Academy Of Vocal Arts

AVA's primary goal continues to be the training of the next generation of great opera singers.

A secondary goal is bringing excellent opera productions and vocal concerts to the Greater Philadelphia community at affordable prices.

Thirdly, AVA seeks to inculcate a love of opera and classical arts in the next generation of performing arts enthusiasts, through outreach programs in area middle and high schools.

AVA's program of full immersion opera is unique among training organizations. Each AVA resident artist will receive highly individualized training in voice, vocal repertoire, opera history, stage movement, acting, stage combat and dance, French, Italian, German language and Russian diction. Each resident artist will be cast in at least one major role in an opera during the AVA Opera Theatre season. Performances are intended to reinforce the training received in the studio and provide a solid repertoire within the standard repertory of today's opera.

Operas are chosen first to provide the training needed by the resident artists. But AVA also seeks to present a variety of operas that will appeal to its loyal audiences and presents its operas in several locations and at ticket prices less than half that o regional opera houses. AVA audiences have come to expect highly professional productions featuring dynamic younger singers, many of whom will shortly appear with opera houses the world over.

AVA's Opera Outreach program will offer study guides and workshops for a broad mix of middle and high schools, culminating in field trips to the theater to attend an AVA opera. Participating classes will have the opportunity to interact with AVA's resident artists and ask questions about opera, the artists' background, and the way they approach learning a role. This process demystifies the experience of opera and offers first time opera goers the opportunity to identify with the performers, who are themselves only a few years removed from high school. In this way AVA seeks to build audiences for the future of opera--audiences who will appreciate and support the artists trained at the Academy.

The Academy has assembled a superb faculty of professional performers, who produce consummate thinking artists--not "cookie cutter" singers. AVA wants to bring out the individual persona in each artist and help them develop their own artistic voice. Led by Maestro Christofer Macatsoris, who himself trained with some of the great conductors of the 20th century (Serafin, Sawallisch, Rudolph), AVA's faculty invests itself in hours of pain-staking coaching to bring out the best in each AVA singing artist.

AVA has achieved unprecedented success, especially in recent years, in graduating artists who achieve almost instantaneous success as major opera stars. Angela Meade, Stephen Costello, and Ailyn Perez, in particular, enjoyed immediate success and acclaim within months of graduating from AVA. Others have achieved similar success over the course of just a few years: Latonia Moore, Bryan Hymel, Michael Fabiano, Corinne Winters.

Financially, AVA continues to work to grow its endowment to the point where it has reserves to weather recessions like the 2008 great recession. To this point AVA has completed a three-year capital and endowment campaign which has added $6 million to its current $35+ million endowment.