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Hartt Honors Alumna of the Year
Posted 5/13/2005
The Hartt School honored opera singer Ai-Lan Zhu as its Alumna of the Year during Commencement on Sunday. This is the first time that the Alumna of the Year was named at the Hartt Commencement ceremony, which was held in Lincoln Theater. A reception followed at The Hartt School.
Zhu, who graduated from The Hartt School in 1986 with an Artist Diploma, is one of America’s most sought after interpreters of the lyric repertoire. Coming to the United States from her native Beijing in 1984 for graduate work at Hartt, she stayed in this country but made the entire opera world her stage, appearing in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Vienna, and Zurich, and at the Glyndebourne Festival.
This past season she made her debut with the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, an opera that she avoided at the start of her career on warning that she would be typecast. After diverse roles, proving that she was not typecast, she sang the title role of Butterfly to rave reviews. Lloyd Dykk of The Vancouver Sun wrote, “A fine actress, she endows this Butterfly with enormous dignity and a prescient, bittersweet wisdom. In ‘Un Bel Di’ … the audience hung on every syllable, like a butterfly drunk on nectar.”
Ai-Lan Zhu has performed in such diverse roles as Violetta in La Traviata, Micaela in Carmen, and Mimi in La Bohème. When she appeared at The Bushnell in a production of Faust, Steve Metcalf of The Hartford Courant wrote that she “superbly projected the vulnerability of Marguerite,” and continued, “In her simple little ‘King of Thule’ ballad, she proved absolutely secure in her voice placement, then went on in the ‘Jewel Song’ to display the purity of her tone, the ease and tastefulness of her phrasing, and an unexpectedly soaring top end.”
Zhu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in her native Beijing, performing a variety of roles at the Central Opera Theater and making a number of recordings for the Central People’s Broadcasting Station. She made her American debut as Mimi at The Hartt School and on tour with the Texas Opera Theater. A recipient of many awards, Zhu was a finalist in Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Luciano Pavarotti International Vocal Competition. She is a winner of the Sigma Alpha Iota Competition at Chautauqua and the Liederkranz Competition in New York.
Zhu, who graduated from The Hartt School in 1986 with an Artist Diploma, is one of America’s most sought after interpreters of the lyric repertoire. Coming to the United States from her native Beijing in 1984 for graduate work at Hartt, she stayed in this country but made the entire opera world her stage, appearing in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Madrid, Vienna, and Zurich, and at the Glyndebourne Festival.
This past season she made her debut with the Nationale Reisopera in the Netherlands as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, an opera that she avoided at the start of her career on warning that she would be typecast. After diverse roles, proving that she was not typecast, she sang the title role of Butterfly to rave reviews. Lloyd Dykk of The Vancouver Sun wrote, “A fine actress, she endows this Butterfly with enormous dignity and a prescient, bittersweet wisdom. In ‘Un Bel Di’ … the audience hung on every syllable, like a butterfly drunk on nectar.”
Ai-Lan Zhu has performed in such diverse roles as Violetta in La Traviata, Micaela in Carmen, and Mimi in La Bohème. When she appeared at The Bushnell in a production of Faust, Steve Metcalf of The Hartford Courant wrote that she “superbly projected the vulnerability of Marguerite,” and continued, “In her simple little ‘King of Thule’ ballad, she proved absolutely secure in her voice placement, then went on in the ‘Jewel Song’ to display the purity of her tone, the ease and tastefulness of her phrasing, and an unexpectedly soaring top end.”
Zhu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in her native Beijing, performing a variety of roles at the Central Opera Theater and making a number of recordings for the Central People’s Broadcasting Station. She made her American debut as Mimi at The Hartt School and on tour with the Texas Opera Theater. A recipient of many awards, Zhu was a finalist in Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Luciano Pavarotti International Vocal Competition. She is a winner of the Sigma Alpha Iota Competition at Chautauqua and the Liederkranz Competition in New York.
