Concurso San Miguel 2021: canceled
Two weeks after the end of the 12th Concurso San Miguel on February 29, 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic broke out. Ópera de San Miguel had to cancel its Winners' Concert, scheduled for late March, and most part-time foreign residents in San Miguel de Allende had to return to their countries before they went into quarantine.
By the middle of the year, it was clear that the pandemic would not end any time soon, so in August then artistic director of Ópera de San Miguel, John Bills, decided to cancel the 2021 season. Two months later, on October 3, 2020, John Bills passed away in Boston, Massachusetts.
Charles Oppenheim, who had already been serving as deputy artistic director since 2020, was appointed artistic director of Ópera de San Miguel, with the task of preparing for Concurso 2022.
In the meantime, the pandemic caused many of the prizes awarded in the 2020 Contest to be postponed, rescheduled or canceled outright. Such was the case of the “Bavaria Project”: the trip of four previous winners of the San Miguel Contest —César Delgado, Akemi Endo, Alejandro López and Carlos López Santillán— to Regensburg, Germany, to participate in master classes and group auditions with more than a dozen mayors of Bavarian opera houses. First, it was first postponed to 2021, and finally it was cancelled.
The 2020 Marmande Prize was postponed to 2021 but, by then, the winner, Alejandro del Ángel, had been accepted at the Zurich Opera Studio, where he is now a member, so he was unable to redeem his OSM prize.
Les Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques postponed its 2020 edition until 2021, but in this case the winner, Ethel Trujillo, did receive permission from the Academy of Vocal Arts (AVA) in Philadelphia, where she is now a member, to travel to Montreal and participate in the event .
The Opera in the 21st Century award for attending a summer workshop in Banff, Canada, which Alejandro Luévanos had won, was first postponed to 2021, and then to 2022. When it was finally rescheduled, Alejandro had already been accepted at the Ryan Center of the Chicago Lyric Opera, so he had to cede his place to Efraín Corralejo, who ultimately canceled his participation with little notice, and the award was finally cancelled.
The 2020 Highlands Opera Studio award, won by Angélica Mata, for singing the role of Donna Elvira in a production of Don Giovanni in Haliburton, Canada, was postponed until 2021, although due to the continuing pandemic —and restrictions on travel to Canada— demanded that her participation be online.
The 2020 Steans Award, a three-week fellowship at Ravinia, was also postponed to 2021. However, the recipient of that award, Ana Luisa Morelos, was in Spain at the time and was unable to travel to Chicago in time to take part in the summer program from the beginning, so she could not be accepted.
Finally, the Conservatori Liceu award: the winner of this award in 2019, Rodrigo Urrutia, traveled to Barcelona in early 2020, where he began the master's program in opera. When the pandemic was declared, in March, the program was suspended and Rodrigo had to return to Mexico.
Meanwhile, the winner of the 2020 Conservatori award, Ethel Trujillo, was already at the AVA when the master's program resumed in 2022. Since Ethel could not participate, we interceded to send Rodrigo back to Barcelona to finish his master of opera course, which he successfully concluded.
During 2021 we dedicated ourselves to fundraising in order to prepare for the return of Concurso in 2022...
Eduardo Martínez receives the first Ópera de San Miguel Award at the 2021 Carlo Morelli Competition in Mexico City
Ópera de San Miguel is proud to present Eduardo Martínez Flores, a 19-year-old baritone from Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, who has just won the Young Revelation Award at the 38th Carlo Morelli National Singing Contest in the City of Mexico.
For several years now, the Morelli Contest has offered the first prize winner of the San Miguel Contest direct access to the Morelli semifinals. In reciprocity, Ópera de San Miguel decided to contribute starting this year with the Ópera San Miguel Prize, proposed by the President of the OSM, Álvaro Nieto, which consists of a piano recital in San Miguel de Allende in an upcoming season and a prize of 15 thousand pesos.
