Jamie Barton, Mezzo, Wins Richard Tucker Award

The New York Times
April 2015

The rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton has been awarded the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, the foundation that administers the award announced on Sunday night.

The $50,000 prize, which commemorates Tucker, the great Brooklyn-born tenor, was the latest in a series of accolades for Ms. Barton, a rising star. She previously won both the main prize and the song prize at the 2013 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and was a winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2007 — a lively competition that was featured in Susan Froemke’s film “The Audition.”

Ms. Barton was in Houston singing the role of Fricka in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” with the Houston Grand Opera when the award was announced.

Barry Tucker, president of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation and the son of the tenor for whom the prize is named, said in a statement that when he first heard Ms. Barton sing “she gave me goose bumps” and described her as having a “once-in-a-generation voice.”

Previous winners of the Richard Tucker Award include Renée Fleming, Lawrence Brownlee, Stephanie Blythe, David Daniels, Angela Meade, Joyce DiDonato and Michael Fabiano, who won last year.