News & Views
By Voice Alone – Crunching the Numbers (Part I)
Four hundred and twenty four participants. Twenty four semi finalists. Seven finalists. One winner. After some incredible singing, the first By Voice Alone competition is at an end. Crunching the numbers has been as interesting as the wealth of talent on...
What is Success?
Explaining Success Explaining success is very difficult – even dictionaries give multiple definitions. They will tell you that it’s acquiring money or respect, or the achievement of a specific result. They even rely on the cop out of defining “successful”...
2019 Winner
2019 Award Winners 1st Prize Jennifer Witton soprano 2nd Prize Luci Briginshaw soprano Emerging Artist Chloé Morgan soprano 2019 Semi-finalist Award Winners Development Award Jack Dolan tenor Development Award Stephanie Maitland...
2019 Finalists & Semi-Finalists
Finalists Luci Briginshaw: Soprano Luci studied Music (with Italian) at King’s College London and went on to gain a Distinction for the LRSM in Singing Performance in 2009. This Autumn, Luci will play Fennimore in Kurt Weill’s Der Silberseeand cover...
Chicken & Egg: Which comes first? Diversity or Inclusivity?
We live in an uneasy social climate. The political upheavals of recent years have done little to foster an atmosphere of inclusion and diversity, and yet that’s the conversation we – as an industry, and more widely as a society – need to have. Since...
Is it time to stop prioritising looks in opera?
Photo Credit: Robert Workman In January 2019, we launched Opera: By Voice Alone - a new competition featuring a ‘blind audition’ in the first round, at which a panel judges candidates purely by how well they sing. The competition, with its emphasis on vocal...
Singing with a disabilitiy: interview with Jenny Wilson-Best
Jenny Wilson-Best is a professional soprano whose career as an opera and concert singer spans nearly 40 years. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and has long been an advocate for singers with disabilities. Here, Jenny shares some of her...
By Voice Alone – No bias. No barriers. No compromise
Round 1 – blind auditions Why blind auditions? No Bias. No Barriers. We want to hear as diverse a range of exciting vocal talent from the largest pool possible: regardless of age, ethnicity, appearance, experience, or disability whilst maintaining the keen...
By Voice Alone: interview with Melanie Lodge
By Voice Alone is a ground-breaking competition with an ambitious aim: to overcome bias within the world of classical singing and seek out raw vocal talent from as wide a pool as possible. This is a competition with a difference - the first round is a blind audition,...
Press Release: Launch of By Voice Alone
Innovative singing competition will challenge unconscious bias in opera and judge artists BY VOICE ALONE. We are pleased to announce the launch of an innovative singing competition taking place in London in 2019. ‘By Voice Alone’ offers classical...