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The Adler Fellowships
Perspectives on a Top Tier Training Program
By Lisa Houston
Originally published in Classical Singer Magazine, July 2014.
Almost every classical singer is familiar with the renowned residency for young singers known as the Adler Fellowships. The success of a classical singer is built upon a foundation of training, mentorship, and opportunity and this program at San Francisco Opera is well known as an unparalleled place to garner all three. The Adler Fellowship program is a two-year performance-oriented program for young professionals who have already completed the San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Program, and the young singers who participate in it are without question the best of the best among aspiring opera singers.
The program comprises approximately eight and twelve artists per year, and also includes coach/accompanists as well as they occasional stage director, such as Josemaria Condemi (Adler Fellow 2001 and 2002.) The program began as the Affiliate Artists Program in 1977 with Carol Vaness as one of the participants and later took the name of its illustrious founder, Kurt Herbert Adler. Note: not to be confused with the longtime Met chorus master Kurt Adler, whose name singers know well from his compilations of operatic arias for Schirmer.
Kurt Herbert Adler was born in Vienna in 1905, the son of a textile manufacturer. By the age of twenty, aided by years of study in Vienna’s Academy of Music, Conservatory, and University, Adler made his conducting debut. His career in his home country began auspiciously with posts at the Vienna Volksoper and an assistantship to Toscanini in Salzburg in 1936 and 1937. But in 1938 he fled the impending dangers imposed on Jews in Austria by the increasingly powerful National Socialist Party. He came to the U.S. to conduct in Chicago and it was in 1943 that San Francisco Opera’s founder and director, Gaetano Merola, invited him to join the company as chorus master.
Adler would eventually succeed Merola and serve as director of the company from 1953 to 1981. Adler’s activities at the company, and beyond, reveal a man broadly passionate about music education and developing young talent. In addition to beginning San Francisco Opera’s training programs as early as 1954, he served as advisor to the San Francisco Conservatory, conducted youth concerts, and organized school performances across the Bay Area. He was also a lecturer in music at the University of California, Berkeley, where his papers are archived.
The preface to an oral history compiled by the University sums up the general opinion of his professional temperament, which famously clashed with that of Maria Callas resulting in the cancellation of her company debut. (Callas sang two concerts in San Francisco, but never did a role with the company.) The preface reads: “Few would disagree that Adler was a difficult, tyrannical character or that he created crisis after crisis just to keep the operatic juices flowing. Of his legendary temper he said that it bade for "artistic tension, which is good for success.”
The stars among Adler alumni prove that to one degree or another, he was correct. Almuni include David Lomeli (2009, 2010,) Ruth Ann Swenson (1983, 1984,) Patricia Racette (1989, 1990,) Dolora Zajick (1984, 1985,) and numerous other A List singers. Whatever his methods, his interest in singers’ development was keen. Soprano Janet Williams (1988 and 1989,) recalls an encounter with Adler just after a performance as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi when she was in the Merola program. “He approached me and told me he'd like me to learn the role of Giorgetta from "Il tabarro", the only opera of Il Trittico in which I had not been assigned a role. When I questioned whether it would be a good idea for me to sing such a spinto role, he told me he thought I should learn roles from the entire Trittico, even if I were only suited to sing one or two of the roles. It taught me a great deal about learning what the composer had in mind when he or she composes separate pieces associated with a cycle or whole group - how much one could learn from the composer's style and musical language.”
At the helm these days is veteran soprano and voice teacher Sheri Greenawald, who had a major international singing career herself and now fosters and encourages the young singers whom she lovingly refers to as “our kids.” Heidi Melton, (Adler Fellow 2009,) who is now enjoying an international career as a sought after dramatic soprano and Wagnerian, says of Greenawald’s lessons, “she was an amazing teacher for me during that time in helping me to, how shall I put this, drive the large truck that I was given.” Current Adler Fellow baritone Hadleigh Adams says of Greenawald, “her door is always open at any time to talk about any issue.”
Greenawald’s priorities are clear. “We still are a training program, it isn’t just an artists in residence program.” However talented they may be when they arrive, she wants to help the Adler Fellows continue to grow technically. “I feel very strongly that you have to work with them on a vocal level. To assume that students can leave their teachers and be out on their own right away in their early twenties or mid twenties is a little naive.” The singers are also given lessons from master teacher, César Ulloam of whom Hadleigh Adams says, “when we arrive we all see Cesar for an hour each Friday great technitian and has an incredible mind. He doesn’t want to interfere with anyone’s technique. He’s keeping things healthy.” Greenawald goes on to say, “you really do have to keep tabs on them because things are changing rapidly. There’s a lot of growth happing for you in your twenties. I hope every Adler goes out-at least that we maintain it- but hopefully they go out singing at a higher level.”
