Black singers only may apply to this British opera competition
NewsHere’s the contentious rule:
Presented by the Black British Classical Foundation in collaboration with Welsh National Opera, this competition showcases the Commonwealth’s finest Black and South Asian singers as they launch their international operatic careers. Up to twenty singers will be shortlisted and brought to the UK in November 2022. After a series of Preliminary Rounds, five singers will be chosen to perform a twenty-minute programme (with orchestra and piano) in the Final at Birmingham Town Hall on 5th December 2022. The Chair of the judging panel will be celebrated British Bass, Sir Willard White. After the competition, the winner of the Samuel Coleridge Taylor Award will perform a specifically commissioned song cycle (and a guaranteed three performances) with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
Eligibility Criteria
Professional singers of Black or South Asian origin/heritage and holding a passport from one of the 54 Commonwealth member states.
A minimum age limit of 20 years on 5th December 2022.
Required to be available for competition commitments in Birmingham from 20th November to 6th December 2022, with the Final at Birmingham Town Hall on 5th December 2022.
Prizes
Sir Willard White (pic) Trophy
£10,000 (subject to UK taxation).
Repertoire coaching with music staff at WNO.
A concert appearance with the WNO Orchestra.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor Award
£5,000 (subject to UK taxation).
A specifically commissioned new work for voice and ensemble (with a guaranteed three performances) with The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
This award will be presented to the singer who, in the Judges’ opinion, gives the best performance of a contemporary song or aria by a Black or South Asian Composer.
Excellent idea well done WNO. This will give so many chances to black and Asian singers.
Not all Asian singers and excluding anyone who isn’t of the desired type.
Can we launch a first white only competition then? Would that be allowed?
That would be useful, because white people are so under-represented in the world of classical music.
I believe that would be…the casting process for most major operas. Even if excellent black and south asian singers audition, casting directors often have white performers in mind for roles from a “look/character” point of view. It’s not said explicitly, but it’s what happens practically. Black and South Asian singers aren’t as able to get the kind and quantity of roles/performances under their belts because of casting discrimination. So there are specific opportunities like this one as an intervention/adjustment to try to recalibrate the system and offset that systemic discrimination that means that black and south asian opera singers of equal quality to white performers aren’t as able to get cast and (thus) establish themselves as professionals.
They’ve been around for decades. They just didn’t write it explicitly in the rules.
Excellent!
Discrimination pure and simple..
This is getting beyond a joke regarding the Arts in Britain. Meritocracy at all times.
Cardiff Singer of The World competition exemplified meritocracy each and every year!
And orchestral jobs/positions are blatantly using positive discrimination now with their advertising.
When will this unholy madness end?
When people stop attending concerts because the level has slipped so much.
Racial discrimination – absolutely astonishing – growing ammunition for the growing number of white nationalists who believe there is an agenda against white culture
Absolutely priceless!!
The woke neo-Marxists are quite open about their agenda against white, British culture.
And the entry criteria for Chineke! ?
Looks like segregation is back in vogue.
Same in elite American universities where there are now quota ceilings on the number of Asian-American students who can enter their hallowed (cough) halls.
When I’m going to hospital and ‘under the knife’ for some aggressive cancer I’ll be asking for the top performers!! Irrespective of colour.
“…and holding a passport from one of the 54 Commonwealth member states.”
The real issue here almost passed under the radar. Let me address it.
Sir Willard White is living proof that today, and for several decades stretching to the pre-WW2 era, black singers have enjoyed the same meritocratic selection process as anyone else who ever sang on the world stage. Great singers always get hired, because the art form itself sinks or swims on vocal quality.
Today, the real barrier to opportunity is definitively NOT skin colour. Passports are the greatest barrier to opportunity in our world. Nationality, not race, ought to be the focus of our attention.
Here’s an example.
A young singer of phenomenal potential from Venezuela, Luis Magallanes – who happens to have dark skin but it’s really not relevant, as you will see – contacted us five years ago in a state of starvation and extreme poverty. He had no means to leave his remote town, let alone his country.
Once we had fundraised to provide the “means” – the easy part – the real problems began.
Having sent Luis’s video to The Royal Irish Academy of Music, they had kindly offered him a two-year scholarship, and my best friends in Dublin had gifted him an apartment for those two years. It would seem his wildest dreams had come true.
Yet, getting him a visa to study in Ireland was our biggest hurdle. I personally processed his application, and had letters of support and financial guarantee from a number of eminent musicians and pubic figures. There was absolutely no reason to reject his application.
When it was rejected, I called my sister, then a Minister in the UK Home Office. She told me that the UK and Ireland both adopted a blanket policy of rejecting applicants from certain countries, because of “non-compliance rates”. Put simply, people from certain countries overstay their visas, while others reliably return to their country of origin.
It turns out – surprise, surprise – that visitors from poor countries suffering humanitarian crises are reluctant to return to the hell from which they flee, while those who can easily pay the high oversees fees for an education are far more likely to leave on completion of their studies.
