Since childhood I have been fascinated by the strength and beauty of the human voice. When I was little, I was thrilled whenever my mother sang with us. As a young girl, I greatly enjoyed singing with my friends, and now that I am older, everything from pop music to classic arias can put a spell on me. I was grateful to be able to share my passion for music with my husband, who himself had a lovely singing voice.
Again and again I saw, on the many international trips I took, how much music is able to connect people across national, ethnic, and linguistic divides. I find great solace and strength in music, which has always helped me through my darkest hours.
In 1985 we held a ceremony to celebrate the 150-year anniversary of the Bertelsmann publishing house, and we invited Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic to give a concert at the Gütersloh town hall. During a talk after the concert, the maestro lamented how difficult it is to find young operatic talent. While many fields promote the search for new talent, there is still a great need for new young voices for opera. The thought of helping out in this area electrified me. It seemed like a perfect project for the Bertelsmann Foundation.
When I discussed this idea with my husband, he was just as excited as I was. But after the initial euphoria subsided, I began to realize that the plan would likely turn into an enormous and time-consuming undertaking. Undoubtedly I would need to create professional partnerships and connect with well-known institutions in the opera world to turn this plan into reality. My most important partner was August Everding, the general intendant of the Bavarian state theaters. From our first phone conversation, he was 100 percent with me. From his decades-long experience as an opera director, he was very familiar with the problem of the lack of future talent. As the president of the German Theater Union and of the Bavarian Theater Academy, his opinion carried great weight. Having August Everding on your side meant having the support of a courageous and tireless ally.
During a meeting in Munich, August Everding explained to me that worldwide there is no single competition for young singers that offered orchestral accompaniment. Such accompaniment is essential to young, classically trained singers so that they may assess their stage presence—indispensable to a professional career as an opera singer. But most auditions still took place in the small dusty rooms of a music academy, which were unlocked just for this occasion. They usually took place with only piano accompaniment—the young singers couldn’t even dream of having a full orchestra accompany them. A true contest under live-performance conditions was needed, where up-and-coming singers could test their presence on a large stage.
During my lively discussions with August Everding, the idea of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s New Voices international singing competition was born. Working closely with the German Theater Union, August Everding began assembling a talent pool of national and international young opera singers. A jury of opera professionals was formed, made up of directors, music critics, and artists who are still well known today. The jury included Elisabeth Legge-Schwarzkopf, Hans Pischner, James Wagner, Josef Metternich, Brigitte Fassbaender, Erika Köth, Edda Moser, Birgit Nilsson, Thomas M. Stein, Hellmuth Matiasek, Francisco Araiza, Sir George Christie, René Kollo, Gérard Mortier, Hans Hirsch, Christoph Groszer, Nicholas Payne, Siegfried Jerusalem, Dominique Meyer, Evamaria Wieser, Bernd Loebe, Jürgen Kesting, and Anja Silja. August Everding was jury president until his death in 1999.
From the beginning, our intent was to support young talent by televising broadcasts of their performances and by inviting talent agents and artistic directors to the competitions. Our first Europe-wide New Voices competition took place in 1987 in Gütersloh.50 The contest was open to anyone who studied voice at a European music conservatory. After several rounds of preselection, thirty-six participants from the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Poland, Bulgaria, Sweden, Canada, the United States, and Japan took part in the final contest.
What began as a European event grew into a worldwide undertaking in the 1990s. Since then, the preselections have taken place in various cities around the world. Whether in Tokyo or in Washington, in Sydney or in St. Petersburg, the New Voices contest grew so quickly that in 2001, for the first time, singers from five continents took part in the competition. It turns out that our singing contest, too, experienced the effects of globalization. Especially the East Bloc countries have come up with a tremendous number of extremely talented young singers. Since 1995, we have been working closely with the Yokosuka Art Theater Foundation in Japan. One hundred and fifty contestants from Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Indonesia participate in the preselection competition. And since 1997, the Chinese elimination rounds have been impeccably organized and fully supported by China’s cultural ministry.51
For all the participants, the road to the biannual competition in Gütersloh is long and labor intensive. They must learn three arias from an opera or an operetta both for the semifinals and for the final round. In 2009, on two successive concert evenings, forty-one selected singers each sang two arias before a jury.
