French tenor Morgan Manifacier, a DMA student in the Department of Music, is the 2021 winner of The American Prize in Voice in the College/University Men’s Art Song Division—The Friedrich & Virginia Schorr Memorial Award.
The award honors the memory of the greatest Wagnerian baritone of his age, Friedrich Schorr, who commanded the operatic stage between the world wars, and his wife, Virginia Schorr, who taught studio voice at the Manhattan School of Music and the Hartt School of Music for nearly 50 years. The prize recognizes and rewards the best performances by classically trained vocalists in America, based on submitted applications.
Manifacier is quickly establishing an international career as an interpreter of repertoire spanning from the Renaissance to the newest contemporary music. A versatile and engaging singer, he has sung under the direction of conductors David Lawton, Department of Music Professor Emeritus; Daniel Beckwith, Department of Music Artist in Residence; Christopher Fecteau, Mark Shapiro, Avi Stein, Benoît Renard and Douglas Martin.
A fellowship recipient from the Oxford Lieder Festival, SongFest, the International Baroque Academy and the AlpenKammerMusik Festival, Manifacier most recently performed with the dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, Amherst Music Festival, Manhattan Opera Studio, Stony Brook Opera, Respiro Opera NYC and Martina Arroyo’s Role Performance Program.
Manifacier is pursuing his DMA in Voice and Opera Performance under the tutelage of Randall Scarlata and Jeremy Little, and continues to coach with Timothy Long, Christòpheren Nomura and Roger Malouf. Other major teachers include Robert C. White Jr. and Neal Harrelson.
The American Prize National Nonprofit Competitions in the Performing Arts is the nation’s most comprehensive series of non-profit competitions in the musical and theater arts, unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.
Congratulations, Morgan!