Greenawald is also keenly aware of the particular challenges singers face in the industry today. “Let’s put it out on the table: the little black dress syndrome. The weight loss issue. My friends who sing at the Met, it’s all about the HD diet. Everybody goes on their HD diet. So that’s what opera singers are confronting all the time. Luckily one of our donors is a PHD psychologist, so we have a list of psychologists who can help them with that. One of my current Adlers just lost 75 pounds so we try to help them cope with that new demand. It may not be a new demand but a more publicized demand. The discrimination probably went on in the past but nobody talked about it. Now it’s all out in the open: you gotta be skinny. So that has changed the business tremendously so we do help with counseling about that.”
With any major opportunity come high expectations and the demands on the Adler Fellows are substantial. Hadleigh Adams: “it’s easy to think, ‘oh, I know this well enough.’ But you’ve got to know the music as well as the conductor, before you start. It’s got to be in your body. Everything on the score, every marking has to be in the way you sing it from day one and there’s no room for that not to be the case. If your conductor says to you they want it legato not staccato, you can get it wrong once…maybe, but if you’re told twice it’s problematic and people remember.” Heidi Melton offered a similar thought: “You have no idea how many people get to a gig and they haven’t learned their music. They kind of know it, and they’re not off book. When I was an Adler, this was not an option. It was instilled in you that no matter how good you are, or you think you are, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day if you’re not doing your work. So for me, it’s about making sure that I’m prepared and coached and know the languages and know what I’m singing about and I’m off book and ready to go.” The Adlers’ rigorous preparation is facilitated by ample coaching in languages and music by people with extensive knowledge of the repertoire. These relationships can have a career defining impact, as in the case of Heidi Melton and pianist and coach John Parr, who is also her colleague now in Karlsruhe, Germany. “My first year as an Adler coaching with John Parr he said to me, “hmm, have you ever thought about Wagner?” When he said that it opened up a whole world for me and it’s the world that is really taking me places. It’s not every day you open up a score and you feel like it was written for you. That’s a turning point.”
Young singers in this program can find themselves swimming in the deep end very quickly. Hadleigh Adams, who knew he wanted to come to San Francisco from the time he saw the DVD of the company’s production of Andre Previn’s Streetcar Named Desire when he was eighteen. In his very first production when he arrived, the program’s “first Kiwi,” fresh from his training in New Zealand and Australia, he was onstage in a production of Les Contes D’Hoffmann with Natalie Dessay. One of Heidi Melton’s biggest opportunities came when she was asked to step in for an ailing Patricia Racette in the Verdi Requiem. Despite their success, neither Melton nor Adams describe anything remotely like complacency at being an Adler, at having arrived. On the contrary, both conveyed a deep sense of responsibility and gratitude. As Adams put it, when he found out he was being made an Adler, he was elated. But he also thought, OK, “I’ve gotta work so much harder now to be ready.”
With such prestige at a relatively early age, it seems fair to wonder if there have been any problems with egotism over the years. Sheri Greenawald gave the following answer to that question. “We’ve had years when there’s been more conflict within the kids themselves, but not in recent years. I’m always emphasizing to them about fellowship because you can’t be on stage by yourself that often so you better get a long with your colleagues. I’ve had a couple of Adlers only stay one year because they realized this isn’t what they wanted to do.”
One example of that is tenor Jeffrey Thomas, who was an Adler Fellow the first year the program was given that name, 1982. Thomas went on to become an early music conductor, notably and currently for American Bach Soloists. Thomas once said, “I never felt like I fit in completely among aspiring opera singers.” As Greenawald says, “it is a moment of reckoning when you realize, ‘yes, I really want to do this,’ or you realize it’s a challenge you don’t want to take on. Your twenties and even your early thirties is a time when we’re all, not just singers, busy defining ourselves. There’s a lot going on for these singers while they’re here. A lot of growth, a lot of trial and error and just searching constantly. Of course that’s what musicians have to do.”
Another thing an Adler has to do constantly is audition. A singer in the program can do as many as thirty auditions in a season, as the house arranges for Agents and other important industry people coming through town to hear them. Sheri Greenawald, “we help them by getting them in so many auditions that by the end of their fellowship, doing an audition is no big deal. They’ve done so many their inured to that process.”