Our New Voices competition quickly established itself as one of the most sought-after musical events among both the general public and classical music experts. We invite about nine hundred guests from politics, finance, culture, and media to join the festivities. From the beginning, our guests have included artistic directors of major opera companies, international talent agents, and representatives of the press, television, and radio. The final performances take place in a concert hall, but so do the recitals with piano: no longer are they tucked away in the small room of a music academy. They are heard through the entire week of competition on the main stage. Since 1995 Gustav Kuhn, director of the Accademia di Montegral and the Erl Tyrolean Festival, has been the competition’s artistic director.
Starting in 1999, Brian Dickie, the general director of the Chicago Opera Theater, has been a regular member of our jury. For many years, he also led the international preselection. Brian cuts a path through mediocrity. Finding new voices is his passion, and he ceaselessly circles the globe to follow his calling. For them, a promising new talent must possess more than just an excellent voice. He looks at a singer’s demeanor as a whole to see whether the performer is able to fully embody the music he or she is singing.
The things we experienced in those years! Sudden illnesses, problems with visas, lost suitcases, and forgotten sheet music kept me and my team on our toes. We spent endless time sharing the fear and apprehension of our young singers, and just as many hours engaged in lively discussions about the finalists. For me personally, the town hall of Gütersloh has been a magical place for the last twenty-two years. My other duties can wait. Memories often come flooding back to me, like that of Nathalie Stutzmann, the winner of our first competition in 1987. She is now considered the most important contralto singer, is invited to perform all over the world, and has won numerous international prizes, including the Grammy Award. We discovered Vesselina Kasarova, who won the competition in 1989 and is now one of the world’s most in-demand mezzo-sopranos. And the winner in 1995, Gwyn Hughes Jones, has since given a brilliant performance at the Salzburg Festival and has performed on European as well as American stages. In 2007 we were enchanted by the young Latvian singer Marina Rebeka, who is now fully booked until the year 2015.
These young singers’ complete dedication to fulfilling their life’s dream has always moved me. During the preselection rounds as well as the final round of judging, equal weight is placed on technical know-how, musical presentation, voice quality, artistic personality, and stage presence. Especially for contests with many international participants, it was very important to me that once the competition was over, we didn’t lose sight of the newly discovered young talent. New singers can easily get caught up in competing for the best roles in the opera world, then ruin their most valuable asset—their voice. So in 1997 we established an international master class that takes place in the year between the biannual competitions. In the class, up to fifteen former participants of the New Voices contest can train their voices under the guidance of world-renowned musicians without any competitive pressure. In the class they can carefully hone their voices and their vocal expression, as well as work on their interpretation and stage presence.
In addition to musical study, the young singers receive expert advice about topics such as securing an agent, auditioning, and contractual and tax law. A singer must be well equipped on many levels in order to stay successful in the international world of opera. The Bertelsmann Foundation is very committed to preparing young opera talent on all levels. Whenever I see one of our young singing stars perform years later on one of the world’s great opera stages, it makes me very happy.
Without a doubt, New Voices has been a success story. Since the beginning, our goal has been to meet and exceed the highest artistic standards. We have committed ourselves to transparency and to being fair to all contestants. We view our competition as a tool for cross-cultural communication, and we maintain complete tolerance for cultural diversity and the rights of the individual.
We have come a long way, and today New Voices is recognized all over the world.52 I always think with love and gratitude of my husband, Reinhard Mohn. Without his deep belief in the unifying power of music, his tireless support of the creative contest, his vision, and his courage, this idea would not have come to fruition.