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Students, Faculty + Alumni

Yale Opera alumni win top prizes in George London Competition

Claudia Rosenthal

Claudia Rosenthal ’08 BA, '14 MM and David Pershall ’10 MM, '11 AD have each won the top prize in the George London Foundation Awards Competition. The annual event, which is for young American and Canadian opera singers, held its final round of this year's competition on February 19, 2016 at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Of the 23 finalists (from an initial field of 85), six were awarded grand prizes of $10,000 each, and nine received “encouragement awards” of $1,000 each. The rest received honorary mention and $500 each.

Rosenthal and Pershall were among the singers chosen for the $10,000 grand prize. James R. Oestreich, reviewing the competition's final round for the New York Times, singled out Rosenthal and Pershall as two of the top singers in those chosen for the grand prize:

Of the top choices, four were among my own picks… [including] the baritone David Pershall, 30, who sang Starbuck’s aria from Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick”; and the soprano Claudia Rosenthal, 29, who offered a farcical number from Poulenc’s “Les Mamelles de Tiresias.”

Pershall and Rosenthal are both alumni of the Yale Opera program at the Yale School of Music.

David Pershall