So, with a winning lottery ticket in his hand, Luis was facing the agony of not being able to cash it in. And skin colour had nothing to do with anything. Only his passport.
It took a Hail Mary pass on my part – and Irish luck – to land the visa. I wrote to the ‘info@’ email at the Irish Ministry of Justice in early August 2018. My appeal happened to land in the inbox just at the moment the Minister of Justice himself – Charlie Flannigan – was looking at his phone. He was on holiday at the time. Out of pure kindness, he replied straight away and personally intervened in the case. But for that moment of extreme serendipity and Irish outside-the-box action by Minister Flannigan, Luis would have been deported home – where his brother would pass away just months later of a perfectly treatable illness.
And the opera world?
It welcomed Luis and his beautiful voice with open arms. Within 16 months, he had won a Young Artists contract at the Zurich Opera, and has now graduated to a full-time contract. As a result, he is now a Swiss resident and will soon be eligible for Swiss citizenship.
Luis is one of the very lucky ones. Imagine how many lights never get the opportunity to shine in this world because of visa rules. We need to pull our heads out of our first world behinds and look to the the rest of the world for the real problems. Skin colour is the least of them.
Ignoring any other considerations, is this even legal?
How is this contentious? The Sphinx Organization in Detroit has hosted a competition for Black and Latino string players for 25 years. The result: many deserving musicians have gotten career boosts that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Bravo to this organization for trying a similar tact to encourage diversity in vocal music.
The irony is that when people become so “woke” they end up meeting in the middle with people from the past who would have been characterized as anti-woke. Or people who were happily, casually, intentionally racist and bigoted.
Mao Tse-tung had his very woke Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960’s-1970’s, and now various folks in 2022 are trying to do their own variation of what he did.
“But aren’t their intentions good, don’t they mean well?”
What about brown singers?
Who decides who qualifies for being black? Will they have a colour swatch chart to scientifically measure a person’s blackness, or is it just a subjective decision based on personal biases?
Ahh, here we go again. People coming to claim ‘it’s all about race/gender/class not talent nowadays’. They fail to recognise the blindingly obvious point that it *used* to be all about race, gender and class – that’s exactly why Western classical music was dominated by posh white men for so long. That’s not coincidence, the *only* way you get that is from making it all about (one specific) class, race and gender instead of talent. It’s now *changing* to be about talent, which is why we’re seeing people from a mix of backgrounds.
There’s nothing wrong with a handful of competitions or orchestras trying to promote musicians from specific underrepresented backgrounds to redress the balance when the vast majority of classical music history has been so blatantly biased towards posh white men.
Experience will tell you that when lots and lots of people fail to see what you think is “blindingly obvious”, it’s probably you who have actually missed something.
There is a difference between racism, sexism, classism and the historical outcomes of simple demographics. The current trend from some quarters to confuse the two reveals at best a shallow understanding of history and a worrying lack of perspective. At worst it is a wilfully devisive misunderstanding of the evolution of classical music to justify the underachievement of certain individuals.
As has been shown time and time again, in fact the doors are wide open to anyone with the talent.
Absolute nonsense. To follow your logic with gender for example, would mean claiming women, who’ve forever made up roughly half the population, just all happened not to have any talent until fairly recently, then suddenly women got talent which is why orchestras became far more gender-balanced. Nothing to do with any other barrier. What a load of rubbish.
Interesting that you hide your bigoted and false views behind the convenience of ‘anon’.
And how many people “of Black or South Asian origin/heritage and holding a passport from one of the 54 Commonwealth member states” will turn up to this or other classical concerts?
How is this discrimination by race even legal?
Y’en a marre de ces conn…….!
This competition implies that there are still casting blocks for Black & Asian singers in some opera companies – especially with regard to heritage repertoire.
Disappointing.
I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with it. A few points:
1. Look at the differences between public and state schools, the former being treated as a charity to get tax breaks. What benefits do they offer to underprivileged children or the direct community? How many are up in arms regarding the lack of opportunities in state schools? How underfunded they are. Have you voted for the winning governments that have put these policies in place. Some state schools in the UK are like the third world.
2. Anything that raises the profile of any singer is a good thing, regardless of the conditions: black, white, asian, mixed race.
How many of those who disapprove will seek out a music conservatoire and donate, even a little, to a scholarship fund, that doesn’t have this criteria?
Michael : all educational establishments have been regarded as charitable as a matter of law since 1577 . There is no difference between a state school , funded largely by taxation, but in part by parents for ancillary costs, and private not for profit schools which can apply for charitable status , What is blatantly unlawful about this idea is its racial discrimination
It has been reported time and time again that white, working class boys persistently underperform compared with other ethnic groups.
Why not introduce schemes for all working class children? This would benefit all ethnic groups.
But no, it fails to tick the right boxes and has zero appeal to those shopping around for high status opinions. Plenty of those here, I see.
This makes discrimination acceptable in the ‘right’ circumstances and, in my opinion, will not end well in the longer term.
What about North Asian singers?
Black audience only too?