera La Monnaie Brussels.

Maria Todaro assumed the role of General Director of the Florida Grand Opera in Fall 2023 with thirty years of international experience as an arts administrator and entrepreneur, stage director, conductor, librettist, and operatic mezzo-soprano under her belt.  She is a citizen of the US, France, and Italy, and has spent a significant amount of time in Brazil, and speaks English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. She began her professional life in opera as a mezzo-soprano and entrepreneur, founding the production company Arteodor in France and later embarking on a career as a stage director.  She has directed 23 productions for companies such as Minnesota Opera, Atlanta Opera, and Hawaii Opera Theater.  Over a span of ten years, Todaro has also staged 16 original productions.  She collaborated as librettist with composer Mitch Bach to write an opera based on The Three Musketeers and is collaborating on an opera about Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, with composer Damien Geter and playwright Harrison Davis Rivers.  In 2009, Todaro co-founded the Hudson Valley International Festival of The Voice (FOV, formerly the Phoenicia Festival of the Voice), a four-day summer event in upstate New York.  As General Director, she created a backstage apprenticeship program, oversaw the purchase of the organization’s buildings, and during the COVID-19 lockdown, pioneered the United States’ first live drive-in opera performance.  She also introduced virtual reality technology to FOV to create a re-imagined and well-received Tosca that was available locally as a live, drive-in performance and worldwide as a digital one.  Opera UK noted, “Todaro’s concept worked because she stayed true to the drama at its core.”   Todaro continues as General Director of FOV in addition to her new role at Florida Grand Opera.   Under her leadership, FOV is preparing to launch an anti-human trafficking awareness program through the arts.  Todaro’s specialties as an arts administrator include audience development and community outreach.  Under her leadership, the Hudson Valley International Festival of the Voice regularly attracts 7,000–10,000 visitors to a three-day festival in a remote location, reinvigorating tourism and the local economy.  One of her first acts as General Director was to recruit locals of all ages and backgrounds to form a chorus, creating a strong and lasting bond between the community and the Festival which continues to this day.  The volunteer chorus has even produced its own professional soloists, young people who chose to pursue music professionally after enjoying the community experience.   Todaro‘s background in opera commenced at birth and has continued throughout her life.  She is the daughter of Italian opera singer Jose Todaro and Brazilian mezzo-soprano Maria-Helena de Oliveira.  Her grandmother, Helena de Oliveira, headed the International Vocal and Piano Competition of Rio de Janeiro.  She is married to international baritone Louis Otey, who she met when they shared a singing engagement.

Nicoletta Mantovani graduated in Natural Sciences from the University of Bologna.
She has been the artistic director of the charity concert “Pavarotti & Friends” from 1995 to 2003; as theatre and cinema entrepreneur, in 2000s she produced the Italian version of the Broadway musical “Rent”, then a short movie and an art movie, award winning at the Rome Film Festival.

She also produced important Italian music festivals, hosting some of the most famous international artists.

She managed the celebrities participating in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics and, since 2008, she has organized many important events worldwide dedicated to the memory of Maestro Pavarotti.

Nicoletta was appointed in 2009 Councillor for Cultural Promotion and Youth Policy in the Municipality of Bologna, while in 2014 she worked as Deputy Mayor for International Relations in the city of Florence.

Nicoletta is the founder and president of the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation.

Pianist, recitalist, coach, prompter and assistant conductor, Yelena Kurdina has been a member of the Metropolitan Opera for over 30 years. She has collaborated with many great singers and conductors during her career. Among those are Renee Fleming, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Placido Domingo, Seiji Ozawa, James Conlon, Valery Gergiev and many others.  Ms. Kurdina’s recitals with the remarkable Dmitri Hvorostovsky, have been called “rich and haunting collaborations, beautifully judged and impeccably ardent”.   Ms Kurdina has worked at several renowned festivals and opera houses in the US and around the world.  Originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, Ms. Kurdina is a protégé of John Wustman – the “Dean of American accompanists” – with whom she studied at the University of Illinois.  Like her illustrious mentor, an important part of Ms. Kurdina’s career has centered on working with young artists. She currently divides her time between New York City and Florida.

John Churchwell began serving as head of music for San Francisco Opera in August 2011.  Prior to this appointment, he served as an assistant conductor for both the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera for 14 years.  Mr. Churchwell has worked on more than 150 productions with such conductors as James Levine, Nicola Luisotti, Donald Runnicles, Nello Santi and Sir Charles Mackerras.   A champion of American music, Mr. Churchwell prepared the world premieres of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Stewart Wallace/Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Philip Glass’ Appomattox, and Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne.  More recently he led the preparation for John Adams’ world premiere The Girls of the Golden West and the West Coast Premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain.  On the recital stage, Mr. Churchwell has partnered with some of today’s most sought-after vocalists, including appearances at the Hollywood Bowl with Ellie Dehn, San Francisco Symphony with Michael Fabiano, and recitals with Renée Fleming, Sasha Cooke, Lawrence Brownlee, Lisette Oropesa, Joyce DiDonato, Susanna Phillips, and Isabel Leonard.   Mr. Churchwell spends his summers at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA, where he is Co-Director of the Lehrer Vocal Institute.   While there, in addition to chamber music performances and public masterclasses, Mr. Churchwell is instrumental in the training of young singers and apprentice coaches.

Mr. Churchwell earned his doctorate from the University of Minnesota and holds a bachelor’s degree in piano from the New England Conservatory, a bachelor’s degree in French from Tufts University, and a master’s degree in accompanying from the University of Minnesota.   Mr. Churchwell attended the Merola Opera Program and is a graduate of the Lindemann Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera.