Campus News

Award-winning soprano

A UGA graduate who now performs with the Metropolitan Opera will celebrate her homecoming when the Performing Arts Center presents soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird in recital April 4 at 8 p.m. in Ramsey Concert Hall.

Tickets are $18 or half-price for UGA students with ID.

After making her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2006-2007 season, singing two roles in a new production of Il Trittico, Bird returned there in the 2007-2008 season to sing Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro. She is rapidly gaining attention by major companies in her young career and is widely regarded as a rising star in the opera world. Of a recent performance, the Seattle Times stated, “No one shone brighter than Anne-Carolyn Bird. . . her stage presence is nothing short of magnetic.”

Bird has performed with Santa Fe Opera and Wolf Trap Opera, among others, and she appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra in a production of Candide starring Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander. She also has been seen in staged and concert versions of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and can be heard on the Grammy Award-winning recording of the opera. In 2006 she toured internationally with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to sing Golijov’s La Pasion de segun San Marcos in a performance that was hailed as “luminous” by The New York Times.

Bird has been the recipient of grants and awards from many organizations, including the Oratorio Society of New York and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Twice a Young Artist with the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers and twice a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, she holds degrees from both the New England Conservatory and the University of Georgia.

The Performing Arts Center is sponsoring a master class with Bird for UGA voice students in conjunction with her Ramsey Hall performance. (706) 542-4400.