The program is comprehensive in its support. As Janet Williams describes it, “anyone fortunate enough to land in the Adler Fellowship program found themselves immediately on the ‘right grapevine.’ Every opportunity was given and no money spared to make sure Adler Fellows got a good start in the business. One singer received a grant to go to Germany to study Lulu, another to Italy to study Italian for an upcoming role. My own good fortune was a grant to go to Paris and study with Régine Crespin - an opportunity that led to my European debut in Lyon, France. We were each assigned generous sponsors who made sure any need was met. Nothing was too trivial or too much. From a sponsor who took us to various dress shops around the cities convincing the shop owners to donate gowns, to arranging major agent auditions before the program was over. No one left the Adler Program without a major agent working on their behalf.”
These days, things may be somewhat different. Greenawald says, “we like to see that we can help them get management before they leave, it doesn’t always work out. Management business has changed. It’s tough in this economy.”
With so many international participants, the prospect of the program ending can be daunting. Hadleigh Adams explains. “With an O-1 visa, which is an exceptional talent visa, you can’t work on any other field. If I want to stay here, and I have a month off, I can’t go work in a restaurant or bar. I’m looking at staying here or going to Germany looking for a Fest job. I have two operas already for next year and that’s nice, to have something in the cards. We have all the resources in the world given to us and we’re so grateful for it and I think we work very hard in response to what we’re given. Then for it to not be there one day is scary. Exciting…but scary.”
The list of Adler alumni does not read exclusively like a list of superstars. Many had major careers. Some did not. Many have had both important careers and success as teachers, such as Carol Vaness who now teaches at Indiana University, or Janet Williams who had an acclaimed career and is now on a Professor at the Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler in Berlin. Life is unpredictable, and the opera world is no exception. A two-year residency cannot guarantee a career. What Adler Fellowships offer is an opportunity to experience working at the highest level, with the best assistance available to achieve that level. Certainly that was the intention of its founder.
Janet Williams was in the program the year that Adler died of a heart attack, 1988 and had this to say of the man: “He inspired singers and left an indelible mark on our musicianship. He had a gigantic presence and his death left a large void. His spirit was always felt.”
Author’s note: This article was written while on a visit to Vienna. As a native San Franciscan looking out across the music-rich city that first nurtured Adler’s ambitions, one is tempted to say: Vienna’s loss was our gain.
Perspectives on a Top Tier Training Program
By Lisa Houston
Originally published in Classical Singer Magazine, July 2014.
Almost every classical singer is familiar with the renowned residency for young singers known as the Adler Fellowships. The success of a classical singer is built upon a foundation of training, mentorship, and opportunity and this program at San Francisco Opera is well known as an unparalleled place to garner all three. The Adler Fellowship program is a two-year performance-oriented program for young professionals who have already completed the San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Program, and the young singers who participate in it are without question the best of the best among aspiring opera singers.
The program comprises approximately eight and twelve artists per year, and also includes coach/accompanists as well as they occasional stage director, such as Josemaria Condemi (Adler Fellow 2001 and 2002.) The program began as the Affiliate Artists Program in 1977 with Carol Vaness as one of the participants and later took the name of its illustrious founder, Kurt Herbert Adler. Note: not to be confused with the longtime Met chorus master Kurt Adler, whose name singers know well from his compilations of operatic arias for Schirmer.
Kurt Herbert Adler was born in Vienna in 1905, the son of a textile manufacturer. By the age of twenty, aided by years of study in Vienna’s Academy of Music, Conservatory, and University, Adler made his conducting debut. His career in his home country began auspiciously with posts at the Vienna Volksoper and an assistantship to Toscanini in Salzburg in 1936 and 1937. But in 1938 he fled the impending dangers imposed on Jews in Austria by the increasingly powerful National Socialist Party. He came to the U.S. to conduct in Chicago and it was in 1943 that San Francisco Opera’s founder and director, Gaetano Merola, invited him to join the company as chorus master.
Adler would eventually succeed Merola and serve as director of the company from 1953 to 1981. Adler’s activities at the company, and beyond, reveal a man broadly passionate about music education and developing young talent. In addition to beginning San Francisco Opera’s training programs as early as 1954, he served as advisor to the San Francisco Conservatory, conducted youth concerts, and organized school performances across the Bay Area. He was also a lecturer in music at the University of California, Berkeley, where his papers are archived.
The preface to an oral history compiled by the University sums up the general opinion of his professional temperament, which famously clashed with that of Maria Callas resulting in the cancellation of her company debut. (Callas sang two concerts in San Francisco, but never did a role with the company.) The preface reads: “Few would disagree that Adler was a difficult, tyrannical character or that he created crisis after crisis just to keep the operatic juices flowing. Of his legendary temper he said that it bade for "artistic tension, which is good for success.”
