Partners, International Scholarships, & Outreach


MARY ANNE BAYSAC OF SAN FRANCISCO
​COMUNE DI ORVIETO
ROME-AMERICAN CONSULATE
Our donors sponsor student tuitions and pay for administrative costs. Please peruse videos of those we have placed on our hopeful scholarship list in the column to the right.

​Our goal from the inception has been to provide the richest, most intense training  possible to singers on the cusp of an operatic career for as low a tuition as possible. All faculty and managers receive an honorarium and not a salary, and each instructor puts in many unpaid hours to run and organize auditions, set up concerts, and to oversee countless efforts to coordinate with the city of Orvieto and the students, themselves.

We offer a breakdown of program costs to any potential donor so that you can see how and where money is applied.  One of the easiest ways to contribute is to donate to cover the costs of tuition for a student, and/or tuition plus program costs (lodging, facility rentals, meals, and so forth).  It is our dream to receive underwriting so as to be able to offer this education at an even more reduced price to our participants, if not to become a tuition-free operation where students understand that the work they put into performances is paid work.  Opera is a very costly and competitive craft, and even some of the highest level young singers, especially sopranos, forge a career paying audition, application, and program fees every step of the way.

Specific scholarship funds include:
Scholarship fund for female classical musicians. Looking to promote more female leaders in classical music and fund the tuition of a female conducting student or vocal coach to be apprentices for our productions, composers interested in opera, and vocalists who aspire to careers as soloists and in education. 

Dr. Hugo Vera -- our artist director -- and I have already decided to feature as one of the operas the first-ever opera composed by a female composer.  With the connections we now have to stages in Italy and now also in Sedona, AZ, we would love to be able to offer scholarships or commissions to promote the work of female composers. 

Scholarship fund for the tuition of musicians from the inner city Chicago and Oakland/Berkeley areas (I've already had an inquiry from an organization in Oakland to see if I could fund an alumnae of a local charity program there to sing a role with my program, and I have connections to the African American communities in Chicago as well as 2 of the local universities that offer related music degrees. This particular alumna could come out to perform with us.)

Scholarship fund for the tuition hispanic musicians (because thus far I've been contacted by four really promising young opera singers who are Mexican (2), Puerto Rican, and Peruvian, and who can't afford to be paying students anymore, but who would like the extra musical coaching, opportunity to learn a new role, published reviews, and exposure to the language and other relevant courses.They're so gifted you have no idea how much I'd love to accept them and not some of the other contenders who can pay. 

In opera, men get to demand scholarships even at the student level because for every 100 people auditioning, at least 90 are sopranos, and yet there are 5 times as many roles for men.  Just like it was in film until the last year or so!  And my program is short of capable male applicants. 

Our academy remains open to partnering with an individual or institution that wishes to join our Board of Directors and play an important financial and even administrative, titular role in the program. Plans for the near future include stabilizing relations with an orchestra in Italy to enhance our final operatic performance and orchestral program.  Join us if you wish to become part of the future of opera, to help us secure the possibility of affordable training for musicians, and as well, to open our doors to more promising pre-professionals from Italy, whose own arts education and opportunity has been languishing in recent years.

Watch~listen to the talented singers on our scholarship wait-list: