Voice Instructor Diane Kalinowski Advances to Semifinals in International Singing Competition

June 3, 2014 — Diane Kalinowski, a voice instructor at Allegheny College, has been selected as one of only 30 sopranos worldwide who will compete in the semifinals for the 2014 Elizabeth Connell Prize, an international singing competition for dramatic sopranos, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on July 9.

The preliminary round of the competition, which is open to professional and non-professional soprano opera singers, included sopranos from 16 countries.

From the 30 semifinalists, five sopranos will be chosen to compete in a finals concert in Sydney, Australia in conjunction with the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award Finals. In addition to monetary prizes for all finalists, the winner of the Elizabeth Connell Prize will be granted an audition at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London.

The competition honors Elizabeth Connell, a South African soprano who had an illustrious career. Fully aware of the difficulty of establishing an operatic career as a dramatic soprano, Connell bequeathed a generous gift to create a charitable trust to administer and fund an international operatic singing prize.

Diane Kalinowski is a recent winner of the Alfredo Silipigni Vocal Competition at the New Jersey State Opera and a grand prize winner of the Rochester Lyric Opera LaDue Professional Recital Competition. A native of Cochranton, she began her study of voice with Vicki Jamison, instructor of music at Allegheny College, and continues to coach with Vicki and Ward Jamison. “I consider them my most trusted ears,” Kalinowski says.

She received her master’s of music in opera from the University of Kansas while singing as a soprano apprentice with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and received her bachelor’s of music in vocal performance from Mercyhurst University.

Kalinowski has been a voice instructor at Allegheny College since 2011.