The stars among Adler alumni prove that to one degree or another, he was correct. Almuni include David Lomeli (2009, 2010,) Ruth Ann Swenson (1983, 1984,) Patricia Racette (1989, 1990,) Dolora Zajick (1984, 1985,) and numerous other A List singers. Whatever his methods, his interest in singers’ development was keen. Soprano Janet Williams (1988 and 1989,) recalls an encounter with Adler just after a performance as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi when she was in the Merola program. “He approached me and told me he'd like me to learn the role of Giorgetta from "Il tabarro", the only opera of Il Trittico in which I had not been assigned a role. When I questioned whether it would be a good idea for me to sing such a spinto role, he told me he thought I should learn roles from the entire Trittico, even if I were only suited to sing one or two of the roles. It taught me a great deal about learning what the composer had in mind when he or she composes separate pieces associated with a cycle or whole group - how much one could learn from the composer's style and musical language.”
At the helm these days is veteran soprano and voice teacher Sheri Greenawald, who had a major international singing career herself and now fosters and encourages the young singers whom she lovingly refers to as “our kids.” Heidi Melton, (Adler Fellow 2009,) who is now enjoying an international career as a sought after dramatic soprano and Wagnerian, says of Greenawald’s lessons, “she was an amazing teacher for me during that time in helping me to, how shall I put this, drive the large truck that I was given.” Current Adler Fellow baritone Hadleigh Adams says of Greenawald, “her door is always open at any time to talk about any issue.”
Greenawald’s priorities are clear. “We still are a training program, it isn’t just an artists in residence program.” However talented they may be when they arrive, she wants to help the Adler Fellows continue to grow technically. “I feel very strongly that you have to work with them on a vocal level. To assume that students can leave their teachers and be out on their own right away in their early twenties or mid twenties is a little naive.” The singers are also given lessons from master teacher, César Ulloam of whom Hadleigh Adams says, “when we arrive we all see Cesar for an hour each Friday great technitian and has an incredible mind. He doesn’t want to interfere with anyone’s technique. He’s keeping things healthy.” Greenawald goes on to say, “you really do have to keep tabs on them because things are changing rapidly. There’s a lot of growth happing for you in your twenties. I hope every Adler goes out-at least that we maintain it- but hopefully they go out singing at a higher level.”
Greenawald is also keenly aware of the particular challenges singers face in the industry today. “Let’s put it out on the table: the little black dress syndrome. The weight loss issue. My friends who sing at the Met, it’s all about the HD diet. Everybody goes on their HD diet. So that’s what opera singers are confronting all the time. Luckily one of our donors is a PHD psychologist, so we have a list of psychologists who can help them with that. One of my current Adlers just lost 75 pounds so we try to help them cope with that new demand. It may not be a new demand but a more publicized demand. The discrimination probably went on in the past but nobody talked about it. Now it’s all out in the open: you gotta be skinny. So that has changed the business tremendously so we do help with counseling about that.”
With any major opportunity come high expectations and the demands on the Adler Fellows are substantial. Hadleigh Adams: “it’s easy to think, ‘oh, I know this well enough.’ But you’ve got to know the music as well as the conductor, before you start. It’s got to be in your body. Everything on the score, every marking has to be in the way you sing it from day one and there’s no room for that not to be the case. If your conductor says to you they want it legato not staccato, you can get it wrong once…maybe, but if you’re told twice it’s problematic and people remember.” Heidi Melton offered a similar thought: “You have no idea how many people get to a gig and they haven’t learned their music. They kind of know it, and they’re not off book. When I was an Adler, this was not an option. It was instilled in you that no matter how good you are, or you think you are, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day if you’re not doing your work. So for me, it’s about making sure that I’m prepared and coached and know the languages and know what I’m singing about and I’m off book and ready to go.” The Adlers’ rigorous preparation is facilitated by ample coaching in languages and music by people with extensive knowledge of the repertoire. These relationships can have a career defining impact, as in the case of Heidi Melton and pianist and coach John Parr, who is also her colleague now in Karlsruhe, Germany. “My first year as an Adler coaching with John Parr he said to me, “hmm, have you ever thought about Wagner?” When he said that it opened up a whole world for me and it’s the world that is really taking me places. It’s not every day you open up a score and you feel like it was written for you. That’s a turning point.”
