Breaking: Met grabs harp from Paris Opéra

The wonderful Emmanuel Ceysson, principal harp at the Bastille for the past decade, has won the audition at the Metropolitan Opera for the seat left vacant by the death of Deborah Hoffman in February 2014.

He starts in Tannhäuser this September.

Here‘s how he describes the audition process:

I loved the fairness of [this] audition: we played behind a screen for all three rounds, we picked numbers for the order, our cell phones were confiscated. The jury had no way to know who we were, how we looked, they only judged us on what they heard…

The semi and finals were on the same day, starting at 3 p.m., and we finished around 10 p.m., it was quite a long and stressful day, but [all] auditions are a challenge…

Most challenging excerpt? Well you can make all excerpts challenging, as any piece of solo repertoire. I loved the repertoire for this audition because it gave us the opportunity to express ourselves in many different ways: Lucia, Chenier, Meistersinger for phrasing, Hansel for virtuosity and stability, Walküre for pedal changes, etc.