Heidi Stober, a 2000 Lawrence University graduate, won the Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Feb. 12 at the Wortham Theater Center. She received the $12,000 Scott F. Heumann Memorial Award for her first-place performance.
A soprano, Stober was one of 17 singers invited to the semifinal auditions last week from among more than 450 singers who applied for the competition from around the world. She was among seven singers selected to compete in the finals.
Stober, 25, earned a bachelor of music degree cum laude in vocal performance from Lawrence, studying in Professor Ken Bozeman’s voice studio. A native of Waukesha, she is currently the apprentice soprano in the Utah Symphony and Opera Ensemble Program in Salt Lake City.
While at Lawrence, Stober performed the roles of Laetitia in “The Old Maid and the Thief” and the countess in “The Marriage of Figaro.” She performed as Lisa in Milwaukee Opera Theater’s “La Sonnambula” in 2001 before leaving for Boston, where she earned a master of music degree from Boston’s New England Conservatory. While there, she received the John Moriarty Presidential Scholarship and performed the roles of the dew fairy in “Hansel and Gretel” and Laurie in “The Tender Land.”
During the 2002-03 season, she portrayed Yvette in “La Rondine” and Sally in “Die Fledermaus” for the Boston Lyric Opera, earning the BLO’s Stephen Shrestinian Award for Excellence. Stober sang as studio artist with Colorado’s Central City Opera in the summers of 2002 and 2003, covering Nellie in “Summer and Smoke” and singing the roles of first wife and first gossip in the world premiere of “Gabriel’s Daughter.”
Stober returns to Lawrence June 4 as a guest soloist for the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra’s and Concert Choir’s performance of Penderecki’s “Credo.”