Young singers in this program can find themselves swimming in the deep end very quickly. Hadleigh Adams, who knew he wanted to come to San Francisco from the time he saw the DVD of the company’s production of Andre Previn’s Streetcar Named Desire when he was eighteen. In his very first production when he arrived, the program’s “first Kiwi,” fresh from his training in New Zealand and Australia, he was onstage in a production of Les Contes D’Hoffmann with Natalie Dessay. One of Heidi Melton’s biggest opportunities came when she was asked to step in for an ailing Patricia Racette in the Verdi Requiem. Despite their success, neither Melton nor Adams describe anything remotely like complacency at being an Adler, at having arrived. On the contrary, both conveyed a deep sense of responsibility and gratitude. As Adams put it, when he found out he was being made an Adler, he was elated. But he also thought, OK, “I’ve gotta work so much harder now to be ready.”
With such prestige at a relatively early age, it seems fair to wonder if there have been any problems with egotism over the years. Sheri Greenawald gave the following answer to that question. “We’ve had years when there’s been more conflict within the kids themselves, but not in recent years. I’m always emphasizing to them about fellowship because you can’t be on stage by yourself that often so you better get a long with your colleagues. I’ve had a couple of Adlers only stay one year because they realized this isn’t what they wanted to do.”
One example of that is tenor Jeffrey Thomas, who was an Adler Fellow the first year the program was given that name, 1982. Thomas went on to become an early music conductor, notably and currently for American Bach Soloists. Thomas once said, “I never felt like I fit in completely among aspiring opera singers.” As Greenawald says, “it is a moment of reckoning when you realize, ‘yes, I really want to do this,’ or you realize it’s a challenge you don’t want to take on. Your twenties and even your early thirties is a time when we’re all, not just singers, busy defining ourselves. There’s a lot going on for these singers while they’re here. A lot of growth, a lot of trial and error and just searching constantly. Of course that’s what musicians have to do.”
Another thing an Adler has to do constantly is audition. A singer in the program can do as many as thirty auditions in a season, as the house arranges for Agents and other important industry people coming through town to hear them. Sheri Greenawald, “we help them by getting them in so many auditions that by the end of their fellowship, doing an audition is no big deal. They’ve done so many their inured to that process.”
The program is comprehensive in its support. As Janet Williams describes it, “anyone fortunate enough to land in the Adler Fellowship program found themselves immediately on the ‘right grapevine.’ Every opportunity was given and no money spared to make sure Adler Fellows got a good start in the business. One singer received a grant to go to Germany to study Lulu, another to Italy to study Italian for an upcoming role. My own good fortune was a grant to go to Paris and study with Régine Crespin - an opportunity that led to my European debut in Lyon, France. We were each assigned generous sponsors who made sure any need was met. Nothing was too trivial or too much. From a sponsor who took us to various dress shops around the cities convincing the shop owners to donate gowns, to arranging major agent auditions before the program was over. No one left the Adler Program without a major agent working on their behalf.”
These days, things may be somewhat different. Greenawald says, “we like to see that we can help them get management before they leave, it doesn’t always work out. Management business has changed. It’s tough in this economy.”
With so many international participants, the prospect of the program ending can be daunting. Hadleigh Adams explains. “With an O-1 visa, which is an exceptional talent visa, you can’t work on any other field. If I want to stay here, and I have a month off, I can’t go work in a restaurant or bar. I’m looking at staying here or going to Germany looking for a Fest job. I have two operas already for next year and that’s nice, to have something in the cards. We have all the resources in the world given to us and we’re so grateful for it and I think we work very hard in response to what we’re given. Then for it to not be there one day is scary. Exciting…but scary.”
The list of Adler alumni does not read exclusively like a list of superstars. Many had major careers. Some did not. Many have had both important careers and success as teachers, such as Carol Vaness who now teaches at Indiana University, or Janet Williams who had an acclaimed career and is now on a Professor at the Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler in Berlin. Life is unpredictable, and the opera world is no exception. A two-year residency cannot guarantee a career. What Adler Fellowships offer is an opportunity to experience working at the highest level, with the best assistance available to achieve that level. Certainly that was the intention of its founder.
Janet Williams was in the program the year that Adler died of a heart attack, 1988 and had this to say of the man: “He inspired singers and left an indelible mark on our musicianship. He had a gigantic presence and his death left a large void. His spirit was always felt.”
Author’s note: This article was written while on a visit to Vienna. As a native San Franciscan looking out across the music-rich city that first nurtured Adler’s ambitions, one is tempted to say: Vienna’s loss was our gain.
©Lisa Houston 2022