UNC President Molly Broad announced a gift of $10,000,000 from the A.J. Fletcher Foundation of Raleigh to establish and endow the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at the North Carolina School of the Arts.

“This generous gift from the Fletcher Foundation represents one of North Carolina’s largest private-public collaborations in the arts. I am thrilled that one of our state’s greatest public institutions is involved in a partnership of this magnitude,” said Broad.

“This gift represents our commitment to Fletcher’s dream for opera and education,” said Foundation President James F. Goodmon. “In order to permanently meet his objectives, the Fletcher Institute will provide the highest level of professional education to promising young singers, it will introduce opera to North Carolina school children, and it will maintain a commitment to performance in the language of the audience.

In addition, the Fletcher Institute will present at least two fully staged operas annually, at both the A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh and the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem. Raleigh’s Fletcher Opera Theater is scheduled to open in February.

Scheduled to open its doors to exceptional singers in the fall of 2001, the A.J. Fletcher Institute will provide performance-based training at the graduate and post-graduate level to 12 fellows annually. Fellows will work with the institute’s prestigious full-time and visiting faculty, such as internationally known singers Marilyn Horne, Marlena Kleinman Malas, Marion Pratnicki, Glenn Siebert and Marilyn Taylor.

North Carolina School of the Arts Chancellor Wade Hobgood extended a challenge to other individuals, corporations and foundations to raise an additional $10,000,000 in new endowment. “The Fletcher Foundation selected the School of the Arts because of the reputation of the voice program in our School of Music, as well as the value that a strong collaboration with our schools of Design and Production, Drama, Dance and Filmmaking would provide this new enterprise. We need to build our overall endowment to assure this kind of collaboration can occur,” Hobgood said.

In addition to participating in fully staged productions and in-school performances, Fletcher Institute fellows will receive extensive, advanced academic training. Skills such as voice, language, diction, operatic and vocal literature, acting, makeup, movement and career enhancement strategies will be taught by some of the world’s most renowned operatic performers.

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, headshot and resume to the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, North Carolina School of the Arts, 1533 South Main St., Winston-Salem 27127-2188.